GoBD-compliant archiving

What the GoBD require technically

The GoBD are not a software certificate you can buy. They describe requirements for your entire bookkeeping. Part of that can be solved technically — and that part is what this page is about.

For invoice storage it comes down to four things.

Immutability

A stored document must no longer be changeable without the change being detectable. Technically I solve that with checksums for every document, storage without overwrite rights and a log that records every access. If a file is manipulated afterwards, the checksum no longer matches — and that stands out immediately.

Completeness

No document may be missing and none may exist twice. On intake it is therefore checked whether an invoice number already exists, and gaps in the number sequence are made visible.

Machine readability

An auditor has to be able to evaluate the data, not just look at it. That is precisely why the structured original has to be preserved. A printout or a pure image PDF does not meet this requirement.

Traceability

From the invoice back to the transaction and forward again — this path has to be documented. That includes a log of when which document entered the archive and how.

The procedural documentation

This is the part that is missing most often. The GoBD require a description of how your documents are created, processed and stored. Without it, an audit can object to the orderliness even if everything runs cleanly on the technical side.

That is why the documentation is part of the project for me, not an afterthought. It contains the path a document takes through your systems, the technology used, the responsibilities and the measures that ensure immutability. Written so that an auditor understands it — not as a technical manual.

What the storage layer should do

Beyond the obligation, one point pays off particularly in daily work: search.

When a document is needed, nobody wants to click through folders. I therefore build the storage so that both can be searched:

• Structured data such as invoice number, date, amount, tax rate, customer or Leitweg-ID
• Full text, meaning everything written in the document

That turns finding a transaction into seconds rather than a quarter of an hour. During a tax audit, that is the difference between a calm day and a long one.

How this connects to the other building blocks

Archiving rarely stands alone. If you create e-invoices or send them from your ERP, storage comes up anyway — so it should be built properly right away.

The same applies to the inbound side: received e-invoices are subject to the same retention obligation as outgoing ones. In practice the inbound side is even the more critical part, because documents arrive there from many sources and get lost more easily.

One closing note: I implement the technical requirements and document them. Whether your bookkeeping as a whole complies with the GoBD also depends on your processes. That assessment belongs with your tax advisor — I provide the basis for it.