At what point are documents removed from SAP Business Network, and can they be archived?

The administrator for your SAP Business Network account and other users with appropriate permission can specify the retention period for transaction documents. If you choose to opt in for data deletion, any transaction documents older than the retention period are subject to deletion every month. This includes transaction documents and any associated attachments.

Customers may need to delete old transaction documents to satisfy regulatory needs in their countries or business requirements in their organizations. Deleting old transaction documents also results in overall performance improvement, another benefit for customers.

Each document is part of a larger document tree, a sequence of related documents sent between the buyer and supplier (for example, purchase order, order confirmation, ship notice, receipt, invoice, and so on). Buyers and suppliers maintain their own data retention period. When all documents in a particular tree are older than the specified data retention period, only then are they ready to be deleted. If any document in a tree is not older than the data retention period, the entire tree is retained.

Documents are identified for deletion according to the data retention period that you specify (for example, 18 months). The age of a document is based on its creation date or the date of its last status update, whichever is later. On the first day of each month, the system traverses your document trees to find any older than the data retention period. If all documents in a particular tree are older than the data retention period, that tree is identified for deletion. The identified tree is queued for deletion and deleted within one month after being identified.

When the system deletes a document, it’s deleted permanently; it can’t be restored. You can’t perform any operations against deleted documents (for example, searching).

SAP Business Network for Procurement & Supply Chain > Transaction Documents > Transaction Document Administration