Use case · Voluntary cessation
The SAS that voluntarily ceases trading
Twelve years of activity, three tired partners, no buyer in sight. You decide to wind down while the cash position is still comfortable. The setting of voluntary cessation — orderly on paper, intense in practice on the digital side.
The setting
Your SAS has been running for twelve years. You founded it as three partners; you went up to four, then seven employees, never more. The market is stable, your customers trust you, but none of the three of you wants to push further. You looked for a buyer for eighteen months — nothing serious. You decide to close now, at your own pace, while the cash position is still comfortable and the partners agree.
This is a voluntary cessation, followed by an amicable liquidation. You vote at an extraordinary general meeting. One of you becomes amicable liquidator. You have around eighteen months ahead to realise the assets, settle the last creditors, prepare the closing accounts, and file for removal at the court clerk's office.
During this window, the company still exists. After it, nothing remains — except what you have explicitly organised. The institutional site you patiently built, the deliverables for your last customers, the accounting emails that will keep arriving for five years for administrative reminders, all of this must find a framework before registry removal. After, it is too late.
A well-run voluntary cessation is not a stop — it is a structured handover. Without handover, the stop becomes a scattering.
- 12 years of activity
- 3 signatory partners
- ~80 GB of archives to preserve
- 18 months dissolution-liquidation window
What is at stake
- Accounting documents. The French Commercial Code (art. L. 123-22) requires a 10-year retention after closure. This obligation persists after registry removal: it transfers to the former directors personally if nothing is organised.
- Customer and supplier contracts. Five-year retention (commercial-law prescription), sometimes more depending on clauses. A request, a complaint, a tax audit sometimes arrives two or three years after registry removal — the document must be producible.
- The institutional site. Twelve years of SEO, dozens of useful pages, accumulated inbound links. Its disappearance cuts your former customers off from any reference information: where to write to you, how to retrieve their documents, who to contact about the next step.
- The main mailboxes.
contact@,accounting@,directors@will receive mail for years — tax-office summonses, formal notices, administrative requests. Without email continuity, these messages disappear into silent non-delivery. - Handover between the three partners. You were together; you remain bound by the residual obligations. The named designation of successors and a voting rule prevents one of you from carrying it all alone ten years later.
How Archivum operates
- 1
Scoping the case
Before any deposit, we map the context with the three partners and, if appointed, your accountant or liquidation lawyer. Asset perimeter, conservation duration per asset class, access and voting rules, end-of- period scenarios. Outputs: a detailed quote, then a template contract adapted to voluntary cessation.
- 2
Documentary archive deposit
Balance sheets, tax returns, contracts, HR, exported email archives, brand source files, customer deliverables. Everything is encrypted, indexed and stored on sovereign French infrastructure. A dated summary is delivered to the three signatories.
- 3
Site frozen as static
Your institutional site — pages, blog where applicable, legal notice updated to flag the cessation — is regenerated as static HTML and migrated to Scaleway behind Cloudflare. The domain name is kept under contract. Former customers retain a stable entry point. See site continuity.
- 4
Email taken over inbound-only
Critical mailboxes are taken over in inbound-only mode. No outgoing message — a deliberate choice. The three partners receive access to incoming mail through the register, fully logged.
- 5
Layered contractual conservation
The contract sets differentiated archive durations: 10 years for accounting, 5 years for HR, 3 years for current commercial correspondence, 15 years for public editorial content. Each layer has its own end-of-period arbitration.
- 6
End-of-period arbitration
Three months before each deadline, the partners (or their successors where applicable) are notified. They decide collegially between extension, deletion and transfer. Failing a decision, the default scenario provided in the contract applies — see end-of-period arbitration.
Five years on
The three partners — or the new decision-makers named in the contract, for instance if one of you has updated it to add a spouse or an heir — settle the matter collegially according to the agreed voting rule.
Extension
A new period, aligned with the residual statutory obligations. Accounting, for example, can justify an extension up to ten years after registry removal.
Deletion
Secure destruction of the archive, or of the layers whose preservation is no longer necessary. Certificate issued to the three partners.
Transfer to the trustee
Archivum inherits contractually the domain name and content, releasing the partners from any future liability. Operating terms set in the contract.
How much it costs
For a case like the one above — twelve-year SAS, ~80 GB of archives, a 50-page site, three mailboxes — over a five-year conservation period, the order of magnitude is a few hundred to a few thousand euros per year. The layered modulation (10 years for accounting, 15 for editorial content) is built into the price. The final figure is set in a quote.
Scope your case
The most efficient path, especially with three partners, is to talk for an hour before the dissolution general meeting. We understand your context, we validate a perimeter, you walk away with a scoped quote and a draft contract — that can be included in the documentation of the amicable liquidation.