Ask a small business where its supplier invoices are, and the honest answer is often "somewhere": a mix of email attachments, phone photos, a shared drive and a spreadsheet the bookkeeper maintains. That works until the Federal Tax Authority (FTA) asks to see the records, and someone has to produce complete, readable copies on short notice.
What's changing
FTA Decision No. 4 of 2026 was issued on 2 June 2026 and took effect on 30 July 2026. It covers how accounting records and commercial books are kept for tax purposes, and it applies to businesses under VAT, excise and corporate tax. Law firms and tax advisers have summarised it, and the points below follow those summaries. The decision itself is on the FTA's legislation portal, and you should read it or have your advisor read it.
The decision does not create a new duty to keep records. That duty already sits in the underlying tax laws. What it adds is detail on how records are kept and accessed. As reported, the main points are:
- Copies must match the original. An electronic copy or photocopy has to reproduce the original accurately: every page, in the original order, and legible. Scanning only part of a document is not accepted.
- Records must be accessible to the FTA on request. That includes access to the system where electronic records are stored. If files or systems are password-protected or encrypted, the business is expected to provide the passwords or keys.
- Outsourcing does not move the responsibility. If a bookkeeper or accounting firm holds your records, you remain responsible for their being complete, legible and accessible.
The FTA has also said that corporate tax records, for both taxable and exempt persons, must be kept for seven years after the end of the relevant tax period. VAT and excise carry their own retention rules, so confirm those with your advisor rather than assuming one period covers everything.
We have deliberately left out penalty amounts. We could not confirm them from an official source, and we would rather not guess.
Why this matters if your records are scattered across inboxes and drives
The risk is rarely a missing filing cabinet. It is the gaps in the middle:
- A supplier invoice that exists only as a cropped photo taken on a phone.
- A contract scanned without its second page.
- Records that sit in one person's personal email account, or on a bookkeeper's machine, and nowhere you can reach.
- A cloud folder that only one departed employee can open.
Each of these is fine on an ordinary day. Each becomes a problem when you need to produce a complete set of records, in order, and show where they are held. Seven years is also a long time for a business to depend on one person's memory of where things were saved.
If you outsource bookkeeping, ask a plain question: if your accountant stopped answering tomorrow, could you still reach every record yourself?
Where Diadyn 360 / automation actually helps
The practical gain from a single system is that invoices, bills, payroll runs and customer records are created and stored in one place, instead of being reassembled from several tools when someone asks. Finance360 and Billing360 hold the financial records your business generates. HRM360 and Payroll360 hold employee and payroll records. Having these in connected apps means fewer copies to chase, and one place to look when you need to show what was recorded and when.
Automation can help at the edges too, for example by prompting the person who owns a document when an attachment is missing, or by keeping approvals and the records they produce together rather than in chat threads. We are early with much of this, so if a particular record-keeping need matters to you, ask us to show you how it works today before you rely on it.
To be clear about the limits here: Diadyn is not a tax authority, tax adviser or auditor, and using Diadyn 360 doesn't by itself make your records compliant with FTA Decision No. 4 of 2026 or any other tax law. Whether your copies, retention periods and system access arrangements meet the requirements is for you to confirm with the Federal Tax Authority or your own tax advisor.
What to do next
- Read Decision No. 4 of 2026 on the FTA's legislation portal, or ask your tax advisor for a short summary that applies to your business.
- List where each kind of record lives today: invoices, bills, contracts, payroll files, bank statements. Note who can access each location.
- Check a sample of scanned documents for missing pages, wrong order and poor legibility.
- If a bookkeeper or accounting firm holds your records, confirm in writing how you get copies and what happens if the relationship ends.
- Confirm the retention period that applies to each tax type with your advisor, and note it somewhere the whole finance team can see.
- Decide who in your business can provide system access if the FTA asks, and how passwords or keys are held safely.
If your records are spread across several tools, Finance360, Billing360, HRM360 and Payroll360 are designed to keep the financial and people records of a business in one connected place. A short walkthrough of how they store and link documents is a reasonable first step, alongside the conversation with your advisor.
