Archive and retention of your books
Your books and your supporting vouchers must be kept for ten years. To Bill keeps them for you as long as your company exists in To Bill. The Complete archive makes a copy that you keep yourself: readable without To Bill, and with an integrity you can verify.
Before you start
- You need the right to export the books.
- Payroll only goes into the archive if you also have access to payroll. Without that access, the archive says so on its cover page and is not complete.
Download the complete archive
Open Accounting › Exports.
On Complete archive, click Download (1).
Wait for the download to finish: the archive contains all your vouchers and can be large.
Store the ZIP file in two places, for example on your computer and on an external drive or online storage.
The archive covers all financial years, not only the one chosen on the page. Download a new one after each year-end closing.
What the archive contains
| Item | Contents |
|---|---|
| 00_readme.txt | Whose books these are, when the archive was made, what it contains, the state of the fingerprint chain, and any vouchers that are missing. |
| One folder per financial year | The journal, trial balance, general ledger, chart of accounts, balance sheet and income statement. |
| journal-chain.csv | All entries, line by line, with their author, the time they were entered and their SHA-256 fingerprint. |
| vouchers | Invoices and credit notes as sent, expense receipts, reminders and the files attached to entries. |
| notes, fixed-assets, recurring-entries | The notes for each financial year, the register of fixed assets and your recurring entry templates. |
| vat | The VAT returns filed from To Bill, with their eCH-0217 file, and their corrections. |
| bank-statements | Your bank statements as imported. |
| payroll | Payslips and salary certificates, payment files and the payroll access log. |
| manifest-sha256.txt | The fingerprint of each file in the archive. |
The folder names follow the language of your accounting: in English, as above; in French, German or Italian, in that language (for example 00_lisez-moi.txt, 00_liesmich.txt, 00_leggimi.txt).
Verify the archive
The manifest lets you prove that nothing has changed since the download. After unzipping the archive, the command shasum -a 256 -c manifest-sha256.txt (macOS) or sha256sum -c manifest-sha256.txt (Linux) recalculates each fingerprint. Your fiduciary or your IT person can do it for you.
Before you delete your company
Deleting the company deletes all its data in To Bill, books included, with no way back. If it keeps its books or its payroll in To Bill, deletion is blocked until you have your own copy.
Open Settings › Danger zone. The Your books must be kept for 10 years box appears.
Click Download the complete archive (1). Store the file in a safe place.
The box changes to Archive of your books downloaded, and Delete the company (2) becomes active.
Click Delete the company, type the company’s name to confirm, then click Delete permanently.
To Bill asks for a new archive if:
- the last one is more than 30 days old;
- entries or payroll have changed since;
- it was made before payroll and the other vouchers were added to it;
- it was not complete, for lack of access to payroll.
For the deletion itself, see Danger zone.
After the deletion
To Bill keeps no copy of your books. The archive you downloaded is then the only one: it is the one you will show the tax authorities or an auditor for ten years.
Legal basis
- The accounting records, vouchers, management report and audit report are kept for ten years from the end of the financial year. They may be kept electronically, if the link with the transactions is guaranteed and they remain readable at all times: Art. 958f para. 1 and 3 CO.
- The books and vouchers cannot be changed without the change being visible: Art. 3 GeBüV, the Ordinance on the Keeping and Retention of Accounting Records (German version: fedlex has no English one). Until the end of the retention period, they must remain available for inspection and verification: Art. 6 GeBüV.
- A rewritable medium is allowed if technical processes guarantee the integrity of the information: Art. 9 para. 1 let. b GeBüV. The integrity and readability of the media are checked regularly: Art. 10 GeBüV.