Close, export, delete
A job ends: stop taking work, hand the data over, and remove it when you choose to.
Closing
Stop taking work, keep giving it back
When collection is finished you close the project. Phones stop sending into it, and at their next sync each one is told the job is closed rather than silently failing. Pulling, downloading and exporting all keep working, because refusing new work and refusing to hand over the work are completely different things and only the first one is what closing means.
This is the one place a push is refused, and the cost is stated rather than hidden: edits a phone had not sent yet stay on that phone. They are not lost, and reopening the project lets them through at the next sync. If somebody is still in the field, reopen it.
Export
A GeoPackage, whenever you want one, open or closed
Export gives you the project as it stands: an ordinary GeoPackage that opens in QGIS or anything else that reads the format. No conversion, no intermediate export format, no request to us. Editing the exported file changes nothing in the cloud, so it is safe to hand to a client as the deliverable it is.
That is the practical answer to a question buyers are right to ask early. The largest things we hold are already files in an open standard, so getting your data out is a download rather than a project, and it stays that way whether or not you are still a customer.
Delete
Gone means gone, including from the backups
A project must be closed before it can be deleted, and deleting asks you to type its name. Both exist because this is the one action nobody gets to undo by asking us nicely.
Deleting an organisation’s data destroys its encryption key as well as its rows and files. That matters more than it sounds: row deletion cannot reach a backup taken last month, and a key that no longer exists makes every copy of that ciphertext permanently unreadable, wherever it is. It is what lets erasure be a true statement rather than a best effort.
Nothing we do deletes a file on a phone. When a cloud project is deleted, each device is told, and its copy becomes an ordinary local project that its owner keeps or removes as they choose. Exports you have already taken are unaffected. Copies in your own hands are yours to manage, which is the other half of meaning it when we say the data is yours.
Worth knowing
What it does not do
Closing is not archiving
It stops collection and keeps everything readable. It is not a cheaper storage tier, and it does not change what you pay.
Unsent edits wait on the device
Close while somebody is mid-job and their last batch sits on their phone until you reopen. Check the board before you close.
Deletion is not instant everywhere
The project goes immediately. Stored copies are purged within thirty days, which is the window that makes an accident recoverable by a human.
Nothing reaches out to a phone
We cannot remotely wipe a device and would not build it. Devices learn what happened when they next sync.