Inactivity and automatic deletion

An account nobody has used for a long time is eventually closed down, but it happens in stages and every one of them is reversible. Sixty days of warning emails, then the account is deactivated: locked, with everything still inside it. Only sixty days after that, if nobody has come back, is anything actually deleted.

The policy exists because the documents WorkZerk holds are the sensitive kind: licenses, insurance certificates, ID, signed agreements from people who stopped working for you years ago. Holding that indefinitely for an account nobody opens is a risk, not a service.

Two tests, and both have to be true

A lapsed subscription on its own is not enough. An account becomes a candidate only when the billing has lapsed and nobody has been using it.

The billing test. Two timelines, depending on whether you ever paid.

Never paid: 60 days after the trial ended. You started the free trial, never subscribed, and the trial ran out more than 60 days ago.
Paid and then canceled: 270 days (about nine months) after your last paid period ended. One paid month is enough to put you on this timeline. It is a little under a year so that seasonal work, where you might cancel after one intake and come back for the next, finds its records intact.

An account with an active subscription, or a trial still running, is never a candidate.

The activity test. Nobody has used the account for the same length of time: 60 days on the first timeline, 270 on the second. Using it means opening WorkZerk while signed in. Opening an email does not count, and neither does resetting a password.

Staying signed in counts. WorkZerk keeps you signed in for up to 14 days after your last visit, so people who work in it every day can go months without typing a password. If the account is being used, none of this applies, whatever the subscription is doing.

One group is exempt outright. If you hold a seat on somebody else's WorkZerk account, your own login is never swept. Your own subscription is not what pays for that seat, so a lapsed one says nothing about whether you are working. If that access ends and your login has no account of its own, it becomes a candidate after 60 days, counted from the later of when your access ended and when you last opened WorkZerk.

The 60 days of notice

Becoming a candidate deletes nothing. It starts a 60-day countdown, and you get four emails during it: straight away, at the 30-day mark, in the final week, and the day before.

Each one names both dates, the day you lose access and the day the data would actually go, so the near date is never mistaken for the end of the story.

Signing in at any point during those 60 days clears the schedule. Nothing to confirm, nobody to email. Subscribing again does the same. Each email carries a Sign in and keep my account button, or go to app.workzerk.com yourself and sign in. Going there directly is the safer habit with any email that asks you to sign in.

If a warning arrives and you do not recognize the account, it is usually a trial somebody at your organization started and forgot. Sign in if you want to keep it. Ignore it if you do not.

What deactivation means

If nobody signs in during those 60 days, the account is deactivated.

Nothing is deleted. Your portals, contacts, uploads, terms and everything else stay where they are.

You cannot sign in and work. Try, and instead of the app you get a page headed "Your account has been deactivated", telling you how long is left, with a Restore my account button.

You have 60 days to click it. One click and the account is back with everything in it. No support request, no waiting on us.

Anyone you share the account with is locked out too, until you restore it.

Portal links stop working. While the account is deactivated, anyone who opens the link you sent them gets a page-not-found message instead of their portal, and cannot submit anything. No reminder emails go out either. Restore the account and the same links work again, with nothing to resend.

Deactivation is there because warning emails land in spam or go to an address nobody reads any more. If all four miss, being locked out is the one notice that cannot be filtered, and it arrives when you try to use the account.

What deletion removes

Sixty days after deactivation, if nobody has restored it, everything goes permanently: your portals, your contacts, every uploaded document and answer, your terms library and the acceptances recorded against it, your workflows, your files, and your login.

Every private link your people hold stops working at the same time.

There is no undo and no backup we can restore from.

Staying clear of it

If you are stepping away for a season, take a copy of your data first. Exporting your data produces a download you can keep offline. The documents people uploaded to your requests are not in it, so ask us for those.

How this differs from deleting an account yourself

Deleting your account is a decision you make, and it runs on a 48-hour delay rather than months of notice. On a deletion you asked for, signing back in is not enough on its own: you have to click Restore my account. On the inactivity sweep, a plain sign-in during the warning window cancels the whole thing. Only once the account is deactivated do you need the button.

Getting help

If you receive a deactivation warning you think is wrong, or you need longer, email [email protected] before the window closes. While the account is only deactivated there is always a way back. Once the hard delete has run there is not.