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Download the retention cheat sheet (Excel)“How long do I keep this?” is one of the most common questions a bookkeeper hears, and the honest answer is that it depends on where the business pays tax. Every major English-speaking jurisdiction sets its own retention period, its own start date, and its own rules on whether a digital copy is enough. This cheat sheet puts all five on one page so you can answer the question in seconds rather than digging through five tax authorities’ websites.
The download is a single table covering the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Singapore: the standard retention period, the date the clock starts from, whether digital copies are accepted, and the catch worth knowing for each.
The headline periods
The standard retention periods differ more than people expect:
| Country | Authority | Standard period |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom (sole trader / partnership) | HMRC | 5 years |
| United Kingdom (company / VAT) | HMRC | 6 years |
| Australia | ATO | 5 years |
| New Zealand | Inland Revenue | 7 years |
| Canada | CRA | 6 years |
| Singapore | IRAS | 5 years |
New Zealand is the outlier at seven years, the longest standard period among the five, and Inland Revenue can extend it to ten in specific situations such as an open investigation.
The clock does not start on the receipt date
The single most misunderstood part of retention is when the period begins. It is almost never the date printed on the receipt. It is the end of the tax year the record relates to, or the filing deadline for that year.
That distinction matters. In the UK, records behind a 2025-26 sole-trader return, due on 31 January 2027, must be kept until at least 31 January 2032. In Canada, a January receipt in a December year-end business is effectively kept for nearly seven years, because the six-year clock only starts once that fiscal year ends. A receipt’s real shelf life is the headline period plus up to a year, depending on where in the year it falls.
Digital copies are fine everywhere here
In all five jurisdictions, a clear digital copy is acceptable. HMRC, the ATO, Inland Revenue, the CRA, and IRAS each accept electronic records provided they are complete, legible, and kept for the full period. This is what makes capture-at-source practical: photograph or forward a receipt the day it arrives, store the image against the transaction, and the paper becomes irrelevant. The archive then lives in your accounting platform rather than a shoebox.
How to use the cheat sheet
- Find the country the business pays tax in, and read the period and the start date together. The start date is what tells you the real keep-until date.
- For UK businesses, check whether the entity is a sole trader, a partnership, or a company, because the period differs.
- Set your archive policy to the longest period that applies to any client you handle, so one rule covers the practice.
- Keep the digital image against every transaction, so substantiation is automatic rather than a year-end hunt.
A retention policy is only as good as the evidence behind it. Tools that capture the document at source build the archive as a by-product of normal bookkeeping:
- Hubdoc fetches and stores recurring bills and statements.
- ExpenseFlow captures each receipt and bill, reads and codes it, and posts it into Xero or QuickBooks Online with the source image attached to the transaction, so the retention period rides on the accounting platform’s records and every entry stays evidenced for the full term.
- Dext stores submitted receipts against their transactions for the retention window.
Keep this sheet to hand, set the policy to the longest period you face, and let captured-at-source documents do the remembering.