My Arkevia is a digital safe dedicated to electronic pay slips. The service, provided by the employer, stores salary slips in electronic form and makes them accessible to the employee via a secure personal space. The challenge arises when trying to consult old documents, sometimes several years after leaving a company.
Activating the My Arkevia account: the prerequisite that many overlook
The operation of the safe is based on a simple principle: the employer deposits the pay slips, and the employee accesses them through their account. The problem occurs upstream, at the time of creating this access.
For the pay slips to remain accessible after departure, the account must have been activated at least once during the employment period. In practice, the HR service provides a username and a temporary password. As long as the employee does not make this first connection, the safe exists but remains inaccessible on their side.
The second critical point concerns the associated email address. During activation, it is possible to provide a personal address separate from the work email. If this step is ignored, the password recovery procedure after departure becomes much more complex, as the work email is generally deactivated by the former employer. The procedure to retrieve My Arkevia pay slips therefore largely depends on this initial configuration.
Legal retention period of pay slips in a digital safe
Arkevia’s competitors and the service itself often mention “lifetime” archiving. The legal reality is more precise.
Under French law, a pay slip provided electronically via a digital safe must remain accessible for at least 50 years or until the employee reaches 75 years of age. This duration far exceeds the employer’s obligation, which only retains a copy for 5 years. In other words, even if the company closes or changes payroll providers, the employee’s safe theoretically remains populated and accessible for decades.
This distinction has a direct consequence: the digital safe is not just a duplicate of the company’s payroll service. It is a personal space, detached from the contractual link with the employer. The documents already deposited remain there even after the employment contract is terminated.
Accessing My Arkevia after departure: what changes and what remains
The day the employment contract ends, the employer stops adding new documents to the safe (except possibly for the final settlement or work certificate, which may be deposited in the following days). However, access to the account is not cut off.
The employee retains the right to consult, download, and transfer all files already present in their space. This right is guaranteed regardless of the relationship with the former employer.
Several situations, however, pose problems:
- The employee never activated their account during the contract period. In this case, recovery requires contacting the service support or the former employer to obtain new login credentials.
- The email address provided was the work address, which is now inactive. Password reset fails, and an alternative identification procedure must be followed on the platform.
- The company has changed its digital safe provider in the meantime. The pay slips deposited before the migration remain in the old safe, but the employee may need to access two separate spaces to retrieve their entire history.
Downloading pay slips for local storage
Once logged in, the My Arkevia platform allows downloading each slip individually in PDF format. For a long history, this process can take time. Some users prefer to archive their pay slips on a hard drive or a personal storage service in addition to the safe, as a precaution.
GDPR rights and data portability on My Arkevia
The General Data Protection Regulation gives employees the right to access, rectify, and transfer the information stored in their digital safe. In practice, this means it is possible to request the export of all their documents in a usable format.
The former employer can no longer access the deposited pay slips once the contract is terminated. The safe remains strictly personal. This separation is guaranteed by the service’s compliance with the security and confidentiality requirements imposed by the regulations.
If an employee wishes to delete their account or all their data, they can exercise their right to erasure. This process is final: deleted pay slips cannot be recovered. Therefore, it is advisable to download and save each document before any deletion.
Best practices to never lose access to pay slips
The majority of difficulties encountered by My Arkevia users stem from a lack of preparation. A few simple reflexes can help avoid these situations:
- Activate the account as soon as the credentials are received, without waiting for the end of the contract. The first connection is the necessary condition to retain access.
- Associate a personal email address with the account, and regularly check that it is still valid.
- Download pay slips as they come, at least once a year, to have a local copy independent of the platform.
- Note the login credentials in a password manager, especially if multiple digital safes coexist over successive employers.
The My Arkevia digital safe fulfills its role of long-term archiving, provided that the employee has taken care to validate their access in advance. The legal retention period protects documents for several decades, but this protection is meaningless if the account has never been activated. The most useful action remains the simplest: connect for the first time, provide a personal address, and keep track of the credentials.