Retention period
The Belgian obligation to retain books and supporting documents for 7 years, what NovaFisko keeps, what it purges automatically and what remains your responsibility.
Belgian law requires accounting books and supporting documents to be retained for seven years. This page specifies what this obligation covers, how NovaFisko contributes to it and where its role ends.
What the law says
| Obligation | Period | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Accounting books | 7 years from 1 January of the year following their closing | Code of Economic Law, art. III.88 |
| Supporting documents | 7 years, as an original or as a copy | Code of Economic Law, art. III.86 |
| Books and documents relating to VAT | 7 years from 1 January of the year following their closing or their date | VAT Code, art. 60 |
These references are indicative. Longer periods exist for certain documents, for example in real estate or social matters. The accounting professional remains the judge of the period applicable to each company file.
What NovaFisko keeps without a time limit
As long as the company file exists in the platform, the following items are never purged automatically.
| Item | Remark |
|---|---|
| Accounting entries | A posted entry is never deleted or changed. A correction is made through a reversal, which also remains in the books. |
| Fiscal years and periods | Including closed ones. |
| Third parties, chart of accounts, journals | As long as they are not deleted by a user. |
| VAT returns | Drafts, validated and submitted. |
| Fixed assets and depreciation schedules | Including disposed assets. |
| Original CODA statements | Kept and downloadable from the Bank tab. |
| Change history | Every change, with its author. |
| Audit trail | Append-only log. |
What NovaFisko purges automatically
| Item | Period | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Trash | 90 days by default, adjustable from 7 to 3,650 days per company file | After the period, the item is permanently deleted every night. |
| Document imports in error or duplicated | 30 days | Only the imports that did not succeed are purged. Validated documents are kept. |
| Technical log of offline synchronisation | 90 days | A device that has gone longer without synchronising reloads the whole company file. No accounting data is concerned. |
| Links for sharing documents by email | 7 days | The link expires, the document remains in the company file. |
| Audience data of the public website | 13 months, IP addresses truncated after 30 days | Unrelated to the accounting files. |
None of these purges affects the entries, the booked supporting documents or the books.
Where the supporting documents are
This is the most important point for retention.
| Origin of the document | Where the file is | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Uploaded to the document importer | Stored by NovaFisko | The file is included in the complete accounting file. |
| Imported from Novadesko | Remains hosted by Novadesko. NovaFisko keeps its data and a link. | The complete accounting file contains an index of the links, not the files. |
For a company file fed by Novadesko, the retention of the original files depends on Novadesko and on the company. If the company stops using Novadesko, make sure that the supporting documents are retrieved before its account is closed.
Building the legal archive
NovaFisko produces the archive; keeping it on a durable medium is the responsibility of the company and of the firm.
- Complete the year end: the documents become final.
- In the Exports tab, download the complete accounting file of the fiscal year.
- Check the cover PDF: integrity certificate and list of files.
- Store the ZIP archive in your archiving system, on at least two separate media.
- Note in your permanent file the fingerprint of the
manifest.jsonfile and the storage date. - Schedule the destruction at the end of the legal period.
Add the generation of the complete accounting file to your closing checklist. One archive per fiscal year and per company file, generated at the same time every year, simplifies the management of destruction deadlines.
Readability over time
An archive only has value if it is still readable seven years later. The complete accounting file uses only open and common formats:
- PDF for the books and the statements;
- CSV (UTF-8, semicolon separator) for the data;
- original CODA files for the bank;
- JSON for the manifest.
None of these files requires NovaFisko to be consulted.
End of the relationship with a client or with NovaFisko
A client leaves the firm
- Generate the complete accounting file of each fiscal year kept.
- Hand the archives over to the client or to their new accountant.
- Keep your own copy for the period that applies to your engagement.
Deleting a company file in NovaFisko removes it from the lists. Do so only after checking your archives.
The firm leaves NovaFisko
Export the complete accounting file of each company file and of each fiscal year before termination. The return arrangements and the period for deleting the data after termination are governed by the contract: they are to be confirmed in your contractual terms.
Platform backups
The backups of the database and of the files are part of the operation of the platform and are not visible in the software. Their frequency, their retention period and their location are organisational commitments to be confirmed with NovaFisko. They do not exempt you from building your legal archive: a backup serves to restore the platform after an incident, not to prove the state of your books at a given date.
Retention and GDPR
The seven-year retention is a legal obligation: it justifies keeping personal data beyond the end of the business relationship. Conversely, once the period has elapsed, the storage limitation principle requires that what is no longer useful is not kept indefinitely. Plan an annual review of the archives that have reached their term.