Data history and the archive

To keep LiteShop fast and cheap to run, old months of sales and records move to an archive. Nothing is thrown away: the archive is kept safely in the cloud and the owner or a manager can download any month at any time. You see it in Settings → Business → Data history.

#How long data stays live

Your plan keeps whole months of history live (on every screen), counted back from this month:

For example, on Free in October, July to October are live. June and older months can move to the archive. A free trial counts as its plan.

Months follow your business day: your time zone and Business day starts at in Daily report settings, the same days as Reports.

#What moves to the archive

When a month is older than your plan keeps, these records of that month move to the archive:

• sales and refunds, ended cash drawers
• stock changes, damages, transfers, finished stock counts, received or cancelled purchase orders
• purchases you don't owe anything on, expenses, ended time cards, loyalty history
• paid-off credit and supplier records, settled courier parcels

Never archived: anything still open or unpaid. A sale on credit that isn't paid, a cash-on-delivery parcel that isn't settled, a delivery that isn't delivered, digital goods still to send, an open cash drawer, a purchase you still owe on, and the records of a customer or supplier with an open balance all stay live until they are closed. Balances (what customers owe you, what you owe suppliers, store credit, points, stock) never change. Your items, customers, settings and Business finance books stay as they are. Payment screenshots are always kept.

#Download a month

1. Go to Settings → Business → Data history.
2. Each archived month shows how many records it has and its size.
3. Tap Download. You get a ZIP file with spreadsheets (CSV) of the sales, sale lines, payments, refunds and expenses, the full records, and a list of payment screenshots.

Tap a month to look at its sales: open a sale to see its details and its payment screenshot.

Only the owner and managers can see and download the archive.

#Reports and totals

Reports, the customer page (total spent, visits, last visit) and best sellers still count archived months. For a period that includes archived months, Reports show an extra card From the archive (monthly totals) with the totals of those months: sales, net sales, refunds, profit and payments by method. Single sales of an archived month are not in the lists any more: download the month to see them.

Membership tiers keep counting what a customer spent and how often they came, including archived sales.

Exports only include live months. Download archived months from Data history.

#Refunds of archived sales

Sales in the archive can't be refunded: their stock and money are already closed in your books. If a customer brings back an item from an archived sale, give store credit or record it as a stock adjustment instead.

#Receipt links

Receipt links you shared keep working after their sale moves to the archive.

#After a downgrade

If you move to a plan that keeps fewer months (for example from Ultra to Free), you get 30 days before anything moves. The same 30 days apply when LiteShop lowers how many months a plan keeps. You see a notice on the plan screen and in Data history, and an alert. Download what you need, or upgrade again: an upgrade keeps more months live from then on. Months already in the archive stay there; you can still download them.

The first time archiving starts for your shop you also get 30 days' notice.