Article

Does licensing your records cost anything?

By TrustPast

Published October 28, 2026 · Updated November 1, 2026

An owner who hears that a buyer pays for company records asks a fair question next. What’s the catch, and what does it cost us? Every pitch an owner has heard has a fee in it somewhere. This page settles what micro1 publishes about charges to the company, and then counts the cost that is real: your time, and maybe your lawyer’s.

The short version, before the detail. micro1’s pages name no fee for applying and no charge at any later step. The money they describe runs one way, from micro1 to the company. What it does cost is hours. Someone has to fill in the profile, sit the interview, take the call, find the old exports, agree what stays out, and read the contract. In a contractor’s office that is the owner, the office manager and whoever knows where the 2014 job files went.

The short answer

We read micro1’s four public pages on 28 October 2026. None of them names an application fee, a listing fee, a processing fee or a charge for review. None of them asks the company to pay for de-identification or for the transfer.

micro1 doesn’t publish a sentence that says “applying is free” either. So we won’t write one for it. What we can say is what the pages do say: the steps, who does what at each one, and where money moves. In every step micro1 publishes, the money moves to the company. If you want the absence of a fee in writing, ask on the call and have it written into the agreement.

The cost you will carry is time. That time is not wasted, because most of it goes into the things micro1 says it weighs when it prices. More on that below.

Apply & License Your Data

Where money moves in micro1’s four steps

micro1 says: “We license data generated through your company’s everyday operations.” It lists four steps.

Discovery and pricing. “We identify licensable datasets across your business and tailor an offer based on the nature, scale, and value of your data.” micro1 makes the offer. None of its pages names a charge for the assessment.

Contracting. “We establish clear licensing terms, including a commitment not to resell or distribute your data until personal and identifying information has been anonymized.” The terms are written between your company and micro1.

Delivery and acceptance. “You securely transfer your data through our APIs or other approved methods. We review the data for completeness.”

Payment. “We pay in full within 30 days of acceptance”. In its answer on timing, micro1 adds that after approval it will ask your company to submit an invoice, and “payment will be made within 30 days of invoicing.”

Read the four steps again and look for a line where the company pays. There isn’t one. The company gives time and, at step three, a copy of its records. micro1 gives the offer, the review and the payment. Our page on what happens after you apply walks through the same steps from the owner’s side of the desk.

Worth knowing what you’d be paid before you count the hours? Our estimate asks five questions. The range is ours, not an offer.

What micro1 says you don’t have to pay for

Two published answers, and one of ours, take cost off the owner’s side. Each one removes a job you might have assumed was yours.

You don’t have to anonymise first. Asked whether a company needs to anonymize its data before transferring it, micro1 answers: “No, micro1 has processes for de-identifying and transforming sensitive information.” That rules out the cost owners fear most: paying someone to go through fifteen years of job files with a black marker.

You don’t have to hit a size. micro1 says “There’s no fixed minimum number of files, documents, or terabytes.” You don’t need to buy storage or hire help to bulk up a delivery. You send what you have, within the scope you agree.

You don’t pay us. How TrustPast is paid is in the last section of this page, and in full on our referral disclosure page.

Our page on how TrustPast is paid puts that disclosure into plain words.

The real cost: owner time, step by step

Here is where the hours go, in the order you’ll spend them. The steps are micro1’s. The description of the work on your side is ours.

The application

micro1’s referral page says the company’s point of contact “sets up the company’s profile on the company portal” and “completes data manifest.” A data manifest is a list of what you keep: which systems, how many years, what is in them.

For a contractor, this is the first real cost. Someone has to know that estimates live in the estimating software back to 2012, that job files moved from a shared drive to field-service software in 2019, and that change orders before that are in email and in a box of paper. If nobody has written that down before, this is when it gets written. Our page on what to look for in your job files and work orders helps with the list. Our page on what to prepare before you apply sets out that list system by system.

The interview

After the referral, micro1 says its team reviews the company and guides it through an initial interview. In micro1’s words, the interview “helps assess whether the company and its data are a good fit for the program.”

This costs the time of whoever knows the records best. In a trade business that is often not the owner. It is the office manager who set up the software, or the estimator who has been there since the first bid. Expect to describe the work, not to show it.

The discovery call

micro1 says “Qualified companies are invited to connect with a Data Partnership Manager to discuss their data, licensing terms, and next steps.” This is the call where the scope and the offer take shape. What to have ready, and what to ask, is set out on what happens on the discovery call.

Bring the person who can answer questions about each system. If the estimator knows the estimates and the service manager knows the work orders, both of their hours belong on this line. A call where nobody can say how far back the change orders go is a call you will have to repeat.

Gathering the exports

This is the biggest block of time, and the one owners underestimate. The records have to come out of the systems they live in. micro1 says you transfer “through our APIs or other approved methods.”

In a contractor’s office, gathering looks like this. Exporting estimates from the estimating software, with every revision, not just the one that won. Pulling job files and work orders from the field-service system. Finding the change orders and the notes on how each extra was agreed. Copying the repair notes and service histories by site. Opening the old backup from the system you left in 2019 and checking that it still opens.

Some of this is an afternoon. Some of it is a week of someone’s spare hours. Our step-by-step pages on exporting from tools like ServiceTitan and Jobber show what each system lets you take out.

Reviewing the redaction rules

Before anything moves, the scope has to be agreed. micro1 says “Before any participation, together we confirm” four protections, including that personal and identifying information is “removed or transformed before your data is shared with third parties.” It also says companies “have the opportunity to review representative samples before use.”

Both of those cost time, and both are worth it. Someone on your side reads the rules for what is removed or rewritten. Later, someone looks at the samples and checks that the rules were followed. That review is your control over what leaves. Our page on how de-identification works explains what you are checking for.

Counsel’s time on the contract

micro1 says the company moves through “contracting, data transfer, and data approval,” and that timelines depend in part on “legal requirements.” It publishes nothing on who pays for a lawyer.

As our own reading, a lawyer you hire to read the agreement is your cost, as it would be on any contract. Whether you need one depends on your company and your contracts. Our page on whether licensing company records is legal lists whose rights to check first: customers, vendors and staff. If a client contract says its job files are confidential, that is the clause to put in front of counsel. Our page on whether you need a lawyer to license your records covers how to brief one for a short, defined job.

The hours go into the price

Most of the time on that list isn’t overhead. It is the work that shapes the offer.

micro1 says compensation depends on “dataset size and volume, workflow complexity, data quality, domain expertise represented, and the uniqueness of the operational knowledge”. Its payout page says the final figure is “determined based on data sources, volume, quality, access terms, and due diligence.”

Line those factors up against the hours. Finding the 2014 to 2018 job files is volume. Exporting estimates with their revisions is quality. Bringing the service manager to the call so the work orders are described properly is domain expertise. A data manifest that matches what you can actually export is due diligence that goes smoothly. Our page on what decides the price goes through each factor, and our page on what a company’s records are worth sets out micro1’s published tiers.

The reverse is also true. An hour not spent finding the old exports can be years of records that never make it into the offer.

What is wanted, and what isn’t

The time is easier to spend once you know what you are looking for. It isn’t the customer list.

micro1 says it is looking for “data that reflects how work is actually performed within an organization.” Its 9 October 2026 announcement says it “uses de-identified company data” to build environments “that reflect real business operations.” The same announcement commits $1 billion over the next 12 months to acquiring and licensing that kind of data.

So the records are de-identified before use. Customer names and payments are never what is wanted. What is wanted is how the work was done: how an estimate became a job, how a change order was settled, how a repair was diagnosed.

That changes where the hours go. You don’t need to spend a day pulling payment records or cleaning up the customer file. You need the chain behind each job. The first estimate. The revision after the site visit. The change order when the run had to move, and the note on how the extra was agreed. The repair note that says what was tried first and why it failed. Our cornerstone page on what data buyers want from a trade business goes through those files one by one.

What micro1 does not publish about cost

Here, plainly, is what we could not find on micro1’s four public pages.

A written “no fee” line. No sentence says applying is free. No step names a charge either.
Legal costs. Nothing on whether micro1 contributes to the company’s legal fees.
Export costs. Nothing on whether micro1 helps with, or pays for, getting records out of old systems.
Costs if the deal stops. Nothing on what happens to time spent if either side stops after the call or after contracting.
Costs of a failed review. Nothing on who bears the work if part of a delivery fails the completeness review and needs another pass.
How long it takes. “There is no guaranteed timeframe between application and partnership completion.”

None of these gaps is odd for a public page. Each is a question to ask on the discovery call, before your office spends a week on exports. Tax on the payment is a question for your accountant, and our page on tax on a records licence lists what to bring.

What this means for a contractor with 30 or more staff

Here is one company, as our own example, not a case micro1 publishes. Say a general contractor with 40 people and fifteen years of records. micro1 is “looking for established companies with 30+ full-time employees,” so it is in range. Our page on companies with 30 or more staff covers the lane.

What it keeps. Estimates in the estimating software, with every revision. Job files with daily logs, submittals and closeout notes. Change orders with the reason and the sign-off. Warranty call-backs and the repair notes on each one.

Who spends the time. The office manager fills in the profile and the data manifest. The chief estimator sits the interview, because she knows the bids back to the first year. The owner and the project manager take the discovery call. The office manager runs the exports over two weeks of spare afternoons. The owner reads the redaction rules and, later, the samples.

What it pays someone else for. An hour or two of its lawyer’s time on the agreement, because two of its public-sector clients have confidentiality clauses. No charge to micro1 that micro1’s pages name. Nothing to us.

What it doesn’t spend time on. Scrubbing customer names out of fifteen years of files, because micro1 says it de-identifies. Pulling payment records, because nobody wants them.

That is the honest cost: a few people’s attention over a few weeks, and a lawyer’s read. Whether that is worth it depends on the offer. That’s the one thing nobody can tell you before the discovery call.

What is never included

micro1 doesn’t publish a fixed exclusion list. It says personal and identifying information is removed or transformed before your data is shared with third parties, and that the scope is confirmed together before any participation.

What follows is our own advice, not micro1’s. Keep these out unless micro1 agrees otherwise in writing: attorney-client privileged records, health information, payment-card and financial-account details, Social Security numbers, minors’ data, biometric data, and classified or export-controlled material. Add anything a client owns under its contract with you, and the customer list itself.

On a cost page there is a plain reason to settle this early. A file that should never have been gathered is time wasted twice: once to export it, once to pull it back out. Our page on what is never included in a records licence shows where those records hide. Our How it’s safe page gives the short version.

What you keep

micro1 says “Companies retain ownership of their underlying data.” Licensing your records doesn’t cost you the records. Your estimating software, your job files and your filing cabinet work the next morning as they did the day before. Our page on whether you keep ownership of your records covers this in full.

Where we fit

We, TrustPast, explain how this works and give you a range with our estimate. You apply to micro1 yourself, through the button below. micro1 pays TrustPast a referral fee when a company that applied through our link completes a deal. Your company pays us nothing. We never hold your records, and we are not on the interview or the call. Our referral disclosure says the rest. You can also apply without TrustPast, straight from micro1’s own site.

TrustPast

Questions and answers

Does micro1 charge a company to apply?

micro1’s pages name no application fee and no charge to the company at any step. Its four steps are discovery and pricing, contracting, delivery and acceptance, and payment, and the money in them runs from micro1 to the company. micro1 doesn’t publish a line saying applying is free, so if a written answer matters to you, ask for one.

Do we have to pay to have the records cleaned or anonymised first?

Not by micro1’s published account. Asked whether a company needs to anonymize its data before transferring it, micro1 answers: “No, micro1 has processes for de-identifying and transforming sensitive information.” Your cost is deciding what goes out of scope, not scrubbing every file.

Is there a minimum amount of data we must gather?

micro1 says “There’s no fixed minimum number of files, documents, or terabytes.” It adds that companies “with several years of records across multiple business systems are generally a stronger fit.” So the time you spend finding old years and systems is time spent on the thing micro1 says it weighs.

Who pays for our lawyer?

micro1 publishes nothing on legal costs. As our own reading, counsel you hire to read the agreement is your cost, like any other contract review. Ask micro1 on the discovery call if you want to know whether that changes.

Does TrustPast charge anything?

No. micro1 pays TrustPast a referral fee when a company that applied through our link completes a deal. Your company pays us nothing. Our referral disclosure page sets this out.

What does it cost if micro1 says no?

The time already spent: the profile, the data manifest and the interview. micro1 says “All companies must complete micro1's qualification and evaluation process” and “There is no guaranteed timeframe between application and partnership completion.” Nothing is licensed and no records leave your systems until you sign and transfer.