Find how much you have
Sign in to Karbon as an admin. Karbon says the ability to export data is available to users with Admin access, so if you do not see the cloud icon below, ask a firm owner or admin to change your rights or run the export. Open Work from the main menu, which shows all work items across your firm.
Choose List mode from the sorting slider icon at the top right and clear every filter, including any saved view you have opened. Karbon exports only the work items the view shows, so a leftover filter shrinks your count. Clicking a column title sorts by that column, ascending first and descending on a second click, which helps you find your oldest work.
Click the cloud icon and choose All Work In This View. Karbon downloads a spreadsheet and its help article does not name the file type. Count the rows. Choose Repeating Work Schedules from the same menu for the schedules that create recurring work, and count those separately.
Work out how much you could license. Anything that exists to prepare an income tax return is income tax return information and is out of scope in every deal, so subtract it. Karbon's Work type, Status and date filters can help you separate the two, but only if your work types are named consistently. Report the licensable number, not the total.
For clients, open Contacts, click the cloud icon and pick the data to download. Each row is one contact card, so the same person can appear more than once. Karbon says a repeated key in column one means several cards for one contact, not a duplicate. Client groups and accounting details are not in that export, and Karbon says to ask Karbon Support for them.
For time, a Time Administrator opens Time, selects a timesheet and clicks Export for detailed time entries, roles and tasks, or opens Time, then Colleague Utilization, and uses the cloud icon for a custom date range. Karbon says you download whatever you are viewing, so check your filters. Count the time entries and put the figure in the description.
A developer can confirm counts through the API. Karbon says @odata.count, the total number of matching records, is included automatically in every list response. By default an API application sees only Public clients and their related records, so the API total can be lower than the number in the app.
What to put on your intake
Your intake has five boxes for each system. Here is what goes in each one for Karbon.
- What does it hold?
- Your firm's own non-tax work: work items with their work types, statuses, start and due dates, recurring schedules, time logged against budgets, and invoices if you use Karbon Billing. Something like: monthly bookkeeping, payroll and advisory work by stage and due date. Say if tax return preparation also lives in Karbon, and leave it out of the count.
- Data types
- Structured records for work items, dates, time and budgets. Add Text only for task descriptions and notes you have reviewed and are willing to license, since they often name clients.
- How big is it?
- Choose Jobs and enter the number of licensable work items from your cleared-filter export, after subtracting tax return work. Put the contact count and the number of time entries in the description.
- Verified or estimated
- Verified when the count is the row total of an All Work In This View export with filters cleared, or the API @odata.count with the Public-clients caveat in mind. Estimated when you filtered by work type or scaled up from one year.
- Records start
- The earliest start date among the work items you would license, found by reading the export or by sorting a date column in List mode. If you migrated from another practice tool, earlier work lives there and belongs in its own entry.
Exporting the full history
If a buyer licenses your records, this is how the full history comes out of Karbon.
A buyer export happens only after a license is signed and the scope is agreed: which work types, which years, and whether time and budgets are in. Tax return work stays out of every deal. Separately, Karbon's public terms say ending your services may involve deleting your content from its live databases and give no deletion timeline, so take your own copy before you cancel anything.
Work: an admin opens Work, sets List mode and filters to the agreed scope, clicks the cloud icon and chooses All Work In This View. Karbon downloads a spreadsheet of exactly what the view shows. Run Repeating Work Schedules from the same menu for the recurring-work schedules. Clear the filters if the scope is everything.
Contacts: an admin opens Contacts, clicks the cloud icon and selects the data to download. For client groups and accounting details, Karbon says to ask Karbon Support, which you reach from the main menu under Help & Feedback.
Time and budgets: a work view export includes budgeted versus actuals by work item and additional details. The Time & Budget tab has a cloud icon that exports budgeted versus actual amounts by colleague, including remaining budgets. In Time, Export on a timesheet gives time entries, roles and tasks, and Colleague Utilization exports a custom period. Karbon describes these exports for Time Administrators, so use that role or an admin.
Developers can use the Karbon API instead. Credentials come from an API Application under Settings, then Connected Apps, then API Applications, and are a bearer token plus an AccessKey that are not interchangeable. List reads such as WorkItems and IndividualTimeEntries (one record per user, day and task) return at most 100 items a request and follow @odata.nextLink for the next page, and EstimateSummaries returns a work item's budget. Karbon recommends no more than 120 requests a minute per account and application, and answers with 429 and a Retry-After header beyond that.
Karbon says it does not support exporting work templates directly to Excel. A buyer sees your structure through the exported work items, and Karbon's API release notes describe a WorkTemplates endpoint that returns templates, so ask a developer to check the API reference before you promise a template export. Under the license, client, contact and staff names, email addresses, phone numbers and notes are removed before anything reaches a buyer.
We only ask for an export after you sign a license and agree the scope. Sizing your data for the intake never needs one.
Limits to know
- Exports depend on your role. Karbon says the ability to export data out of Karbon is available to users with Admin access, and it describes its Time and Budgets exports for Time Administrators. If you do not see the cloud icon, ask an admin to change your rights or run the export.
- Exports follow the view. The work export holds only the items that match your filters, and for time Karbon says whatever you are viewing is what you download. A stale filter silently shrinks a file, so clear filters and run it again whenever you need everything.
- Karbon's help article names the result only as a spreadsheet. Check the columns before you promise a buyer a particular layout, and ask Karbon Support for anything missing, such as client groups and accounting details.
- Karbon says it does not support exporting work templates directly to Excel for bulk editing. Its API release notes mention a WorkTemplates endpoint that returns templates. Ask Karbon or a developer what fields it includes before you promise a buyer your template structure.
- Deleting a work item does not delete its time. Karbon says the time entries stay on the contact and are visible from the contact's Time & Budgets tab, so work counts and time counts can disagree after clean-ups. Karbon also says resetting a work item leaves its time entries in place.
- The API sees less than an admin does by default. Karbon says an API application sees only Public clients and related records, Private and Hidden clients are left out of lists and return 404, and an admin in your firm can request access to them. The API works at the account level, not the user level.
- API throughput is limited. Karbon recommends no more than 120 requests a minute per account and API application, returns 429 with a Retry-After header beyond that, and shows an exponential backoff with up to 5 retries. Add a stable $orderby when paging so page boundaries do not shift, and send Accept-Encoding: gzip to shrink payloads.
- Tax work is out of scope. Work items, notes, documents and correspondence tied to preparing income tax returns are income tax return information under IRC §7216 (26 U.S.C. 7216) and are never licensed, even de-identified or turned into statistics (26 CFR 301.7216-2(o)). Client-level records from your other work need that client's specific consent under the AICPA Code (1.700.001). This is general information, not legal advice.
This guide isn't legal advice. Check your contracts, and any recording-consent rules that apply, with your own lawyer.
Why buyers value it
Karbon is where an accounting firm schedules, assigns and tracks its work. Work items carry a work type, a status, start and due dates, a team and a budget, and time is logged against them, so years of records show how bookkeeping, payroll, advisory and onboarding work actually moves from request to done, how long it takes and where it stalls.
Buyers building finance and accounting workflow tools want process records like these: stage sequences, recurring-work patterns and time against budget, with the client left out. The cleanest material is the firm's own structure, such as a workflow with no client information in it. Job-level records tied to real clients are confidential client information under the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct (opens in a new tab) (1.700.001) and are considered only with each client's specific consent, which interpretation 1.700.060 says should preferably be in writing. This is general information, not legal advice.
What stays private
Client, contact and staff names, email addresses, phone numbers, street addresses and tax IDs are removed from work items, notes, time entries and billing records before delivery under the license, along with names typed into work titles, task descriptions and time-entry notes. Hourly rates and pay details are left out.
Income tax return information is never licensed. Under IRC §7216 (opens in a new tab) and 26 CFR 301.7216-2 (opens in a new tab) it is defined by where it came from, so redaction does not change that, and preparers may not sell even anonymous statistics built from it. Client email, attachments and files, your user list and permissions, and any logins are excluded by default. This is general information, not legal advice.
Common questions
Sources
Vendor documentation, checked . Screens and plans change, so if a step looks different in your account, check with Karbon.
- Karbon Help: View work and manage work views (opens in a new tab)
- Karbon Help: Export, download, and edit contact data (opens in a new tab)
- Karbon Help: Review, adjust, and approve timesheets as a Time Administrator (opens in a new tab)
- Karbon Help: What happens to my time entries when I reset or delete a work item? (opens in a new tab)
- Karbon Help: Setting up Billing (opens in a new tab)
- Karbon Help: How can I export work templates to Excel to bulk update them in Karbon? (opens in a new tab)
- Karbon Developers: Making your first API request (opens in a new tab)
- Karbon Developers: Creating a new work item (opens in a new tab)
- Karbon Developers: Release notes, October 9, 2025 (WorkTemplates) (opens in a new tab)
- Karbon Developers: Handling rate limits (opens in a new tab)
- Karbon Developers: Pagination (opens in a new tab)
- Karbon Developers: Budgets and time (opens in a new tab)
- Karbon: Terms of use (opens in a new tab)