Retention & prune cron

The validation log table grows monotonically — by default the module ships with a nightly prune cron to keep it bounded.

Cron schedule

Job	Schedule	What it does
byte8_vat_validator_prune_log	17 3 * * * (03:17 nightly)	Deletes rows where requested_at < now() - retention_years

Configuration

Stores → Configuration → Byte8 → VAT Number Validator → Validation Log

Field	Default	Notes
Persist Validations to DB	Yes	Master switch for the audit log
Retention (years)	10	Matches §147 AO. Drop to 7 if you're outside DACH and want a shorter window.

Why 10 years?

German tax law (§147 AO) requires merchants to retain records supporting tax treatment for 10 years. UK / Irish equivalents are typically 6 years. We default to 10 because:

• It's the longest mandatory retention in any market the module validates for
• A merchant who later opens a German storefront doesn't have to retroactively re-create destroyed audit records

Disabling the cron

Set retention to a very high number (e.g. 999) to effectively disable pruning. Don't set it to 0 — that would delete everything immediately on next cron run.

If you genuinely don't want the prune cron firing, comment out the job in etc/crontab.xml in your own theme/customisation module — but at that point you also lose the audit log entirely, so it's rarely the right call.