Digital personnel file: a file that knows its own retention periods

Electronic payroll records in Germany from 2027

On 31 December 2026 the option to be exempted from keeping payroll records electronically ends (section 8 (3) of the German Contribution Procedure Ordinance, BVV). Records received on paper have to be converted into an electronic format and must be available at any time and readable without delay throughout the retention period (section 9 (5) BVV).

The obligation covers part of the personnel file. If that part has to be digital, the whole file belongs in one place – for a property developer ideally in the same system as projects, working time and leave. kanbau turns the document storage into a file with rules.

One file, eleven folders

The personnel file sits with the employee under “Attachments and documents”. kanbau provides a ready-made structure, and every folder has a description of what belongs in it:

Folder	What belongs in it	Retention (Germany)
01 Application and hiring	application, CV, references, personnel questionnaire	6 months
02 Contract and agreements	employment contract, written statement of terms, supplementary agreements	3 years after leaving
03 Payroll and social security	payslips, health insurance and notifications, tax, exemptions and evidence, pension	6 years from year end
04 Working time and absence	leave requests, maternity protection, parental leave, working time agreements	3 years after leaving
05 Qualifications and safety training	training, health and safety instructions, driving licence checks, forklift or crane certificates	3 years after leaving
06 Health	occupational health certificates (without findings), reintegration management	3 years after leaving
07 Appraisal and development	appraisal interviews, target agreements	3 years after leaving
08 Formal warnings	warnings and counter-statements	2 years
09 ID and residence	residence permits, work permits, documents employees must carry on construction sites	3 years after leaving
10 Leaving	notice, termination agreement, reference, employment certificate	3 years after leaving
11 Correspondence and other	anything that fits nowhere else	3 years after leaving

You set the structure up once as a template; the proposal can be previewed and adjusted freely. For a new employee you apply the template directly. For employees who already have records, kanbau only adds the missing folders – folders and files with the same name stay as they are.

Protected where it is confidential

The folders payroll and social security, health and formal warnings are protected. Only users with elevated permission for HR, plus admins and owners, see them. For everyone else these folders do not exist: they appear neither in the list nor in search, and their files cannot be opened or downloaded. A click on the lock shows exactly who has access.

You protect further folders with a right-click. Roles stay separate: a line manager approves leave for the team without seeing the personnel file.

Retention periods the file knows itself

Every folder of the personnel file comes with a filing rule. Depending on the type of record, the retention period starts at the document date, at the end of the document year or when the employee leaves – until then the file stays protected. Each file shows the date until which it must be kept.

12345

• File in “03 Payroll and social security”, here in the subfolder for payslips.
• Name by the naming rule, e.g. “2027-01 Payslip Freimann.pdf”.
• Retention payroll records, six years from the end of the document year: keep until 31 December 2033.
• Protect deleting and archiving before the period ends only after confirmation, or not at all.
• Log who opens or downloads the file.

You set how strictly the period applies: hint asks before deletion, lock prevents it. With a lock, only owners can override, with a mandatory reason; the other owners and admins are notified. Archiving counts as deletion. A legal hold keeps records regardless of any period, for example during labour court proceedings.

If a file is moved into a folder with a shorter period, it takes its period along. A retention period never shortens silently. Once it has expired, the file appears under “Period expired” for review – kanbau never deletes on its own.

Germany and Austria in one system

A rule set defines how long records are kept and how strictly this applies. Two are included, you can add more. Assignment works through the legal entity: employees of an Austrian company follow the Austrian periods, everyone else the German ones.

Period	Germany	Austria
Payroll records	6 years from year end	7 years from year end
Applications	6 months	7 months
Contract, health, general personnel file	3 years after leaving	3 years after leaving
Formal warnings	2 years from issue	2 years from issue

The personnel file proposal also comes in two versions, the Austrian one with folder names that follow Austrian terminology. If you change a rule set, existing files stay unchanged until you deliberately apply the change.

Verifiable: log, access and checksum

• Log: every deletion, archiving and restoration, every rule change, every legal hold and every renaming under a filing rule is recorded with person and time. Each entry is chained to the previous one; admins and owners check that the chain is complete and unchanged.
• Access log: in the payroll, health and warnings folders kanbau records who opened or downloaded a file. Repeated access by the same person is grouped so the log stays readable.
• Notifications: when a file is added or a period expires, the defined recipients receive a notice in kanbau – optionally the employee's line manager as well.
• Export for the payroll audit: all files of a retention type as a ZIP file, ordered by employee and folder, with a table of contents and a checksum (SHA-256) per file. It shows that the file has not changed since it was filed.

Everything the filing rules report and log is collected under Filing & notices in the company menu – for all employees on one page.

In the same system as working time and leave

Employee master data, working time recording, leave and absence planning and the personnel file share the same employee record. Payroll itself stays in your payroll software; the file holds the records that payroll produces and that reach you.

See the digital personnel file in a demo