Record keeping

Good records are important for your business. You use your records to fill in tax returns and finalise your tax.

Getting it right

Keep all your records throughout the year. Everything is important.

Keep records of cash and non-cash sales and expenses.
Keep all your records (including those in electronic form) for at least 7 tax years.
Your records must be in English or Māori, unless you get approval from us to use another language.
If you store your records off-shore (including cloud computing), make sure either you or your cloud service provider has our approval.

If we audit you, we’ll check these records.

Pages in this section

Record books Details you need to keep in your wage, deposit, petty cash and cash books.
Records of income and expenses You must keep records of all cash and electronic sales and purchases for 7 years.
Bank records Keep all your banking records, and clearly show money you take out and put into your business accounts.
eInvoicing eInvoicing means you can digitally swap invoice information between buyers’ and suppliers’ financial systems — even if the systems are different.
Computer record keeping for audit If you keep records on a computer, you need to store them in a format that we can use.
Financial reporting for companies Your company may need to prepare financial accounts for us.
Lost, destroyed or damaged records What to do when your records are lost, destroyed or damaged.