Can I recover deleted data?

The honest answer first: TimeBill has no undo and no trash. Deletions are permanent the moment you confirm them, and some don't even ask. Whether you can get data back depends entirely on what copies exist outside the app.

What deleting actually removes

• Deleting a project cascades: all of its tasks, time entries, and cost items are permanently deleted. Archived invoices are the exception: they are kept as standalone financial records and remain in the Invoice Vault under a No Project group.
• Deleting a task or time entry is permanent after its confirmation dialog.
• Deleting a customer happens with no confirmation dialog at all. One click and it's gone.
• Removing a cost item from a project (or from the Cost Item Catalog) also happens immediately, with no confirmation.
• Deleting an invoice from the vault is permanent ("This cannot be undone.").

Also note: the deletion dialogs for projects, tasks, and time entries each offer Delete and Don't Ask Again. Choose it and that category of warning stays off. There is no in-app setting to turn it back on, so use it sparingly.

Recovery paths, best to worst

1. Re-import a JSON export

If you ever ran File → Export → Project Export, you can restore projects from that file: choose File → Import Project… and select the .json. This brings back the projects with all tasks, time entries, cost items, deadlines, priorities, and billing states. Two caveats: the export deliberately contains no customer records (the customer link is restored only if that customer already exists) and no Invoice Vault contents. Projects that still exist are skipped, never overwritten, so importing is safe even if only one project is missing.

2. Previously exported files

Invoice PDFs or XMLs you saved earlier via Re-export, Share, or Export All still exist as files on disk, but they cannot be imported back into the Invoice Vault. Keep them as your records. If the project still exists, you can also rebuild a deleted invoice by regenerating it with the same invoice number and Include Already Billed Tasks enabled. See Correcting and re-issuing an invoice.

3. A backup of your whole Mac

TimeBill stores everything in a local database inside its app container, so a full-computer backup (such as Time Machine) taken before the deletion contains your data. Restoring it correctly is fiddly. If this is your situation, stop using TimeBill for now (new data complicates a restore) and contact us via the in-app Help → Contact Support menu or the contact form; we'll walk you through it.

If none of these exist, the data is unrecoverable. There is no cloud sync or server copy; everything lives only on your Mac.

Protect yourself going forward

1. Regularly run File → Export → Project Export → Export All Projects and keep the .json somewhere safe.
2. Periodically use Export All in the Invoice Vault to keep file copies of your invoices.
3. Prefer Archive over delete for finished projects: archiving is non-destructive and reversible. See Archiving vs. deleting projects.

A full backup routine is described in Backing up and moving to a new Mac.