Store your business documents securely and in compliance with Swiss legal requirements. The Document archive supports GeBüV-compliant and audit-proof archiving throughout the entire retention period. This ensures traceability and integrity while reducing physical storage needs and administrative effort.
The Document archive is part of the bexio Optima and bexio Ultimate subscriptions. It can not be purchased separately in combination with any other bexio subscription.
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Benefits of the Document Archive
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GeBüV-compliant archiving: Documents are stored in a tamper-proof manner in accordance with Swiss legal requirements.
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Efficient organization: Folder structures, tags, custom attributes, and intelligent search help you find documents quickly at any time.
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Audit-ready: In the event of a tax audit or revision, all required documents can be provided completely, transparently, and without delay.
What Is the Document Archive?
The Document archive is a secure, regulation-compliant storage area for business documents. Once documents are archived, they are protected against modification or deletion in accordance with GeBüV requirements.
Documents cannot be changed or deleted during their defined retention period. This ensures audit-proof storage and traceability over the entire lifecycle of the document.
Which Documents Should Be Archived?
Legal requirements for compliant archiving vary depending on legal form, industry, and individual business circumstances. For this reason, no universally valid list of documents can be provided.
To ensure full compliance with all applicable regulations, we recommend coordinating with your accountant or fiduciary. They can determine which documents must be archived in a compliant and audit-proof manner for your specific situation.
Legal Compliance & GeBüV Scope
All documents stored in the Document archive are managed in accordance with Swiss law. Companies are required to retain accounting-relevant business documents in compliance with Art. 958f of the Swiss Code of Obligations (OR).
To ensure auditability and integrity, documents must be archived in a timely, orderly, and traceable manner throughout the retention period. This requirement is derived from the Swiss Business Records Ordinance (GeBüV), Articles 7–9, which specify that archived documents:
- Must be protected against changes after upload (immutability, Art. 7 GeBüV)
- Must remain traceable with an audit trail of access and modifications (Art. 8 GeBüV)
- Must be stored in a regular, orderly, and timely manner (Art. 9 GeBüV)
This ensures that all archived documents are audit-proof and compliant for the legally required retention period.
GeBüV Compliance in bexio
There is currently no automated interface between bexio and the Document archive. As a result, the integrity of documents cannot be technically guaranteed between creation in bexio and upload to the archive. Documents become GeBüV-compliant only from the moment they are archived.
We are currently working on an automated solution for document storage. In the future, certain documents such as sales invoices, bills, and expenses will be stored directly and automatically in your Document archive after they are created.
We will inform you once this feature becomes available. Existing documents will remain unaffected and no duplicate documents will be created.
Timely Archiving Requirement
GeBüV requires documents to be archived in a timely manner. This does not require immediate archiving after creation, but it does require regular and prompt archiving without long unprotected periods.
Recommended archiving intervals:- Daily or weekly for high document volumes
- Weekly or bi-weekly for medium volumes
- Monthly for low volumes
Documents must always be archived before VAT reporting, period closing, or year-end closing. Archiving only at year-end is not considered timely under GeBüV.
Older Documents & Retroactive Compliance
Documents from previous years can be uploaded to the Document archive. However:
- GeBüV compliance does not apply retroactively
- Compliance starts from the time of upload onward
- The period before archiving remains outside technical integrity protection
Practical recommendation:Older documents stored elsewhere should be copied into the Document archive to centralize storage and simplify access. The original storage method and creation date should be documented to help demonstrate the chain of custody. Full lifecycle GeBüV compliance - meaning integrity guaranteed from document creation onward - will be achievable once automated archiving is introduced for the respective document types.
Certification
The Document archive solution has been certified as a compliant method for archiving documents under GeBüV.
This certification confirms that the archive meets the technical and organizational requirements for legally compliant document storage in Switzerland.
- Your company must have an Optima or Ultimate subscription
- Only users with Document archive administration permission can create the archive
The setup is a one-time process.
Cancellation
Please note that access to the document archive is linked to an active bexio account. In the event of termination, the user is responsible for archiving and backing up the data in a timely manner.