Customer data access

Hidden_Panda

Yes, A volunteer left and I found customer exports in three places: the shared mailbox, her laptop, a spreadsheet on the cloud. Nobody deleted them, lol. We have 2FA on every admin, which sounds safe, but it is useless if the orders already sit in that spreadsheet. Which data should a shop keep, where should it live and who should see it?

Golden_Thistle

I think I'd split this in two: the minimum amount of data you need to make an invoice and everything else.

Each business should only need to record what information it actually needs to make invoices and record the order for bookkeeping and keep that for as long as it needs to, in case the tax man comes around.

Everything else has no purpose after a set period. Abandoned carts, browsing history, support mail, marketing profiles - anything that does not have any value is just noise and should not be kept beyond what is strictly necessary.

For example:

You can keep a copy of every page someone has browsed since joining, for a one-time marketing activity, but beyond that. No need to store it.

It's all about defining the business requirements for what should be archived, stored, shared.

Turkan.Turgut

Golden_Thistle wrote
No need to store it.

Every bit of it for the seven years because of tax law.

Golden_Thistle

Turkan.Turgut wrote
Every bit of it for the seven years because of tax law.

And just to be precise, the 'book-keeping responsibility' is with regard to the transactions and associated financial records for the relevant tax years. It doesn't cover things like customer buying patterns and marketing profiling. So you can store that data separately. And with more up-to-date security if that helps.

Which would mean that you would need to store the 'transaction data', invoice data and payment details for at least the last seven tax years.

There's a good reason for this; the book-keeping is that data needs to be stored for tax law compliance.

The buying patterns and the marketing profiles, though, aren't part of that so that data should be stored separately and, again. You need to decide how long it is to be stored for.

Turkan.Turgut

Fair enough! I can see where your coming from and in the export plugin I have I'm exporting the full customer profile - not just those used on the invoice.

mohamedvanhoof

Hidden_Panda wrote
Nobody deleted them, lol.

I understand this, but in the small shop, with shared mailbox, two laptops, spreadsheet on cloud storage, data really resides their and the real exposure is that place not in the database. But one thing remains. Who should know what and where?

aLLengoMEZ

I am also wondering: What about an assistant (AI) plugin connected to the shop that is able to see customer table?

Would you need the names and addresses at all or is this totally useless?

Golden_Thistle

If i were you i'd look in to what the integration's user can read. Make it have the smallest role you can find.

You are telling it order values and products to answer its questions; it needn't have names or addresses for the same.

Sleepy_Cobalt

We will talk to whoever prints picking lists, as they have full addresses. And I need to find that box of old paper slips in the stockroom.

How long do you keep yours?

mohamedvanhoof

I swear it was the only compliant component: the shredder.

shreya

Deleting the old customers... Will I lose their history for our mailings?

Hidden_Panda

We went with this: keep only invoices and the items sold (order lines); all carts, logs, etc., will be deleted after a specified time; one admin per person will be created but these admin accounts will be separate - not a shared login; if the customers data is to be exported, the exporting will be done on a need basis and these will be deleted after use.

Any fellow who has an official period set for the retention?

czerwinskiagency

Our policy is

30 days for logs
6 months for customers
1 year for orders

The most tricky was backups, even if we delete them, they sit in backup systems and even after 3-4 month they may still be accessible (restored to the point they were).