# Export Overview

Exports let you retrieve bulk data from your Advocate program in CSV or zipped XLSX format. Use them to back up data, feed a data warehouse, or run analysis outside of impact.com.

### Export types

You can export the following data types:

* `USER`: users in your program
* `USER_REFERRAL`: users with their referral data
* `REFERRAL`: referrals between users
* `USER_REWARD_BALANCE`: users with their reward balances
* `REWARD_BALANCE`: reward balances
* `REWARD`: individual rewards

### Lifecycle

Exports are asynchronous. When you create an export, it enters the `PENDING` state and is queued for processing. Once processing finishes, the export's status changes to `COMPLETED` and the file becomes available for download. If processing fails, the status changes to `ABORTED`. Exports eventually expire (`EXPIRED`) and are no longer downloadable.

Large exports can take time to prepare, so plan for an asynchronous workflow rather than expecting the file to be ready immediately after creation.

### Knowing when an export is ready

There are three ways to detect when an export has completed:

* **Webhooks**: subscribe to the export-completion webhook event before creating the export. Advocate will notify your endpoint as soon as the export is ready. This is the recommended approach.
* **Polling**: store the export's `id` when you create it and call the lookup endpoint periodically to check its status.
* **Listing**: use the list endpoint to retrieve recent exports and inspect their statuses.

### Filtering

When creating an export, you can apply filter parameters to limit which records are included, for example, only records created or updated since a given timestamp. This is particularly useful for incremental exports into a data warehouse. Available filters depend on the export type. See the Create an Export endpoint for the full list.


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