Depending on your regulatory requirements, you may need to provide clients with the option to remove their data from Practice Better. This setting helps you honor your clients' "right to erasure" or "right to be forgotten" while maintaining compliance with data protection regulations in your jurisdiction.
In this article:
- Understanding the Client Deletion Setting
- Enabling Client Account Deletion
- What Happens When Clients Delete Their Accounts
- Preparing for Client Deletion Requests
Understanding the Client Deletion Setting
By default, the client account deletion option is disabled in the Client Portal. This gives you control over whether clients can independently request account deletion or need to contact you directly for data removal requests.
When you enable this setting, your clients will see a Delete My Account option under My Profile in their Client Portal, allowing them to initiate the deletion process themselves.
💡 Consider your requirements: Review your professional regulatory obligations and local data protection laws to determine whether offering client-initiated deletion aligns with your compliance needs. Some practitioners prefer to handle deletion requests personally to ensure proper record-keeping and client communication.
Enabling Client Account Deletion
- Go to the Settings (gear icon) > View All Settings.
- Scroll down to the Login & Security section and click on Regulatory Compliance.
- Scroll down to the Right To Be Forgotten section.
- Toggle the setting to enable client-initiated account deletion.
- Click Save Changes near the top-right.
📍 Please note: If you're on the Team plan, this setting is only available under the team owner's account. Team members cannot modify this regulatory compliance setting independently.
What Happens When Clients Delete Their Accounts
When a client requests account deletion through their Client Portal, Practice Better removes specific content created by the client within 30 days of the request. This includes:
- Journal entries created by the client.
- Documents uploaded by the client through their Documents section.
- Chat sessions and messages exchanged through the Secure Messenger.
All other data stored as part of the client's file remains available in your practitioner records to support your regulatory and professional obligations.
✅ You're covered: This approach balances your clients' data rights with your professional responsibility to maintain accurate client records according to your regulatory requirements.
Preparing for Client Deletion Requests
Practitioners will receive both an email and an in-portal notification alerting them of the client's deletion request. This email contains details confirming what will be deleted from the client account (as above).
Before a client's data is removed, you may want to export their information for your records. This is particularly important if you need to maintain complete documentation of client interactions for regulatory purposes.
We recommend exporting your client's file using the instructions provided in our export help article. This ensures you have copies of journal entries, chat messages, and shared documents before they're removed from the system.
📍 Please note: We retain database backups for 30 days for security and disaster recovery purposes. Client data may persist in a database backup for a maximum of 30 days after the final deletion step, after which it will be completely purged from our system.
💡 Want to learn more? Read our comprehensive article on Deleting a Client Account to understand exactly what data gets removed during the client deletion process and how the timeline works.