Document Versioning

Papermerge keeps every version of a document, together with a complete audit trail of who changed what and when. This is what lets you prove, at any point in the future, exactly what a document looked like on a given date, and who was responsible for each change.

For a plain-language explanation of the four document states (Draft, Archived, Superseded, Expired) and what you can do with a document in each one, see Document Lifecycle.

Why This Matters for Compliance

Tax and legal regulations — including Germany’s GoBD — require that business records can’t be silently altered or deleted, and that any change stays traceable. Papermerge’s versioning model is built around that requirement:

• Nothing is silently overwritten. Correcting an archived document doesn’t edit it in place — it creates a new version and marks the old one Superseded. Both the mistake and the correction remain on record, side by side.
• Every transition is logged. Draft → Archived, Archived → Superseded, Archived → Expired — each one is recorded with a timestamp and the user who triggered it. See Audit Trail.
• Deletion always needs approval. An Expired document isn’t removed until a designated deletion approver — configured per category — approves the deletion. See Data Retention.

Together, this gives you — and an auditor — a complete, tamper-evident history of every document, from upload to eventual deletion.