Digital Archive Software
Custom digital archive software for long-term preservation of paper folders and electronic records — bulk OCR, WORM immutable storage, 10 and 50-year retention rules aligned with Bulgarian archival law, eIDAS timestamping, full-text BG/EN search.
What it covers
Bulk OCR of paper archives
Industrial pipeline — Tesseract for Bulgarian Cyrillic, AWS Textract for tables, manual review for low-confidence pages. Batches from 50,000 to 2 million pages, searchable text alongside the original PDF.
Retention rules (10 and 50 years)
Configurable engine per document type — 10 years for accounting under the Bulgarian Accounting Act, 50 years for employment records under the Labour Code, 30 for medical. Automatic expiry, legal holds during audits.
eIDAS timestamping and signatures
Every document gets a qualified electronic timestamp from an EU-licensed TSP — cryptographic proof of when it was archived, critical for tax and court use. QES support on ingest and on export.
WORM immutable storage
Write-Once-Read-Many object storage on S3 Object Lock or Azure Immutable Blob — once written, a document cannot be modified or deleted before retention expires. Protection against ransomware and accidental deletion.
Versions, access rights, audit trail
Versioning before WORM commit, role-based access by department, four-eyes policy for sensitive folders. Immutable audit trail of every view, download and export — who, when, from which IP.
GDPR erasure and BG/EN search
Controlled erasure under GDPR Article 17 with full record of reason and approval. Full-text search over OCR content in Bulgarian and English, with faceted filters by date, department and retention status.
Who it fits
Companies with paper archives
Manufacturing, trading and logistics firms with basements full of 15-20 years of invoices, contracts and employment files. The goal: free physical space, fast retrieval during tax audits, legal destruction of paper after certified digital copies exist.
Government and municipal bodies
Ministries, agencies and municipal administrations with archival fonds under the Bulgarian National Archive Fund Act — long-term preservation matched to the nomenclatures, classified access, interoperability with the national e-government portal.
Legal and accounting firms
Law firms with 10-30 years of case files, notaries with deeds, accounting firms with client archives across the 10-year tax retention period. Instant retrieval by case number or tax ID; WORM blocks accidental deletion.
How we build the digital archive
We do not resell a foreign DMS with a monthly fee. We build your own archive on a proven stack: PostgreSQL for metadata and full-text index (pg_trgm and tsvector for Bulgarian), S3-compatible storage with Object Lock for WORM immutability, a bulk OCR pipeline on Tesseract plus AWS Textract, eIDAS timestamping from an EU-licensed TSP and a dedicated retention engine.
We start with an audit — linear metres, document types, statutory retention, current rights. From that map we draft the classification scheme and retention matrix covering the Accounting Act and the Labour Code. Pilot with one department before full migration. See our custom software development and API integrations. Post-launch the archive runs read-mostly, with infrastructure cost often under €200 per month at several million documents.
Why Saitami for your digital archive
Physical space
Average drop in square metres of archive room after full migration to WORM storage with protocol-driven destruction of paper originals.
Retrieval in 30 seconds
A 2009 document is found via full-text search in under 30 seconds — instead of half a day digging through a basement.
Starting investment
Fixed price for phase one — retention engine, WORM storage, OCR pipeline and BG/EN search. No per-user licensing, no lock-in.
Often pairs with a document management system for active workflows and an electronic signature system for pre-signed inputs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the digital archive replace paper for Bulgarian regulators?
Yes, when implemented correctly. The Bulgarian Electronic Document and Trust Services Act recognises an electronic document with a qualified eIDAS timestamp and signature as equivalent to paper before the tax authority, social security and the courts. A documented scanning process, eIDAS timestamping on WORM commit and a protocol for paper destruction are required — all generated by the system automatically.
Does OCR work on old typewritten documents?
Yes. The bulk OCR pipeline combines Tesseract for clean Cyrillic and AWS Textract for typewritten content and complex tables. For worn 1990s pages we add deskew, despeckle and binarisation before recognition. Pages below 85% confidence go into a manual review queue — so no text is lost from full-text search even with poorly scanned originals.
How many documents can be migrated at once?
We have migrated archives from 200,000 to over 8 million pages. Realistic throughput on one scanning line is 50,000-80,000 pages per week with OCR, metadata and WORM commit. For larger volumes a scanning subcontractor runs on site while our software consumes the output in parallel — daily operations stay unblocked.
How much does digital archive software cost?
Pricing starts from €3,800 for phase one — retention engine, WORM storage, baseline OCR and BG/EN search up to 50,000 documents. A full corporate archive with several million pages, eIDAS signatures, paper migration and ERP integration typically lands between €14,000 and €38,000. Fixed price for the agreed scope, milestone-based, no per-user fees and no monthly subscription.
Ready to free up the archive room?
We measure the real paper volume, map document types and retention and leave with a phase-one plan for your digital archive software — fixed price, fixed timeline. Free 45-minute demo.
Book an archive demo →