Data Retention

A retention period defines how long a document must be kept before it can be deleted. In many countries, tax and legal regulations require businesses to retain certain documents (invoices, contracts, receipts) for a specific number of years — typically 7 or 10 years, depending on the document type and jurisdiction.

Papermerge helps you manage retention periods automatically.

How Retention Works

Retention periods are configured at the document category level. When you assign a document to a category that has a retention period, the document automatically inherits that retention period.

For example, if your Invoices category has a 10-year retention period, every document assigned to Invoices will automatically be set to expire 10 years after its creation date.

Retention Pivot

The retention pivot determines when the retention period starts counting. By default, this is the document’s created_at date — the moment it was uploaded into Papermerge.

However, you can choose any date-type metadata field as the pivot. For example, if your invoices have an “Invoice Date” metadata field, you might want the retention period to start from that date rather than the upload date.

End of Year Extension

By default, a document expires exactly when its retention period ends. For example, a document created on 17 March 2025 with a 5-year retention period would expire on 17 March 2030.

When the end of year flag is enabled, the expiration is extended to 31 December of that year. In the example above, the document would expire on 31 December 2030 instead.

What Happens When Documents Expire?

When a document’s retention period ends, it transitions to the expired state. At this point, the document is eligible for deletion — but it is not deleted automatically.

Before an expired document can be removed from the system, it must be approved for deletion.

Deletion Approver

The deletion approver is the person (or group) authorized to approve the final removal of expired documents from the system.

You can assign either:

A specific user — only that person can approve deletion
A group — any member of the group can approve deletion