GoBD archive for e-invoices: eight years, unchanged

Q: How long do I have to keep e-invoices?

Eight years, counted from the end of the calendar year of the invoice. The fourth Bureaucracy Relief Act (BEG IV) shortened the period from ten to eight years. The archive locks each file for exactly that period.

Q: Do I need archive software at all?

You need a place that keeps every invoice unchanged, findable and backed up for eight years. Folders and hard disks manage that only with discipline and a backup that actually runs. The archive does it for you: the lock, the second copy and the index are built in.

Q: Where are my documents stored?

With a German cloud provider, in a data centre in Berlin, with a second copy in Frankfurt. Both copies are locked against changes.

Q: What happens if I cancel my plan?

New uploads stop, but your archive stays readable and exportable for at least 30 days after your plan ends, so you can take everything with you. Your retention duty does not end with the plan, so export your archive before it is deleted.

Q: Can my tax advisor or an auditor access the archive?

Hand over the export: a ZIP with every file and an index listing number, date, type and fingerprint. It opens without our software, which is what a handover should be.

How it works

Upload once, done for eight years

Step 1

Upload the file

PDF, XML, JPG or PNG, up to 20 MB each. Choose incoming or outgoing, and enter the invoice date and number.

Step 2

It is stored and locked

The file is stored byte for byte as uploaded and locked against changes and deletion until its retention period ends.

Step 3

Find it, download it, hand it over

Your archive lists every document by invoice date. Download single files, or export everything as a ZIP with an index.

Built in

What keeps your invoices safe

Locked against changes

Every file is written once and locked until the end of the eighth year after its invoice year. Before then it can be neither overwritten nor deleted, except on your explicit instruction.

A fingerprint for every file

At upload each file gets a SHA-256 fingerprint. Every copy and every export is checked against it, so a changed byte would not go unnoticed.

Two copies, two data centres

Your archive is stored in Berlin, and a second copy is kept in Frankfurt, with the same lock. Both data centres are in Germany.

Filed by invoice date

Documents are filed by year and month of the invoice, with type, number and date as the index, and listed newest first.

Export with an index

One click exports the whole archive: every file in its year and month folder, plus an index file with number, date, type and fingerprint. Ready for your tax advisor or a tax audit.

No duplicates

The same file uploaded twice is recognised by its fingerprint: it is stored once and counted once.

What the law asks for

Three properties, eight years

Since the e-invoice became mandatory, the file itself is the invoice. That is what you have to keep.

The original

The file as it was received or issued: the XML of an XRechnung, the hybrid PDF of a ZUGFeRD invoice. A printout or a PDF you made yourself does not count.

Unchanged

No re-saving, no conversion, no cleanup. Any program that rewrites the file turns it into a different document, and the original is lost for good.

Eight years

Counted from the end of the calendar year of the invoice (§ 14b UStG, § 147 AO), for incoming and outgoing invoices. An invoice from March 2026 stays until the end of 2034.

Issue, receive and archive: GetZUGFeRD covers what the e-invoicing mandate asks of your invoices, in one service and without an expensive ERP system.

Straight talk

What stays your part

Archive both directions: the invoices you receive and the ones you issue.

Describe your process in a few lines (Verfahrensdokumentation): where invoices arrive, who archives them, where they are kept. The GoBD expect that of every business, whatever software it uses.

Only files you upload are archived. The free tools on this site still process files in memory and store nothing.

Archiving e-invoices in line with the GoBD

Since 1 January 2025, every business in Germany must be able to receive e-invoices, and from 2027 the larger ones must issue them too. Because the file itself is now the invoice, the retention duty follows the file: an XRechnung is kept as its XML, a ZUGFeRD invoice as the hybrid PDF with its embedded data, each exactly as it was received or issued, for eight years.

GoBD-compliant archiving rests on a few principles. The document must stay unchanged, often called audit-proof storage, it must be findable, readable at any time during the retention period, and available to the tax office in a machine-readable form. A printout loses the structured data, a PDF you converted yourself is no longer the original, and a single hard disk rarely survives eight years.

What that means in practice for ZUGFeRD and XRechnung files, and why a printout or a PDF copy falls short, is covered in our guide “An e-invoice arrived. What you actually have to do with it”.

From principle to routine

The GetZUGFeRD archive turns these principles into a routine. Every upload is written once and locked against changes and deletion (WORM storage) until the end of its retention period, a second copy is kept in another German data centre, and a SHA-256 fingerprint proves that nothing has changed. For a tax audit you hand over the export: every document in its original format plus an index, ready for the data access the tax office may request.

For freelancers and small businesses without a document management system, it is the simplest way to meet the retention duty for e-invoices: nothing to install, no server to run, and the same plan includes the tools to create, validate and convert ZUGFeRD and XRechnung files.

Your online invoice archive. Eight years, safe and unchanged.