Keeping invoices: how long and where?

The main rule is seven years

You must keep your records for seven years. That covers your sales invoices and purchase invoices, your bank statements and the other documents with which you can show how you arrived at your figures. The period generally starts at the end of the year the data relates to. An invoice from March 2026 is therefore kept until the end of 2033.

For some data a longer period applies, for example for immovable property, where VAT can be revised afterwards. If you have such data, ask your accountant which period applies to you.

Paper or digital

You may keep your records digitally, as long as the data stays complete, readable and reliable. A pdf of an invoice is fine. A photo of a receipt that turns out to be unreadable later is not. During the retention period you must also be able to show the documents to the Dutch Tax Authority if it asks.

Where to keep them

A shared folder with a fixed structure is enough for many business owners. More important than the system is that you always do it the same way. A workable structure:

• First the year, then the client, then the type of document (quote, invoice, credit note).
• File names that contain the number, for example 2026-041 invoice Studio Voorbeeld.pdf.
• A copy in a second place, for example cloud storage next to your computer, so that one failure does not cost you all your documents.
• A way to let your accountant in without giving access to your whole mailbox.

Do not keep invoices only in your mailbox. Mail gets cleaned up, accounts expire and searching takes time.

Quotes and proof of approval

For a quote itself there is no fixed retention period like there is for invoices, but the approval of a quote is the proof of what you agreed. As long as a discussion about the work or the price is still possible, you want to be able to show it. Many business owners therefore keep signed quotes as long as the related invoices.

Keep the signed version, the terms that applied and the proof of who accepted when. You can read more in having a quote signed online.

Keeping personal data no longer than needed

An invoice contains personal data, such as a name or an address. The GDPR says you must not keep data longer than needed. Your legal retention duty is a good reason to keep invoices for seven years. For data without such a duty, such as old e-mail exchanges or technical data, you do not need to keep it forever. Set a period and clean up afterwards.

A simple plan

1. Choose one fixed place and one structure for invoices and quotes.
2. Store each document at the moment you send or receive it.
3. Make a copy in a second place.
4. Note when you clean up each year: only after the period has ended, never before.
5. Ask your accountant whether any documents have a longer period.

An example from practice

An invented consultant keeps everything in his mailbox. When the Dutch Tax Authority asks for an invoice from 2023 after four years, he spends an afternoon searching old e-mails and finally finds it as an attachment to a message with a different subject. The month after, he sets up a fixed folder structure: year, client, document type, with the invoice number in the file name.

A year later the same question takes him two minutes. The difference is the habit of putting each document in its fixed place straight away. A quarter of an hour of tidying each week is enough, as long as you keep it up.

Frequently asked questions