How long must you keep your business records?

The main rule is well known: seven years. Yet in practice it often goes wrong, because the period is linked to the period in which the Belastingdienst can still make an additional assessment. Throwing away too early means you can no longer show anything when questions come.

Seven years, counted from which moment?

The retention obligation for your records is seven years. It concerns the data that may be relevant for taxation — your general ledger, your purchase and sales invoices, your bank statements and the documents from which your figures follow. For data relating to immovable property a longer period applies.

What you keep in any case

• •Your complete records: general ledger, journals and the reconciliations.
• •Purchase and sales invoices, receipts and bank statements.
• •Your annual accounts themselves, with the underlying calculations.
• •The proof of filing with the KVK, if you are a legal entity.
• •The agreements and contracts that support your figures (rent, loans, leasing).

Is everything allowed digitally?

Yes, keeping records digitally is allowed, as long as it remains complete, legible and verifiable. Scan or keep the PDFs as you received them and make sure you can find them back at the moment a question comes. A folder with the year and within it the months works better than a search function in your email.

A backup is part of it: records that exist only on one laptop are not records. Also see what we do ourselves — it explains how we store client data encrypted.

Throwing away after the period

The annual accounts themselves you keep longer than your records, and if you still have to prepare them: preparing your annual accounts.

After the retention period you may destroy the documents. Do that carefully: they contain personal data and financial data, and privacy rules continue to apply as long as you have them. So shred or securely erase, not in the paper bin.

The annual accounts themselves you keep longer than the underlying records. They are your own history: for financing, a sale or a dispute they are the first thing requested. For a legal entity they are moreover in the trade register, and they do not disappear from there.