Failure of the signature or seal creation unit

Supplementary information can be found in the article "Failure scenarios".

In Austria, the signature or seal creation device is responsible for providing an electronic signature for further processing by the software component of the technical security device. 

Under § 17 para. 1 RKSV, a loss of function of the signature or seal creation unit is a reportable failure of the cash register security device if it is not merely temporary (see also section 3.6 of the Decree).

This can lead to confusions, as the failure of the actual security device is equivalent to the failure of the cash register. More information on this in the above linked article.

According to § 17 para. 1 of the RKSV (Cash Register Security Ordinance), any "not merely temporary failure [...] of the security device [...] must be reported without unnecessary delay" to the competent tax office or via FinanzOnline (=portal of the Austrian Ministry of Finance).

Although the RKSV refers to the security device, this case concerns scenarios related to the signature or seal creation device:

1. Theft or other loss of the signature or seal creation device or
2. Loss of function of the signature or seal creation device.

The "Decree on the individual recording, cash register and receipt sharing obligation" specifies the provisions of the RKSV (cf. 3.6. Decree):

• According to the decree, a temporary failure of the signature or seal creation unit is assumed if it does not last longer than 48 hours. These are, for example, operational disruptions due to power failure, scheduled maintenance work and other events.
• According to the decree, reporting "without unnecessary delay" generally requires notification within one week at the latest.

Failure report

As described above, a loss of function of the signature or seal creation device that is not merely temporary must be reported via FinanzOnline or to the competent tax office. The end of any reported failure must also be notified via FinanzOnline without unnecessary delay.

In addition to failure reports, the (planned) decommissioning of a signature or seal creation device also falls under the reporting obligation.

The RetailForce fiscal solution does not report a failure of the signature or seal creation unit to FinanzOnline automatically. The signature or seal creation units supported by Fiscal AT are HSM signature services (A-Trust, PrimeSign); for these, no failure report is sent. A failure that is not merely temporary must be reported by the company operating the cash register (or its authorised representative) via FinanzOnline or to the competent tax office, including where an HSM signature service is used.

Reports that RetailForce does submit are sent centrally to FinanzOnline via the RetailForce Cloud, provided that you or your customer (the company operating the cash register) uses a paid variant of the service. The RetailForce Cloud is not available in the free "Start Edition" variant.

In order to send the notification of a planned decommissioning of a signature or seal creation unit, this must be triggered in the RetailForce portal.

Cashier operations

Under § 17 para. 4 RKSV, cash transactions must first be recorded on another cash register with a functioning connection to a signature or seal creation unit. If this is not possible, checkout operations may continue using the affected cash register, subject to the statutory fallback requirements.

If another functioning cash register cannot be used, the notice "Sicherheitseinrichtung ausgefallen" must be clearly visible on each receipt issued by the affected cash register during the failure. The exact same wording must also replace the signature or seal value in the machine-readable code (cf. § 17 para. 4 RKSV).

This note is reported back to the POS system by the RetailForce Fiskal middleware Fiskal AT in the Fiscal Response in the UserMessage and PrintMessage fields.

After the end of the failure of the signature or seal creation unit, i.e. when it is put back into operation, a signed so-called "collective receipt" (= receipt with an amount of zero - a so-called "zero receipt") must be created and saved in the data capture log. The creation of the collective receipt is done automatically by Fiscal AT. The collective receipt combines all receipts that were issued during the period of failure of the signature or seal creation device. The collective receipt must document the beginning and the end of the failure, e.g. by indicating the respective receipt numbers. The start and end time of the failure are included in the PrintMessage field of the FiscalResponse from the Fiscal Middlware to the POS software.

Sources

• Ordinance of the Federal Minister of Finance on the technical details for security devices in cash registers and other measures serving data security (Cash Register Security Ordinance, RKSV): https://www.ris.bka.gv.at/GeltendeFassung.wxe?Abfrage=Bundesnormen&Gesetzesnummer=20009390 
• Decree on the individual recording, cash register and receipt sharing obligation: https://findok.bmf.gv.at/findok/iwg/84/84454/84454.1.pdf