How Long Should You Keep Invoices?

Typical retention periods

These are the common baselines. Specific circumstances — an open audit, a property transaction, a loss carried forward — can extend them considerably.

• United States: at least three years, seven if a loss or bad debt is claimed
• United Kingdom: six years for VAT records
• Germany: ten years from the end of the year of issue
• France: ten years for accounting records
• Canada: six years from the end of the tax year
• Australia: five years from when the record was prepared

Digital copies count

Every jurisdiction listed above accepts digital records, provided they are complete, unaltered and readable for the whole retention period. That last condition is the one that catches people — a proprietary accounting format you can no longer open is not a kept record.

PDFs are the safe choice, backed up somewhere other than the machine that created them.

Keep the document, not just the entry

A ledger line saying you invoiced a client for a sum is not the same as the invoice. Tax authorities ask for the document, because the document is what shows the description, the tax treatment and the date of supply.