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Small and medium business | Business Central, N...
Answered

Safe Storage of accounting records in 5 years

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Hi experts

In my country authorities requires that I keep my accounting records safely for at least 5 years - including at least all fiscal records, sales invoices and purchase invoices with incomming documents. That means that the data for each fiscal year must be kept in a way that allows me and the authorities to get access to the data in an easy structured way for at least 5 years after the end of the fiscal year.

Also I must somehow document that the accounting records are kept in this way. 

Can I anywhere find some documentation or official statement from Microsoft, so I can use this as documentation, that my data is safe and available at all times?

What happens with my data if I end my BC subscription? I don't plan to end my subscription, but I need to clarify how to handle that situation. Is it possible to keep the system with just one cheap read only user license? Or can I export the data in a format that is still easy available for the authorities?

Please let me know your thought on what is best way to handle this issue.

Kind regards

Thomas Madsen Nielsen

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  • Verified answer
    YUN ZHU Profile Picture
    89,974 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at
    RE: Safe Storage of accounting records in 5 years

    Hi, I agree with Inge, you just need to keep a BC admin license, if you have a license for office 365, you can have read only access in teams.

    Access Business Central with your Microsoft 365 license

    https://yzhums.com/31710/

    PS: The BC standard also must keep data for 5 years.

    More details: Data Administration page

    https://yzhums.com/15246/

    Hope this helps as well.

    Thanks.

    ZHU

    pastedimage1672276970208v1.png

  • Suggested answer
    Inge M. Bruvik Profile Picture
    1,035 Moderator on at
    RE: Safe Storage of accounting records in 5 years

    As long as you have a running subscription for Business Central you should be all good and you can refer to the license agreement and the SLA that Microsoft provides for the service.

    If you at some point will opt out of your Business Central subscription then you will have to export your data to a format that can be readable in the future. Luckily the export options from Business Central is very rich these days so exporting your data should not be a problematic issue.  You can easily export data to Excel and store your Excel sheets in a safe storage somewhere and all documents can easily be printed to PDF files if needed.

    There is no specific read only license available for companies that end their subscription so if you do not want to export your data you will have to keep at least one ordinary license running for the 5 years your regulations requires.

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