Help: archiving step by step

What belongs in the archive?

The archive is for your company’s accounting records and accounting vouchers, that is everything that backs up your accounts. Drafts, private documents and anything you still need to change do not belong in it.

The law speaks of accounting records and accounting vouchers (OR, Swiss Code of Obligations, Art. 958f para. 1). In everyday terms these are mostly:

• invoices issued and received;
• receipts and till slips;
• bank and credit card statements;
• the annual accounts with balance sheet and income statement;
• VAT returns;
• payroll records, such as payslips;
• contracts and business correspondence, where they document a transaction;
• the books themselves, for example the journal and account sheets as PDFs from your accounting software.

These do not belong in the archive:

• drafts and interim versions;
• private documents;
• anything you still need to change or add to.

The reason: what has been archived stays locked until the retention period has ended (see Wrong file archived). You can add a copy of the annual report and of the audit report; you must also keep the signed original on paper (OR Art. 958f para. 2).

Formats and limits

You can add any file format. Files are never converted but stored unchanged. For readability over many years we recommend PDF/A. The limits are 1 GB per file or ZIP; a ZIP may contain at most 5000 files and 2 GB unpacked. The content of the files is not read: there is no text recognition and no full-text search. So give files names you will recognise them by. How to scan paper is explained in the guide Keeping receipts digitally (in German).

Year-end checklist

The easiest way is once a year, as soon as the business year is closed and the invoices and receipts are complete. The checklist below takes you through it in eight steps.

1. Wait for the year end. Wait until the business year is closed and you have all the invoices and receipts of the year.
2. Create a backup in Magic Heidi. If you use Magic Heidi, create the backup for the year there: a ZIP with your invoices and expense receipts. Leave it as it is (see Archiving Magic Heidi records (in German)).
3. Collect the other records. Bank and credit card statements, VAT returns, payroll records and the annual accounts.
4. Check the business year and the retention period. Choose the business year the records belong to. The period is 10 years from the end of the business year; for records relating to real estate you choose 20 or 26 years (see Retention duty and periods (in German)). Neither can be corrected afterwards.
5. Check the business year, then add. Above the drop area, check the business year and the end of the retention period. Then drag the files and the ZIP into the archive: they are archived straight away.
6. Compare the numbers. Compare the number of archived files with what you expected. Files that are already in the archive are skipped as duplicates.
7. Complete the procedure documentation. Fill in the part about your company in the procedure documentation (in German), or update it if something has changed, and add the document to the archive.
8. Grant read access. If your trustee or your auditor needs to see the records, give them read access.

Wrong file or wrong business year archived

An archived document can be neither changed nor deleted until its retention period has ended: not by you, not by us, and not even if it was added by mistake. Your archive is still in order; you add the right file as well.

This is what section 6 of the terms of use (in German) says. The lock applies to everyone, so we cannot remove or correct anything on request either. After the retention period has ended you can delete the document. What you can do in each case:

• Wrong file added. It stays in the archive until the retention period has ended, and nothing breaks. Add the right file as well.
• Business year chosen too late. The document stays locked for longer than necessary. Nothing else happens.
• Business year chosen too early. The lock ends before the legal period does. The business year cannot be corrected afterwards. So keep the file yourself as well until the right period has ended, and write to us at hello@magicheidi.ch.
• Same file added again. The archive recognises it by its checksum and skips it; the same file is not stored twice. For the same reason you cannot add a file a second time under a different business year.

Read access for your trustee or auditor

In the archive, under “Access”, you enter the person’s email address. They then sign in at archiv.magicheidi.ch with exactly that address and can read your archive, but cannot add or delete anything. We do not send an email: you tell them the address of the website and the email address you entered yourself.

1. In the archive, open the “Access” tab. Only you, as the owner of the archive, can see it.
2. Enter the person’s email address and grant access.
3. Tell the person two things: the address archiv.magicheidi.ch and the email address you entered. They receive no message from us.
4. The person enters exactly this email address at archiv.magicheidi.ch and opens the sign-in link they then receive.
5. You can revoke the access in the same place at any time.

A person with read access can view and download documents, check the integrity and export the archive. They cannot add or delete anything, and cannot grant or revoke access. Each of their accesses is in the journal under their email address. Downloading and exporting require your archive to have an active subscription.

If the person has an archive of their own

Anyone who already has an archive of their own under an email address only sees their own archive with that address. A trustee with an archive of their own therefore needs a different email address for each client. Also grant the access before the person signs in for the first time: without read access they are offered to set up an archive of their own.

Verifying an export

The export is a ZIP with all documents in their original format (folder dokumente/), the index with the checksums (manifest.csv), the complete journal with the timestamps (journal.json) and instructions (LIESMICH.txt, in German). Checksums, journal chain and timestamps can be verified without our software, with standard tools such as shasum and OpenSSL.

You start the export in the archive, in the “Integrity & export” tab. The following three steps are also in the file LIESMICH.txt (in German) that comes with every export. You can do step 1 yourself; steps 2 and 3 are for specialists, such as your auditor.

1. Compare a file with its checksum

Calculate the SHA-256 checksum of a file from the folder dokumente:

shasum -a 256 <file>

The result must match the value in manifest.csv and the value in the journal entry document.archived (field sha256) in journal.json.

2. Recalculate the journal chain

Every entry in journal.json has a field hash. It is the SHA-256 checksum of the UTF-8 text of:

JSON.stringify([archive.id, seq, at, actor, action, docId, sha256, detail, prevHash])

Missing fields are put in as null. prevHash is the hash of the preceding entry, for the first entry 64 zeros. seq counts from 1 without gaps.

3. Check the timestamps

The field timestampToken is an RFC 3161 response (TimeStampResp, DER, base64) from the authority named in the field tsa over the hash of the entry (as 32 bytes, SHA-256 imprint). Save the value in a file token.b64 and check it with OpenSSL:

base64 -d < token.b64 > response.tsr
openssl ts -reply -in response.tsr -text
openssl ts -verify -digest <hash> -in response.tsr -CAfile <CA certificate of the authority> -untrusted <TSA certificate>

Through the chain, a timestamp also proves all earlier entries.

Signing in and access

You sign in without a password, with a link to your email address that works once. Whoever has access to that mailbox has access to the archive. At present you cannot change the address yourself, so write to us at hello@magicheidi.ch before you give up or lose a mailbox.

• The link works once. Open it in the same browser in which you requested it. In another browser or on another device you enter the email address again. If a link has already been used, request a new one.
• Use an address that lasts. The archive runs for ten years or longer. Use an address you will still have access to then, and not the personal mailbox of an employee.
• Changing the address. At present you cannot change the address of your account yourself. If a change is coming up, for example of provider or domain, write to us at hello@magicheidi.ch while you still have the old mailbox.
• Protect the mailbox. Anyone who can read the mailbox can sign in to the archive. You are responsible for protecting the mailbox; report any misuse to us without delay (section 4 of the terms of use (in German)).
• One account, one archive. Each account has exactly one archive for one company. Only the person who opened it can add documents, delete them after the retention period has ended, and grant read access.

Price, subscription and payment

This section restates section 3 of the terms of use (in German). Their German wording is what counts.

Price

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 and use the same email address for both products, the archive is included at no extra cost, also up to 100 GB. More than 100 GB is available on request.

• The first 12 months: free, up to 1 GB of storage. The 12 months count from the opening of your archive.
• After that: CHF 100 per year, up to 100 GB of storage.
• With Magic Heidi: included in the paid Magic Heidi subscription, up to 100 GB. What matters is that you sign in to the archive with the same email address as in Magic Heidi.
• More than 100 GB: on request from hello@magicheidi.ch.

When the storage of your plan is full, you cannot add anything more. What is already archived is not affected.

Paying for and cancelling the subscription

You take out the subscription in the archive. Nothing is charged automatically: the free 12 months do not create any obligation to pay. You pay by card; the payment is handled by Stripe. The subscription renews every year for another year. You can cancel it at any time in the customer portal, which you reach in the archive through “Manage subscription”. The subscription is taken out by the person who owns the archive; people with read access pay nothing.

Without an active subscription

Without an active 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 are without an active subscription once the free 12 months are over and you have not taken out a subscription, or once your subscription has ended and the archive is not included in a Magic Heidi subscription. The block also applies to people with read access.

The legal duty to keep your records stays with you, even without a subscription: you must be able to present your records to an authority or an auditor. So if you do not want to continue the subscription, export your archive while it is still running and keep the export yourself.

Closing the account and discontinuation of the service

This section restates section 9 of the terms of use (in German). Their German wording is what counts.

Closing the account

Cancelling the subscription does not close your account: you can still sign in and see the document list, the journal and the integrity check. If you want to end the contract altogether, write to us at hello@magicheidi.ch; you can do so at any time and without notice. Export your archive first, while your subscription or the free 12 months are running. We can terminate the contract by email with at least three months’ notice, and without notice only for a serious breach of the terms of use or for unlawful use.

After the contract has ended

When the contract ends we remove your sign-in and all read access. Adding, retrieving and exporting are then no longer possible. We delete documents whose lock has expired. Documents whose lock is still running cannot be deleted early by anyone: they stay stored and locked, can no longer be retrieved by anyone, and are deleted once their lock has expired. You are responsible yourself, with your export, for keeping the records for the rest of the legal period.

Discontinuation of the service

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. 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.

Contact and operator

You can get help by email at hello@magicheidi.ch. There is no telephone number.

Magic Heidi Archiv is operated by Magic Heidi AG, Route de Vaux 1, 1126 Vaux, Switzerland, UID CHE-215.620.945. Documents, index and journal are in the Google Cloud, Zurich region. All details about the operator are in the legal notice (in German).