Infor M3 Data Retention — Per CONO, Per Jurisdiction

Infor m3 data retention is the per-jurisdiction discipline of preserving M3 transactional, master and audit data for the statutory retention window required by the country or regulator — typically 7 years for US tax-relevant records, 10 years for German HGB-relevant accounting records, 6 years for UK HMRC, 5–10 years for various EU SAF-T jurisdictions, plus long-tail requirements for FDA Part 11 batch records (pharma, food) and ISO 9001/14001/27001 evidence. After Fusion migration the retention obligation persists — the question is whether the historical data lands in Fusion (queryable but expensive), in a Syntra cloud archive (queryable, cost-optimised), or in cold object storage with on-demand restore. The infor m3 data retention strategy is per-CONO per-jurisdiction, driven by tax, legal and quality.

German entities under HGB §257 are required to retain accounting records (GL postings, AP/AR documents, inventory valuations, contracts, audit trails) for 10 years with auditor on-demand access. GoBD (German principles for orderly bookkeeping) adds explicit requirements around audit-trail integrity, immutability and machine-readability. The infor m3 data retention strategy for German CONOs typically routes 10 years of FGL postings, AP/AR documents, inventory valuations and audit trails to a Syntra cloud archive with HGB/GoBD-compliant storage — content-hashed, tamper-evident, indexed for direct auditor query. Migration to Fusion may load the most recent 2–3 years for operational reporting, with the older 7–8 years served from the archive — both queryable, both audit-accepted.

SAF-T is the OECD-defined standardised audit-file format adopted by Portugal, Norway, Luxembourg, France (FEC), Poland (JPK), Hungary (Online Invoice), Spain (SII) and others with country-specific schemas. Each jurisdiction has its own retention window (typically 5–10 years) and its own field-level requirements. The infor m3 data retention strategy for SAF-T-applicable CONOs preserves the SAF-T-relevant fields — GL line, source document reference, audit-trail timestamps, electronic-signature evidence — for the full retention window, with per-country pre-flight verification that the extract from either Fusion or the archive matches what the country's tax authority would request. Direct filing endpoints (Hungarian Online Invoice, Spanish SII real-time) integrated via OIC where applicable.

The Syntra cloud archive serves as the long-term store for M3 historical data that exceeds Fusion's economic retention window. It holds extracted M3 source data (per-CONO partitioned, per-fiscal-year indexed) in Parquet format with content-hashed manifests, query-accessible via SQL (Trino/Athena/BigQuery-compatible) for auditor and finance investigation. Storage cost is 60–90% below holding equivalent volume in Fusion. Retention windows configured per-CONO per-jurisdiction. WORM (write-once read-many) storage class for jurisdictions requiring immutability. Integration with the live Fusion environment via cross-source OTBI views and direct OAS connections means historical query produces unified results spanning archive and current.

FDA 21 CFR Part 11 governs electronic records and electronic signatures in FDA-regulated industries. Pharma customers, FDA-registered food facilities and certain medical device manufacturers running M3 must preserve electronic-signature-bearing batch records, audit trails and quality release evidence for the relevant product-life-cycle retention window (typically product-life-plus-1-year or longer). The infor m3 data retention strategy for Part 11-applicable CONOs preserves every electronic signature, every audit-trail entry, every batch record, every deviation log and every release evidence with full integrity — tamper-evident, restoreable on FDA inspection demand, indexed for recall traceability query. WORM storage where the regulation demands immutability.

GDPR right-to-erasure (Article 17) creates tension with retention requirements — an EU data subject can request erasure of their personal data, but accounting records they're tied to must be preserved for HGB/SAF-T/tax retention. The infor m3 data retention framework handles this with selective field-level anonymisation: when an erasure request is approved, the data subject's personal fields (name, address, contact details) in the archive are replaced with hash placeholders, while the transactional data (invoice numbers, amounts, dates, GL postings) remains intact for tax retention. The audit trail of the erasure itself is preserved. GDPR data-protection officer signs each erasure execution. Spreadsheet of erased subjects retained for regulatory inquiry.

Yes — and most multi-CONO tenants do. The infor m3 data retention strategy includes a tiered cost model. Year 1–3 post-cutover: hot tier (frequently queried — finance investigation, recall traceability, audit response) at standard cloud-storage rates. Year 3–7: warm tier (occasional auditor query) at 60–70% lower per-GB. Year 7+: cold tier with restore-on-demand (rare but supported) at 90% lower per-GB. WORM-tier overlays where jurisdiction requires immutability. Per-CONO per-jurisdiction tier configuration. After the last retention window expires (10 years for German HGB, 7 years for US tax, jurisdiction-specific elsewhere), data is purged per the signed destruction certificate with cryptographic proof of deletion.

Per-CONO per-jurisdiction audit evidence is built into the retention framework. Quarterly compliance reports verify: retention windows configured correctly per CONO, storage tier appropriate per data age, WORM-tier applied where required, KMS-signed manifests intact, audit-trail integrity verified by hash-chain replay, query log shows expected pattern (low-volume auditor queries vs high-volume operational queries). Annual third-party audit (typically a Big 4 SOC 2 + jurisdiction-specific overlay) verifies the framework operates as designed. Findings remediated within agreed window. Audit report shared with customer compliance, tax and legal leads. The framework operates as a service — customer doesn't manage retention storage, configuration drift or audit response directly.