General considerations

• Legal archiving applies to both outbound (accounts receivable) and inbound (accounts payable) invoices. Each direction uses a separate product ID.

• If both the sender and recipient are Sovos customers with Legal Archive enabled, the document is archived separately for each party. The same document is archived twice.

• If your workspace is not configured to sign documents, the unsigned legal format is archived.

Activate legal archiving

Legal archiving is a separate product from France e-invoicing and e-reporting. You must assign the archiving products to your account before archiving starts. There are two products, one for each invoice direction:

• fr_archiving_inbound_1.0 for inbound (accounts payable) invoices

• fr_archiving_outbound_1.0 for outbound (accounts receivable) invoices

Add the products that match your use case. You can add both if you handle inbound and outbound invoices.

Product assignment works in two steps: assign at the organization level first, then at the company level.

To assign legal archiving products at the organization level:

1. Go to Settings and select Organizations.

2. Select your organization.

3. Go to Products and select Add product.

4. Add fr_archiving_inbound_1.0, fr_archiving_outbound_1.0, or both, depending on your use case.

To assign legal archiving products at the company level:

1. Go to Settings and select Companies.

2. Select the company you want to enable archiving for.

3. Go to Products and assign the same archiving products you added at the organization level.

What gets archived

When legal archiving is active, Sovos automatically archives the following items for each processed invoice:

• The legal document with a digital signature. If the workspace is not configured to sign, the unsigned legal format is archived.

• All existing lifecycle status documents at the time of archiving.

• The audit trail.

• The signature validation report.

• A human-readable rendering (PDF). A PDF is not required if the archive can generate a human-readable visualization on demand.

Lifecycle messages generated after an invoice is archived are also automatically archived alongside the related invoice, along with an updated audit trail.

E-reports successfully submitted to the French tax authority are also automatically archived when you have the Legal Archive product enabled.

Retention

The retention period is 11 years for all archived document types, including invoices, e-reports, and lifecycle documents. Sovos calculates the 11-year period as 10 years from the end of the fiscal year in which the document was submitted to the archive.

Access archived documents

API

Use the GET /v2/archived-documents/{documentId} endpoint to retrieve an archived document. The documentId is the document ID Sovos returns after the document is stored. Sovos returns the archived document, including any attachments and metadata. See Retrieving invoices for the full endpoint reference, including request and response samples and error handling guidance.

Portal

Archive status is visible in the transaction detail view. The document processing panel shows archiving as a child step, for example, Archiving Legal Signed, with a status indicator. There is currently no way to view or retrieve the archived document in the portal. Document retrieval requires the API. A dedicated archive consultation view is under discussion.