Where Your Captured Documents Are Stored
You choose, and the default is BDP Managed Azure Storage.
The three options are not interchangeable. They differ in who holds your invoice files and in whose storage they consume — which matters most if your DocumentQ subscription ever lapses.
The setting is DocumentQ Setup → Document Storage → Storage Mode.
The three modes
| Storage Mode | Where the files live | Who holds them | If your subscription ends |
|---|---|---|---|
| BDP Managed Azure Storage (the default) | Cloud storage operated by Business Dynamics Pro, separate from your Business Central database. | BDP. This is the only mode where your invoice files are held by us. | You keep read access for a 90-day grace period, and you can export every document during it. After that, retrieving files from our storage requires an active subscription. Read the note below. |
| Business Central Database | Inside your own Business Central environment, as a normal incoming document attachment. | You. The files never leave Business Central. | Your documents are unaffected. Reading them does not involve DocumentQ at all. |
| Customer Storage Account | An Azure Blob Storage, Azure File Share or SharePoint account that you own and configure once in Business Central. | You. The credentials are held by Business Central’s own platform — DocumentQ never sees or stores them. | Your documents are unaffected, and remain directly accessible in your own account. |
How to choose
The question behind this choice is not really where do the bytes sit. It is whose storage bill do invoice PDFs land on, and who holds them in ten years. Those two pull in opposite directions, which is why there are three modes and not one.
The default keeps your database small. Invoice PDFs accumulate quickly, and Business Central environments have their own storage capacity limits — capacity you pay for. BDP Managed Azure Storage keeps those files out of the database entirely and needs no configuration at all. Please read the note below before leaving it there.
If you would rather hold your own files — and can set up an account — use Customer Storage Account. It solves the database-size problem exactly as well as the default does, and leaves the documents in an account you control, readable with or without DocumentQ. If your organisation has any long-term records-retention policy, this is the mode that satisfies it with no caveats.
Choose Business Central Database if you want nothing to leave your tenant. It is the simplest answer to any data-residency question, at the cost of Business Central database storage. If your document volume is modest, that cost may never matter to you.
What BDP Managed Azure Storage means, stated plainly
This is the default, so please read it even if you change nothing.
In this mode BDP holds your captured invoice files. Day to day, retrieving them is authorized through the same subscription check as the rest of the product.
If your subscription lapses, you do not lose access immediately. DocumentQ keeps your documents readable for a 90-day grace period, and an export action lets you take every document with you during that window. Reading and exporting what you already own stay available; processing new documents does not. After the grace period ends, retrieving files from our storage requires an active subscription again.
The grace applies to a plain lapse — an expired or ended subscription. It does not cover identity failures or configuration failures, and it never extends to spending, writing or erasing.
Invoices are records most organisations must retain for several years, well beyond the life of any one software subscription. The grace period and the export route exist so that a lapse is a prompt to act rather than a locked door — but they are a window, not a permanent guarantee. If your retention obligation runs for years and you would rather not depend on a window at all, choose Customer Storage Account or Business Central Database, where the question cannot arise.
Setting up your own storage account
This mode uses Business Central’s own native external file storage. It is a one-time setup:
- In Business Central, search for File Accounts and add an account for your Azure Blob Storage, Azure File Share or SharePoint location, following Microsoft’s own prompts.
- In DocumentQ Setup, set Storage Mode to Customer Storage Account and select the file account you just created. That field is only editable when this mode is selected.
DocumentQ addresses that account through Business Central. Your connection string, key or shared-access signature is held by Business Central’s own encrypted secret storage — it is never sent to, or stored by, any BDP service. DocumentQ only names the account.
Not yet observed on a live tenant. That Business Central’s external file storage mechanism is callable from DocumentQ has been proven by compiling against it. No document has yet been written to, or read back from, a real external account. If you are planning to depend on this mode, test it on a sandbox with a real account first.
Changing the mode later, and what it does not do
Changing Storage Mode affects newly captured documents. Documents already captured keep being read from wherever they were stored, so switching modes is safe and never strands an existing document.
That works because the mode is recorded per document as well as per tenant. When DocumentQ reads a PDF back it uses the document’s own recorded mode, never whatever the tenant is configured for today. Re-reading the setting at read time would send the reader to the wrong backend and hand them “not found” for bytes that provably exist.
There is no backfill: switching to a new mode does not move documents that already exist. That is also what makes switching safe.
If your Setup page does not show a Storage Mode field at all, your version stores documents in the Business Central database — the second row of the table above.
Two rules that run underneath
An offload that fails, fails safe. If the gateway or your external account is unreachable, the attempt is caught, an audit event is written, and the PDF simply stays in Business Central. Intake never fails because storage did, and the scheduled batch retries later.
A document promoted from a pre-existing Incoming Document never has its native copy cleared. If the file was in Business Central before DocumentQ ever saw it, a native View or Download must never find zero bytes. Nor is a superseded duplicate ever offloaded, because storage is content-addressed and clearing it would strip the surviving original too.
Deletion
Deleting a document in Business Central deletes its stored file as well, in the same operation, whichever mode it was stored under.