GoBD archiving: keeping receipts and invoices audit-proof

What the GoBD require of an archive

The GoBD are the German tax administration's principles for books, records and documents in electronic form. They apply to every business that receives, creates or keeps records electronically, which today means almost every one. For an archive this means above all:

• Complete: every record is there, none is missing.
• Unalterable: what is kept stays as it was; a change can be recognised as a change.
• Traceable: it is recorded how a document arrived and who did what with it, and when.
• Orderly: a document can be found again within a reasonable time.
• Readable: until the end of its period it can be opened and evaluated.

How long records are kept

Since 2025, invoices and accounting vouchers are kept for eight years (§ 147 AO, § 14b UStG); before that it was ten. Books, inventories and annual financial statements stay at ten years, business letters received and sent at six.

The period begins at the end of the calendar year in which the document was created. An invoice from March 2025 is therefore kept until 31 December 2033.

The e-invoice: what is kept is the data

Since 2025, every business in Germany has to be able to receive e-invoices. With an e-invoice, the structured part is the invoice: the XML file of an XRechnung, or the XML file inside a ZUGFeRD invoice. Under the Federal Ministry of Finance's letter of 14 July 2025, which adapted the GoBD to the e-invoice, keeping this structured part is enough.

The PDF of a ZUGFeRD invoice has to be kept as well only if it carries further information that matters for tax, such as a booking note. A printout does not replace the e-invoice.

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What "audit-proof" means

Audit-proof (revisionssicher) is a word from practice, not from the law: an archive in which an audit finds every record complete, unaltered and with its history. There is no official certification for it; under the GoBD, certificates for a software do not bind the tax office. What counts is how the archive is used and described in the business.

How TWT DMS keeps records

• Every document type carries its retention period, eight years where the law says so, counted from the end of the year.
• A document stays the file it arrived as: the photo, the PDF, the e-invoice.
• An archived document is write-protected, and a new version keeps every earlier one.
• Every step is in the document's history, with person and time; the activity log keeps it even after a deletion.
• When the period has run out, the archive proposes the document. Nothing is destroyed by itself; the administration decides whether it is destroyed or kept longer.
• Full-text search finds a document by any word, even years later.
• Read and stored on our own servers in Germany.

The process documentation

The GoBD also require a process documentation (Verfahrensdokumentation): a description of how records arrive in your business and how they are captured, kept and found again. It describes your processes, not only the software. For it, TWT DMS gives you the history of every document and the retention of every document type; if in doubt, ask your tax advisor.

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