The workpapers stay with the Firm.
Your retention duty does not end when a subscription does. Every finalized Study leaves TracePrep as a branded PDF, structured data, and an immutable evidence manifest, and the finalized evidence is yours permanently.
A report you can lose is not a workpaper
Firms carry a document-retention duty that outlives any vendor relationship. A finished study that disappears from a portal the month the invoice stops is not a deliverable, it is a liability. It reads like a workpaper right up to the moment you need it, which is exactly the moment it is gone. TracePrep treats the finished Study as the Firm’s property from the start, because that is the only arrangement in which the word workpaper means anything.
Three artifacts, not one file
Finalizing a Study produces three things. The branded PDF, which is the client-facing document. The structured data behind it, so the figures are readable by something other than a person with a highlighter. And the evidence manifest, which seals every source snapshot at the version it was used. Together they are what the file actually needs: the conclusion, the data, and the evidence, kept as one set rather than as a document and a memory of where it came from. Separate any one of the three and the other two get weaker. A PDF alone is an assertion, and data alone is a spreadsheet nobody can source. Kept together they are a workpaper, which is what your file is supposed to contain.
What happens if you cancel
The Firm permanently owns its finalized evidence and workpapers. Cancelling does not change that. Finalized Studies also remain downloadable inside TracePrep for exactly three years after cancellation, so leaving never turns into a scramble to get your own files out. Export on the way out, or come back for them later. Either way, ownership was never the thing in question.
Why this matters
For the Reviewer
The file you signed is still the file, and the evidence behind it is still attached to it. A question years later gets answered from the manifest you approved rather than from a vendor’s current copy of anything.
For the Firm
Retention is satisfied by what the Firm holds, not by what a vendor still hosts. The finished work goes into the tax file as a complete set and stays there.
Questions
What does the Firm actually own?
What happens to finished Studies if we cancel?
Why does the evidence manifest matter separately from the PDF?
See what your Firm ends up holding.
Walk the six steps a Study moves through, from intake to the workpapers that stay with you.