Drop in your records. Kept unalterable for ten years.

No, and that is not a shortcoming of the product: Swiss law has no official certification or approval body for archives. “GeBüV-compliant” is therefore always a self-assessment. We disclose what is technically in place, and the procedure documentation describes every step, so that your auditor or your trustee can check it.

For the first 12 months after opening, your archive is free, up to 1 GB of storage. After that it costs CHF 100 per year, up to 100 GB. If you have a paid Magic Heidi subscription, the archive is included at no extra cost, also up to 100 GB. More than 100 GB is available on request.

Nothing is charged automatically: you take out a subscription yourself. Without a subscription you can no longer add anything, and downloading and exporting are blocked. Your documents stay stored unalterably until the end of their retention period; the document list, the journal and the integrity check remain visible. As soon as you take out a subscription, downloading and exporting work again.

You pay for the subscription by card through Stripe. It renews every year, and you can cancel it at any time in the customer portal. When it ends, the same applies as after the free 12 months: you can no longer add, download or export anything. The documents stay stored unalterably until the end of their retention period, and the document list, the journal and the integrity check remain visible. With a new subscription, downloading and exporting work again. The legal duty to keep your records stays with you in any case.

Yes, if you have a paid Magic Heidi subscription and use the same email address for both products. You then use the archive at no extra cost, up to 100 GB of storage.

Ten years. The period starts at the end of the business year (OR, Swiss Code of Obligations, Art. 958f para. 1), not with the document date or the upload. For records relating to real estate the VAT Act requires 20 years (MWSTG Art. 70 para. 3), and the Federal Tax Administration (ESTV) in its practice 26 years. You choose the period when you add the documents.

Only after the retention period has ended. Until then the document is locked in the storage and cannot be deleted or overwritten by anyone, not by us either and not on request. So only add what belongs in the archive. After the period has ended you decide whether to delete; the deletion is recorded in the journal.

It stays in the archive until the retention period has ended. Until then nobody can change or delete it, not us either, and not even if it was added by mistake (terms of use, section 6). Your archive is still in order: add the right file as well. The business year cannot be corrected afterwards either, so check it before you add anything.

In the archive, under “Access”, you enter their email address. They sign in at archiv.magicheidi.ch with exactly that address and can view, download, check and export, but cannot add or delete anything. We do not send an email: tell them the address of the website and the email address you entered yourself. Every access is in the journal under their address.

Records kept electronically have the same evidential value as paper if all requirements of the GeBüV are met. But the risk of destroying the original lies with your company (VAT Info 16 of the Federal Tax Administration, ESTV). Before destroying anything, check that the scan is complete and legible, and record how you proceed in the procedure documentation. You must in any case keep the annual report and the audit report as signed originals (OR Art. 958f para. 2).

In the Google Cloud in the Zurich region (europe-west6), spread across several data centres in that region. The index and the journal are also backed up daily. There is currently no second location outside the Zurich region. The time-stamping authorities (DigiCert, with FreeTSA as a fallback) are external services; they only receive checksums, never a document. The pages of this website are delivered by Vercel, which has no access to your documents. Sign-in runs through Firebase Authentication by Google; Google may also process your email address and the times you sign in outside Switzerland. The subscription is paid through Stripe; Stripe receives your email address and your payment details, but no documents.

Any file format. The limits are 1 GB per file or ZIP, up to 5000 files and 2 GB unpacked. Files are never converted. For readability over many years we recommend PDF/A.

Magic Heidi Archiv is deliberately only an archive. There is no text recognition (OCR) and no full-text search, no folders, no AI, no scanning app, no email inbox and no interfaces to accounting software. You search by file name, path, business year and source. Each archive has one person responsible for it; other people can be given read access.

The bookkeeping itself, the completeness of the records you add, the quality of scans, the part of the procedure documentation about your company (GeBüV Art. 4) and the signed originals of the annual report and the audit report. An archive keeps records; it does not make your accounts proper by itself.

You export the whole archive as a ZIP, as long as you have an active subscription or the free 12 months are running: all documents in their original format, an index with the checksums (manifest.csv) and the complete journal with the timestamps (journal.json). Checksums, journal chain and timestamps can be verified with standard tools such as OpenSSL; the instructions are included.

We will not discontinue the service at short notice. We announce a discontinuation by email at least twelve months in advance and keep the complete export available until the shutdown date (terms of use, section 9). The export contains documents, checksums, journal and timestamps, that is everything you need to go on keeping the records elsewhere and to prove that they are unaltered.

You sign in with a link sent to the email address of your account; whoever has access to that mailbox has access to the archive. At present you cannot change the address yourself. So use an address you will still have in ten years, and write to us at hello@magicheidi.ch before you give up or lose a mailbox.

Magic Heidi Archiv is operated by Magic Heidi AG, Route de Vaux 1, 1126 Vaux, UID CHE-215.620.945. The company also makes the invoicing and accounting software Magic Heidi. You can reach us by email at hello@magicheidi.ch; there is no telephone number.