Starting a business: Your business tax obligations
Starting a business - keeping records
If you are going to make a success of running your business, you need to keep accurate records. There are legal reasons for keeping accurate records as well as good business reasons.
Types of records
You are required to keep enough records to be able to calculate your income and expenses and to confirm your accounts.
For business income records, you must keep:
- your cashbook, journals and ledgers
- invoices and receipts, issued and received
- bank statements and deposit slips
- worksheets showing tax return calculations
- any other necessary documents to confirm account entries.
Records are required to be kept for seven years and in English, unless you get approval from us to use another language.
Benefits of keeping accurate records include:
- better control of your business (eg, they help you determine if your business is making enough money to meet its expenses)
- evidence a business is being run professionally, which may assist you when applying for finance, or for potential buyers to judge the performance of your business
- save your accountant's time and your money, by having your books in order
- audits will take less time.
Date published: 14 Jan 2005
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