Four statuses, one clear path
Every transparency notice on The Taurus has a status that tells you exactly where it stands. Understanding these statuses helps you manage your notices confidently, whether you are creating your first notice or overseeing dozens across a team.
The four statuses are: Draft, Listed, Published, and Archived. Each serves a distinct purpose in the compliance lifecycle.
Draft -- your work in progress
When you create a new transparency notice, it starts as a draft. A draft is private -- only you and your team members can see it. It does not appear on the public notice viewer at ttad.eu, and no QR code is active yet.
You can save a draft at any point and come back to it later. There is no deadline for completing a draft, and you can edit it as many times as you need before publishing. The wizard tracks your progress across all steps, so you can pick up exactly where you left off.
Drafts are the only notices that can be deleted. If you started a notice by mistake or your plans change, you can remove a draft entirely from your dashboard. Once a notice moves beyond the draft stage, deletion is no longer possible due to legal retention requirements.
Listed -- tracking an external notice
Not every transparency notice originates on The Taurus. If you or your organization has created a notice on another platform or through another service, you can add it to The Taurus as a listed notice. This allows you to track all your political advertising obligations in one place, even when the actual notices live elsewhere.
A listed notice serves as a reference record. It appears in your dashboard and can be associated with campaigns, but it is not hosted on ttad.eu in the same way a published notice is. If you later decide to complete the notice through the full wizard, a listed notice can transition to published status.
Published -- live and publicly accessible
Publishing a notice is the key step that fulfills your obligation under EU Regulation 2024/900. When you publish, several things happen at once:
- The notice becomes publicly accessible at its unique URL on ttad.eu
- The QR code for the notice becomes active, meaning anyone who scans it will see the full transparency details
- An immutable revision snapshot is created, documenting exactly what information was disclosed at the moment of publication
To publish, all steps of the wizard must be complete. The platform validates that every required field has been filled in correctly before allowing publication. This ensures that your notice meets the minimum requirements of the regulation.
A published notice can still be edited. If you need to correct information or update financial figures after publication, you can make changes and republish. Each republication creates a new revision, and you will be asked to provide a change note explaining what was modified. This revision trail is a legal requirement under Article 12 of the regulation.
Archived -- the ad has ended, the record remains
When your advertising campaign finishes, you archive the notice. Archiving signals that the ad is no longer actively running, but it does not remove the notice from public view. An archived notice remains fully accessible at ttad.eu, marked with an archived status so visitors understand that the advertising period has concluded.
You can archive a notice from the notice actions menu on your dashboard. The process is straightforward and takes effect immediately.
Archived notices cannot be edited. The information is locked in its final published state, preserving the integrity of the compliance record. The notice will remain publicly accessible for the legally required retention period of five years after the advertising ends.
How notices move between statuses
The transitions follow a logical progression:
- Draft to Published: Complete all wizard steps and publish. This is the standard path for most notices.
- Draft to Listed: Mark a draft as an external notice that you are tracking for reference.
- Listed to Published: Complete the wizard for a previously listed notice and publish it.
- Published to Published: Edit and republish a live notice, creating a new revision.
- Published to Archived: End the notice lifecycle when the ad campaign is finished.
There is no way to move backward -- you cannot unpublish a published notice or convert an archived notice back to a draft. These restrictions exist because the regulation requires a continuous, unbroken public record once a notice has been published.
Deletion and retention
Only draft notices can be deleted. Published and archived notices must remain accessible for at least five years after the advertisement stops running. This is not a platform policy -- it is a legal requirement under EU Regulation 2024/900. The Taurus handles retention automatically, so you do not need to worry about accidentally removing a notice that must be preserved.
If you need to correct information in a published notice, use the edit and republish workflow rather than attempting to delete and recreate the notice. This preserves the revision history and maintains a complete audit trail.