Frequently asked questions about document management

It means the electronically archived document can be relied on against a third party — a regulator, a court, an auditor — because you can demonstrate it hasn't been altered since archiving. In practice four things are required: reliable identification of the document (a cryptographic fingerprint / hash), a timestamp that fixes the moment of archiving, mandatory metadata that describes the document, and an access log showing who did what with it. The framework law in Romania is Law 135/2007 on archiving documents in electronic form, republished.

It depends on the document type, and this calls for caution. Law 135/2007 provides for a regime in which the archived electronic document produces the same effects as the original, but that regime involves an electronic archive administrator accredited by the competent authority. 4docs prepares documents exactly for that regime — fingerprint, timestamp, metadata, a complete log — but it doesn't substitute for accreditation. For documents where the law expressly requires keeping the paper original, our recommendation is a mixed archive: the original is kept, and 4docs becomes the tool through which you find it in seconds.

It's the list of document categories a company creates, each with its own retention period. The National Archives Law 16/1996 requires it from document creators and holders, and it is, in practice, the backbone of the archive: without it you can't justify why you deleted one document or why you're still keeping another. In 4docs the records schedule is configurable, and the retention period is applied automatically to every new document in that category.

No. Once archived, the file becomes uneditable: any correction is made through a new version, linked to the previous one, and the initial version stays in the archive. Every version has its own cryptographic fingerprint, so you can verify at any time that the file you download today is bit-for-bit identical to the one archived three years ago.

Within the European Union, on the 4b2b ecosystem's own infrastructure, with encryption in transit and at rest and with daily backups. We do not transfer documents outside the EU.

No. 4docs is a document management system: archive, registry, internal circuit, OCR, retention. Contract lifecycle management and digital signing are covered by a separate application in the ecosystem, 4mycontracts.net — for contracts and digital signing, that is the right place. A contract signed there can be archived here, with its retention period and the company's access rights.

Every document entering or leaving the company gets a unique registration number, assigned automatically, in strictly increasing order, together with the date and time. The number can't be reused and can't be skipped: if an entry is cancelled, it stays visible in the register marked "cancelled", exactly like a crossed-out line in a paper register. You can have separate registers by work point or by type (incoming, outgoing, internal), each with its own series and optional annual reset.

Yes. Every register has a dedicated email address: messages sent or forwarded there enter the registry automatically, with attachments extracted as separate documents and the sender filled in from the message header. The message body is kept as a standalone document, so the context isn't lost.

Yes. The register exports to PDF or XLSX for any period, filtered by department, sender, recipient or category. For outgoing mail you can generate handover logs, with the list of documents, the recipients and the courier's or delegate's receipt signature.

Only users with the registry-officer role, and only through a justified cancellation — never through deletion. The reason, the author and the moment stay in the log. Other users can only register new documents and view what they have the right to see.

The internal route a document takes from receipt to resolution: who receives it, who reviews it, who approves it, and within what time. You define the circuit once per document category — for example, an incoming invoice: warehouse → department head → finance — and new documents in that category automatically start down the route.

Every step has a deadline. As the deadline approaches, the person in charge gets a notification; once it's passed, the document appears on the coordinator's delay list, with the number of days overdue. At any moment you can see the map of the circuit: the steps taken, who approved and when, the current step and who holds it.

No, and the distinction matters. An approval in the circuit is an internal action recorded in the log — authenticated user, moment, decision, notes — used as proof of the internal review. It is not an electronic signature within the meaning of the eIDAS Regulation 910/2014. When you need a legally binding signature toward third parties, you use 4mycontracts.net.

Yes. Every user can set a substitute for a period, and documents that would have reached them are automatically routed to the substitute. Delegation shows up in the log: it stays recorded that the approval was given by delegation, by whom and under which period.

On printed documents, scanned straight at 300 dpi, in Romanian with diacritics, character-level accuracy is typically above 98%. It drops noticeably on scans at 150 dpi, on angled photographs, on faded thermal paper (receipts) and on forms with stamps over the text. Handwriting is not reliably recognized, and we don't treat it as such. For natively digital documents (a generated PDF, not a scan), OCR isn't applied — the text is extracted directly, with no loss.

You can manually correct the indexed text without touching the original file — the correction only affects the search layer. Documents with a low recognition score are flagged automatically, so you know where to look; for a large batch, you can filter and reprocess them after a better rescan.

Any word in the document's content, not just in the file name: an invoice number, a person's name, a tax ID, an amount, a phrase from a report. Search combines text with metadata filters — category, date range, department, issuer, registration number — and is diacritics-aware, so "process verbal" and "proces-verbal" find the same document.

No. Results are filtered by your rights: a document you're not allowed to see doesn't appear in the list and isn't flagged in any way. Otherwise, search would become a leak of information about the existence of confidential documents.

The general rule under Accounting Law no. 82/1991 is 10 years for accounting registers and supporting documents, calculated from the close of the financial year in which they were drawn up. The exception that's hardest to remember: payroll records are kept for 50 years, because they're used to establish pension rights. For some financial-accounting documents, the implementing regulations (OMFP Order 2634/2015) provide for a shorter period, of 5 years. In 4docs the period is attached to the category — you don't have to remember it yourself.

When a document's retention period expires, it doesn't disappear automatically. It enters a list of disposal proposals, which the person in charge of the archive reviews and approves — exactly the logic of the classic archival selection report. After approval, the file is permanently deleted, and the archive keeps only the record that it existed and was disposed of: category, period, date, who approved it.

The right to erasure (Art. 17 GDPR) isn't absolute: it doesn't apply when processing is necessary to fulfil a legal retention obligation. In practice, a CV received unsolicited and kept "for the future" must be deleted on request; a payroll record or an invoice is not, because the legal period takes precedence. 4docs helps you handle the request correctly: you search for every document that contains the person, see the basis and the period for each, delete what can be deleted, and document with reasons what remains. The reasoned response is itself the proof of compliance.

Through retention periods attached to categories, not to individual documents. Art. 5(1)(e) GDPR requires that data not be kept longer than necessary; in practice this means being able to show, for every category, how long you keep it and why. 4docs' reports list exactly that, with documents past their period highlighted separately.

Yes. You can place a retention hold ("legal hold") on a document or an entire file: while it's active, the document can't be proposed for disposal, regardless of whether the period has expired. The hold, the reason and who set it stay in the log.

Rights are granted by role and by document category, not file by file. An accountant sees the financial categories, an HR officer sees personnel files, a director sees everything belonging to their department. On top of that, you can further restrict sensitive files to named individuals. Every view, download or share is recorded in the access log.

Yes, through a secure link: you set the expiry date, whether the recipient can only view it or also download it, and optionally a password. After expiry the link stops working, and the log keeps who created it, who it was sent to and how many times it was opened. You can revoke a link at any time, before it expires.

The user, the action (view, download, metadata change, share, delete), the document, the moment and the IP address. The log cannot be edited or deleted by users, is exportable for audit, and is kept for at least the lifetime of the document it refers to.

Yes. 4docs is part of the 4b2b ecosystem: the same account, the same access rights and the same invoice across every application you use. Documents generated in other ecosystem applications can flow directly into the archive, with the category and retention period applied automatically.

Yes. The affiliate program gives you a unique referral code and a recurring monthly commission from the subscription of every company that signs up through you, for the entire duration of its subscription.

An account, and the documents you already have — scanned or natively digital (PDF, DOCX, XLSX, JPG, exported emails). At activation we set up the company's records retention schedule together (the document categories and each one's retention period), the fund-and-inventory structure, then we import the existing archive. You don't need a professional scanner to get started: you can also upload phone photos, OCR processes them just the same.

In two steps. First, digitization: you scan by category (incoming invoices, delivery notes, minutes, correspondence, personnel files), at a minimum of 300 dpi so OCR gives good results. Then indexing: on upload, 4docs automatically extracts the text and proposes the category, date and issuer, and you confirm. The original paper documents remain your responsibility — if the law requires keeping the original, the electronic copy doesn't automatically replace it.

A single monthly or annual subscription, in lei, sized to archive space, number of users and the volume of pages processed by OCR. You don't pay per document uploaded, per search or per document sent through the circuit. Payment is by card or bank transfer against a proforma invoice.

Yes, at any time. When upgrading to a higher plan, the remaining value of the current subscription is deducted proportionally, calculated by day. When downgrading to a lower plan, the change applies from the next subscription period, so you don't lose archive space in the middle of a paid month.

We export your entire archive for you: the original files, plus an index in an open format (CSV/XML) with all the metadata — category, registration number, date, issuer, retention period — so you can reconstruct the archive in another system. The export stays available for 30 days after the subscription ends; after that period the data is permanently deleted.