The paperless office with Paperless-ngx: a practical guide for SMEs

The essentials first: Paperless-ngx turns a cabinet full of paper into a searchable digital archive. Documents are scanned or delivered by e-mail, automatically text-recognised (OCR), tagged and retrievable within seconds. For Swiss SMEs this is doubly interesting because the Swiss Code of Obligations requires business records to be retained for 10 years (Art. 958f CO) – and explicitly allows this retention to be electronic.

What is Paperless-ngx?

Paperless-ngx is an open-source document management system (DMS), actively developed by a large community. The core features:

• OCR text recognition for scans and photos – multilingual, including German, French, Italian and English.
• Automatic classification: correspondents, document types and tags are assigned automatically after a short learning phase.
• Full-text search across the entire archive – “invoice garage Miller March” instead of leafing through binders.
• E-mail import: a mailbox such as receipts@yourcompany.ch is emptied and archived automatically.

Does a digital archive satisfy Swiss retention requirements?

Yes – under conditions. The Swiss Business Records Ordinance (GeBüV) permits electronic retention but requires integrity (immutability, or traceability of changes), availability throughout the entire retention period and orderly storage. In practice that means:

1. Keep original files unchanged – Paperless-ngx stores the original next to the searchable copy.
2. Backups – daily at OpenHosting, on Swiss infrastructure.
3. Access control and logging – user management is built in.

For the record: whether paper originals can be discarded in a specific case (for example documents with original signatures) is best clarified with your fiduciary – for the day-to-day volume of invoices, delivery notes and correspondence, digital filing is the norm.

Why host Paperless-ngx instead of using a cloud DMS?

The content of a document archive is as sensitive as business records get: contracts, salaries, customer files. With a US cloud DMS, this data moves into a jurisdiction where the CLOUD Act enables governmental access. A hosted Paperless-ngx instance in Switzerland combines the best of both: the convenience of a cloud (access from anywhere, no server in the basement) with the sovereignty of self-operation.

Criterion	US cloud DMS	Paperless-ngx at OpenHosting
Data location	US control	Switzerland
Pricing model	per user/month	flat from CHF 19/month
Source code	proprietary	open source
Data export	often painful	complete, at any time

In one sentence: the archive lives in Switzerland, costs a flat fee from CHF 19 per month (as of August 2026), and because Paperless-ngx is open source you can always get your data out in full.

How do you get started, concretely?

1. Order the instance – set up within one working day, reachable under your own subdomain.
2. Point your scanner or multifunction device to the import address via scan-to-email.
3. Digitise retroactively – pragmatically: everything digital from today onwards, the old archive as needed.
4. Invite the team and briefly agree responsibilities (who tags, who reviews).

Paperless-ngx is part of our bundles for law firms, medical practices and trades businesses – or on its own via the Paperless hosting page. We are happy to answer questions about the rollout personally.