Auditor access and tax exports

During a tax audit (Betriebsprüfung) the tax office can ask for access to your digital records. The GoBD describe three ways: reading access in your system (Z1), evaluations you run on the auditor's instructions (Z2), and handing over the data on a storage medium (Z3). Paperarchive supports all three with the auditor role, search and exports, and the GDPdU export. For your tax advisor there is the DATEV export.

Auditor role (read only, limited time)

An auditor can read a space for a period you choose, and nothing else.

Invite an auditor

  1. Go to Settings > Spaces and select the space.
  2. Click Members, then Invite Member.
  3. Enter the email address and choose the role "Auditor (read only, limited time)".
  4. Pick the date in "Access until". Access ends automatically at the end of that day, at most one year ahead.
  5. Click Send Invitation.

Owners and admins of the space can invite auditors. The space owner needs an active plan or trial, as for every shared space. The invitation link is valid for 7 days. The auditor needs a Paperarchive account to accept it.

What an auditor can do

Auditor canAuditor cannot
View and download documents and their filesUpload documents
Search the space and see events and detailsChange, move, archive or delete anything
See the change history of every documentInvite or manage members
Create the GDPdU export of the spaceChange space settings

Change or end the access

  • In the member list you see until when each auditor has access. Use "Change access" to extend or shorten it.
  • To end the access right away, remove the person from the space. Only the owner or an admin can do this; the auditor cannot leave the space or end the access themselves. Access lasts at most 366 days.
  • After the end date the auditor has no access anymore. The entry stays in the member list as "Access expired" until you remove it, so you can see who had access and when.
  • The auditor role cannot be changed into another role or the other way round. Remove the person and invite them again with the role you want.
  • Granting, changing and removing auditor access is recorded in the change log of the space.

Files an auditor opens are recorded

Every file an auditor opens or downloads, in the web app, in the iOS and Android apps, through the Paperarchive API or through an AI assistant (MCP), is recorded in the change log of the space before the file is handed out. Auditors cannot read files directly from the file storage, only through this recorded link, so they need the current version of the iOS or Android app. If the entry cannot be written, the file is not handed out. Exports an auditor creates are recorded as well.

Evaluations on request (Z2)

If the auditor asks you to run evaluations yourself, use search and filters in Paperarchive, download the originals they need, or export the change log of a GoBD space as CSV or JSON in the space settings (owner and admins). Paperarchive does not include its own audit software.

GDPdU export (Z3)

The GDPdU export creates a ZIP archive in the format of the German tax authorities. Audit software such as IDEA reads it directly.

  1. Open the Export menu in the header of the document list, or the export menu of the space in Settings > Spaces.
  2. Choose "GDPdU export (tax audit)".
  3. Pick the period: last year, this year, the last 3 years or a custom period of at most 11 years. The document date counts; documents without a document date count by the date they were added.
  4. Click Create export.

The ZIP contains:

  • index.xml following the description standard of the tax authorities (Beschreibungsstandard)
  • dokumente.csv, ereignisse.csv and aenderungsprotokoll.csv: documents, their events and every change log entry of the space in the period, including the hash chain values (UTF-8, semicolon separated, decimal comma, dates as DD.MM.YYYY in German time)
  • fehlende_dateien.csv: every file of an exported document that could not be included, with the reason
  • The original files in the folder belege/, plus the PDF views of e-invoices and emails, the source emails (also further emails that brought the same attachment) and the source files of merged documents

Large exports are split into several ZIP files; each of them contains index.xml and all tables. Documents in the trash are not included, except archived documents that were moved to the trash after their retention period (column Papierkorb). Every export is recorded in the change log of the space.

Owners, admins and auditors of a space can create the export. You have to be signed in; if you use two-factor authentication, Paperarchive asks for your code first. API keys cannot create this export.

DATEV export for your tax advisor

"Export for your tax advisor (DATEV)" in the same Export menu creates a ZIP with a DATEV booking batch (Buchungsstapel), an overview of the receipts (belege.csv) and the original files of the invoices, receipts and credit notes of the space for a period of at most one year. Owners, admins and editors of the space can create it; viewers and auditors cannot, because the export archives the exported documents in a GoBD space. The DATEV export is a handover to bookkeeping, not an audit export. Every DATEV export is recorded in the change log of the space.

From a GoBD space, the DATEV export archives every document it contains. Documents with an open Needs input item are not exported; belege.csv lists them with a note. If archiving fails, no export is created.

Things to know

  • The auditor role, the GDPdU export and the change log work in every space, but locks, retention periods and the hash-chain checks only apply in spaces with GoBD mode.
  • Read access of members (viewing, searching, downloading) is not recorded in the change log. Files that auditors open or download are.
  • Paperarchive does not yet keep an independent backup copy of the files. Create a GDPdU export of your GoBD space regularly and keep it outside Paperarchive.
  • For your own process documentation there is a template (German), and the system description explains how the GoBD mode works.