Legislators often provide guidelines for the orderly storage of documents relevant to tax law or commercial codes. The principle of order applicable, and the location where the documents are stored are left up to the business owner, provided that they ensure that the documents are available within a reasonable time, should there be an audit.
Legislation usually only requires retention of the document’s original form on paper for opening balance sheets and financial statements (individual and consolidated financial statements including notes), as well as for certain customs documents. These must be printed and signed, even if they have been created using electronic data processing (EDP) procedures. For all other documents subject to retention, electronic storage is usually sufficient, provided that the reproduction is consistent with the principles of proper accounting and that the following prerequisites are filled:
- The data must correspond figuratively with business letters, booking documents and all other documents in terms of content.
- In the case of tests, the documents on image and data carriers must be readable and evaluated by a machine within an appropriate amount of time.
Image carriers include all media that allow a pictorial image of the original (for example, photographs, photocopies or microfilm recordings).
Various electronic storage media (CDs, hard drives, magnetic tape, etc.) are available as data carriers for business document contents.