Before cancelling paid Tally: test intake and preserve uploads

Cancel paid Tally only when the intended plan can run your essential intake and a second authorized person can retrieve the required historical responses and attachments. If either depends on an unresolved downgrade behavior, retain the needed entitlement until you have confirmation. A downloaded table and a working form today do not establish what happens after paid features expire.

This guide concerns an existing Tally account, including a team considering Pro-to-Free or Business-to-Pro. It is a preparation and acceptance test, not a claim that those transitions behave identically. Vendor documentation was read on October 21, 2026; no account downgrade or migration was executed.

Establish the paid-through date and accountable owner

Tally says cancellation takes effect immediately, while paid features remain until the prepaid period ends. Billing settings provide subscription management and invoices. Record both the cancellation confirmation and the paid-through date; leave enough time to resolve failures before that second date. Tally billing guidance.

Account deletion is different: Tally describes it as permanent removal of the account and associated forms, workspaces and submissions, with no account restoration. Do not use deletion as the cancellation step. Tally account settings.

Name the organization owner, a backup operator, the person processing submissions and the person authorized to change the subscription. Write down the exact intended destination plan and ask for confirmation of that transition if the billing screen is unclear. Inventory every active form before judging whether one successful replacement makes the whole subscription removable.

Check whose access the plan supports

Tally documents that teammates cannot access workspaces and forms when the organization's owner lacks Pro. Folders and their contents can become inaccessible; the owner can restore Pro or move forms into a single workspace to regain access. That owner remedy does not establish free teammate collaboration. Workspace troubleshooting.

Give the backup a real task: locate yesterday's intake, correct an operational instruction where authorized, and deliver its attachment to the responsible colleague. If the proposed setup leaves that person dependent on the original owner's login, the handoff has failed. Use approved individual access, not shared credentials. Keep Pro if continuing team operation requires it, even when respondents can still reach a form.

Archive records with their meaning intact

Tally offers response CSV export and individual response PDFs; partial submissions have a separate export. Its dashboard displays times in the viewer's timezone, while integration exports use UTC. Submission IDs distinguish submissions; Respondent IDs identify respondents across forms within a workspace. Tally FAQ.

Set a cutoff and record each form's response count, included date range, question wording and relevant routing. Save an unchanged export before cleaning a working copy. Keep partial submissions separate from completed responses and note any exclusions. Capture the identifiers actually available through your export route; do not assume every file includes every field.

Create an index with the form reference, submission identifier, original timestamp, timezone convention and attachment filenames. Preserve repeat submissions by the same person. Investigate a count mismatch instead of deduplicating by email or mistaking a timezone difference for a missing response. Keep enough question history to explain an old answer after the live wording changes.

Download the attachments, not just their addresses

Tally's upload guide sets a 10 MB per-file limit on Free; Pro removes that limit subject to fair use. Batch downloading must be repeated for each submissions page. Integration-generated attachment links include access tokens, so people able to read an exported link may access its file without a Tally login. Tally file-upload documentation.

Download the actual files your approved archive requires into controlled storage. Match every expected attachment to its response, preserving original filenames alongside any archive names. Include older submissions, multiple attachments and similarly named files in the review. A token-bearing spreadsheet is neither an independent file backup nor something to publish casually.

The documentation read does not specifically establish treatment of previously uploaded files larger than the Free limit after downgrade. Do not promise they remain usable or predict their deletion. If continued hosted access is essential, obtain vendor confirmation for your transition; otherwise prove retrieval from the independent archive before relying on it.

Resolve domains and retention before expiry

Custom domains require Pro, and the domain registration is separate from Tally. The domain guide does not establish a post-expiry redirect, grace period or notification-sender fallback. Tally custom-domain guidance. List branded URLs, embeds, QR codes and sender settings. An inaccessible printed QR code cannot be fixed by updating only the website.

Business retention controls schedule automatic deletion per form. The documented way to disable that behavior is a separate settings change; the page does not settle what an existing rule does after a plan downgrade. Tally retention controls. Have the records owner approve any retention change. Do not equate losing the paid feature with cancelling its schedule, or turn off deletion merely to simplify a test.

Run this pilot — UNEXECUTED

Use a nonproduction copy or recreated test form with dummy submissions and files. The following is a proposed procedure, not a measured result. Testing while still paid cannot prove post-expiry behavior; use an authorized target-plan test or written vendor confirmation for those boundaries.

Check	Evidence to record	Stop condition
Intended respondent submits through each required URL and embed	Device, route, timestamp and received submission	Broken route, unexpected barrier or missing record
Representative permitted-size upload arrives	File opened by the processor, matched to the submission	File unavailable or associated with the wrong answer
Backup retrieves an old record from the independent archive	Response, question context and actual attachment opened without the author's help	Only a hosted link works, or mapping is unclear
Required notification or downstream handoff completes	Correct recipient and destination record, without duplication	Success depends on an unconfirmed paid feature
Target-plan access, domain and retention questions are resolved	Account-specific test record or vendor response	Any essential behavior remains unknown

Before a live change, save the working configuration and distribution locations. Keep the current entitlement through the acceptance window. If the pilot fails, restore the previous intake route while it remains available, reconcile submissions from both routes and postpone the plan change. Do not assume paying again restores missing data or every former setting.

Count only the charge that ends

Use your actual invoice and a confirmed target-plan quote for the same currency, organization scope and billing term. Compare current Tally charge minus retained Tally charge minus incremental archive, integration and replacement-intake costs. Count the retained account once across all forms. Track migration labor separately from recurring administration.

One migrated form may leave the entire contractual bill intact. Keep paying when shared operation, larger incoming files, branded distribution or an approved retention process still needs the paid plan. Record the renewal reduction only when the billing change is confirmed; use the subscription audit and cancellation checklist to organize the decision. Stack Watch lists current options and availability.