Exporting your data
Download your company's records from Arvello as one ZIP of CSV and JSON files: what's inside, what's left out, and how long Estonian law says to keep it.
Your books are yours, and Arvello lets you take a complete copy of them at any time — for your own archive, for an accountant using other software, or before you leave. The export lives on the Export tab of Settings → Company.
Downloading the export
Open Settings → Company → Export and press Download export (ZIP). The archive is put together as it downloads, so a company with years of records takes a little longer. The file is named after the company and the day, like arvello-export-yourcompany-2026-10-10.zip.
Any member of the company can download it, Advisors included. It contains the records you can see in Arvello.
What's in the archive
- csv/ — one file per record type, semicolon-separated and UTF-8 encoded, so Excel shows Estonian characters correctly. Amounts are decimals. A column header ending in (EUR) is in euros. One ending in (currency) is in that row's own currency, given in its currency column — so a dollar invoice never reads as euros.
- json/ — the same records and fields as JSON, with amounts as whole cents, exactly as stored. These are the files for re-importing into another system.
- manifest.json — when the export was made and how many rows each record type has.
- README.txt — a short guide to the above.
The record types cover the books and everything behind them:
| Area | Records |
|---|---|
| Company | company details, financial years, VAT registrations, OSS registrations, connected integrations |
| Sales and purchases | contacts, invoices and purchase invoices with their lines and payments, received e-invoices |
| Accounting | chart of accounts, journal entries and their lines |
| Banking and documents | bank transactions, receipts, forwarded receipt emails |
| Payroll | people, payroll runs, payroll items, payslips, dividend distributions and recipients |
| Returns | VAT returns, OSS returns with their lines, countries and corrections, TSD returns and their submission lines, annual reports |
| Other | fixed assets and depreciation, business trips and their expenses, home office agreements and claims |
Each record keeps its ID and the IDs of the records it belongs to — an invoice line points at its invoice — so the files can be put back together. Internal fields, such as who last edited a record, are left out.
What isn't in it
- Document files. The export holds data, not files. Download invoice PDFs, uploaded receipts, payslips and annual report files from their own pages.
- Filed KMD, TSD and annual-report files. The export lists each VAT and TSD return with its period, status and filing details, and each line a TSD submission declared, but not the files you uploaded or sent. Save those from the return's or report's own page. OSS and IOSS returns are the exception: the XML file as approved and filed is included.
- Settings and automation. Invoice designs, recurring templates, bank-connection settings and reconciliation rules aren't included.
- The activity log. The change history under Activity Log isn't part of the export.
- Arvo conversations. They're private to the member who had them, not company records.
Reports have their own exports: Export PDF and Export CSV on the profit & loss and balance sheet, and Export CSV on the Transaction History.
If the company is scheduled for deletion, the deletion page offers this same export plus a ZIP of the stored files: invoice PDFs, receipts, payslips, uploaded documents and the logo. See Company settings.
How long to keep it
Keeping the records is the company's duty, not Arvello's:
- Seven years for source documents, counted from the end of the financial year in which the entry was made (RPS § 12 lg 1). Accounting registers, contracts, financial statements and other business documents needed to understand the transactions are kept seven years from the end of their financial year too (lg 2).
- Machine-readable. Records are kept in a machine-readable form, and they have to stay reproducible, readable as plain text and usable as evidence for the whole period (lg 5).
- Ten years for EU One-Stop Shop (OSS) and import scheme (IOSS) records, from 31 December of the year of each sale (KMS § 43 lg 15 and § 43¹ lg 15).
An export is a snapshot of the day you made it. Keep the archive somewhere safe, together with the document files.
Official text: Accounting Act, Käibemaksuseadus.