How do I delete my account?

You can delete your account in Settings → Delete account in any Small Mercy app, or on the web: au.smallmercy.app/account/delete for Australian-service accounts, and uk.smallmercy.app/account/delete for United Kingdom accounts. There is a 7-day window in which you can change your mind, after which your account and its data are permanently removed and we issue a deletion receipt you can keep.

Export what you must keep, first

This is the part to read twice. Deleting your Small Mercy account does not lift any of your record-keeping obligations:

Export before you delete. Confirmed records are kept while the account is active; clinicians remain responsible for their own record-keeping obligations — export what you must keep before deleting.

Small Mercy is a documentation aid, not the source of truth for your clinical record. Anything you are required to retain should already be filed where you keep records — and if it isn’t, get it out before you start. Notes and letters you have already filed into Cliniko or Nookal live in your practice’s own software, and deleting your Small Mercy account does not remove them. Once the window closes, the data is gone and we cannot bring it back. Export the individual notes and letters you must keep using the in-app controls before you start. If you need a full account export, request it from privacy@smallmercy.app before deleting your account; the delete screen does not produce a whole-account bundle.

The 7-day window

Deletion isn’t instant. For seven days you can change your mind, which is there to protect you from a decision made in a hurry. After that, your account and its data are permanently removed.

United Kingdom organisations have their own contractual clocks, and they compose with the 7-day window rather than replacing it: the window is your chance to change your mind, and deletion begins when it closes. From there the UK privacy notice and Data Processing Schedule apply — clinical data deleted within 14 days, encrypted backups expiring on a 35-day cycle within the UK region, and append-only processing-evidence and audit records retained for legal claims and regulatory accountability. How long is UK data kept after we leave? sets the three clocks out separately.

The account deletion receipt

Once removal is complete, we issue a deletion receipt you can keep — a record that the deletion actually happened, rather than a promise that it will. This is a different thing from the patient-facing QR receipt for consult audio, which covers a single recording rather than your account.

Consult audio is a separate matter

You don’t need to delete your account to get rid of consult audio. Audio is deleted by default: Free deletes it when the first draft arrives; paid keeps it encrypted for review and deletes it on confirmation by default; a practice can instead set immediate deletion or a short fixed retention window, and every mode sits under a hard 7-day ceiling. The privacy by design page walks through the whole lifecycle, and the privacy notice for your region is the formal statement of what’s held and for how long.

If you’re deleting because something isn’t working, it may be worth telling us first — some of it we can fix.