This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or tax advice. For questions about your specific situation, please consult a tax advisor.
How Long Do You Have to Keep Invoices?
Eight years. That covers both the invoices you issued and every invoice you received (§14b para. 1 sentence 1 UStG). For tax purposes an invoice is a Buchungsbeleg, an accounting voucher, and §147 para. 3 sentence 1 AO sets the same eight years for those.
This matters because a large part of the internet is still out of date here. Until the end of 2024 the period was ten years. The Fourth Bureaucracy Relief Act (Viertes Bürokratieentlastungsgesetz) shortened it for accounting vouchers to eight years as of 1 January 2025, in parallel across §147 para. 3 AO, §257 para. 4 HGB, and §14b para. 1 UStG. Any source still saying a flat "ten years for invoices" simply has not been updated.
The change is not limited to new documents. Under Art. 97 §19a para. 2 EGAO, the eight-year period applies to all records whose ten-year period had not yet expired on 31 December 2024. In practice, two full years' worth of documents became free to delete overnight on 1 January 2025.
When Does the Clock Start?
Not on the invoice date, but at the end of the calendar year in which the invoice was issued (§14b para. 1 sentence 3 UStG, and generally §147 para. 4 AO). An invoice dated 3 February 2018 and one dated 28 December 2018 therefore share exactly the same deadline.
For recent years that works out as:
| Invoice issued | Clock starts | Keep until | Can be deleted from |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 31 Dec 2017 | 31 Dec 2025 | 1 Jan 2026 |
| 2018 | 31 Dec 2018 | 31 Dec 2026 | 1 Jan 2027 |
| 2019 | 31 Dec 2019 | 31 Dec 2027 | 1 Jan 2028 |
| 2020 | 31 Dec 2020 | 31 Dec 2028 | 1 Jan 2029 |
A common miscalculation is adding eight years to the invoice date. That would make an invoice from 3 February 2018 free in February 2026. In reality its period runs until 31 December 2026.
Which Documents, Which Period?
Invoices are only one category. §147 para. 3 AO defines three periods:
| Period | Documents |
|---|---|
| 10 years | Books and records, inventories, annual financial statements, opening balance sheet, the EÜR income-expense statement, plus the working instructions and organisational documents needed to understand them |
| 8 years | Accounting vouchers: outgoing and incoming invoices, receipts, till slips, bank statements, payroll records |
| 6 years | Business correspondence sent and received, plus other documents relevant for taxation: contracts, quotes that led to an order, business emails |
Two details that regularly get missed:
- For the ten-year documents, the year of preparation counts, not the year they cover. An EÜR for 2016 that you prepared in 2017 runs until 31 December 2027.
- Delivery notes are a special case. If a delivery note is not itself an accounting voucher, its retention period ends when the corresponding invoice is received or sent (§147 para. 3 sentences 3 and 4 AO). If the note contains something the invoice does not, it becomes a voucher and falls back under the eight-year rule.
What Can You Delete in Early 2027?
Because every period ends at year end, 1 January is the only date on which anything changes. From 1 January 2027, these are clear:
- Invoices and other accounting vouchers from 2018 and earlier
- Business correspondence and contracts from 2020 and earlier
- Books, records, and financial statements prepared in 2016 or earlier
Read the next section before you delete anything, though. It is the reason "the period has expired" and "this can go" are not the same thing.
When Does the Period Not Expire After All?
The retention period does not end as long as the documents matter for taxes whose assessment period (Festsetzungsfrist) has not yet run out (§147 para. 3 sentence 5 AO). This suspension is the point almost every retention table online leaves out.
It becomes relevant mainly in these situations:
- A tax audit is running or has been announced. Everything covering the audit period stays on file, even if the eight years are arithmetically over.
- A tax assessment is subject to review (Vorbehalt der Nachprüfung) or has not become final.
- An appeal or proceeding is open.
- You filed a return late, or have not filed one yet. The assessment period then starts later, and the end of your retention duty moves back with it.
The rule of thumb: deleting is only safe once the period has expired and nothing is still open for the years in question.
Is Printing Invoices Out Enough?
No. What was created digitally has to be kept digitally. Printing a PDF invoice you received by email and filing the paper copy does not satisfy the requirement. On top of that, §14b para. 1 sentence 2 UStG requires that authenticity of origin, integrity of content, and legibility be guaranteed for the entire period (§14 para. 3 sentence 1 UStG).
For an e-invoice, the structured data set is the original, not the PDF rendering. The post on GoBD-compliant invoices covers how to handle that cleanly.
Where Are You Allowed to Store Invoices?
In Germany, as the default. For electronic storage you may also keep them elsewhere in the EU, provided full remote access to the data plus the ability to download and use it is guaranteed (§14b para. 2 sentence 2 UStG). If you do not store invoices in Germany, you must tell the tax office where they are kept (§14b para. 2 sentence 3 UStG).
In practice: cloud storage with EU-based servers is unproblematic. With providers that store outside the EU, you should at least know where your data physically sits, and when in doubt keep a second copy inside the EU.
Does This Apply to Kleinunternehmer Too?
Yes, in full. The small business rule under §19 UStG exempts you from charging VAT, not from keeping records. You are an entrepreneur under the VAT Act, so §14b para. 1 UStG applies unchanged: eight years for invoices issued and received.
The same goes for the GoBD rules. A simple income-expense statement is still a record within the meaning of §147 AO.
Do Your Clients Have to Keep Invoices?
In one case yes, and it affects you directly. If you supply taxable construction work or another service connected to a property to a private individual, that client must keep the invoice, a payment record, or another form of proof for two years (§14b para. 1 sentence 5 UStG).
Your part in it: in exactly these cases, a note about the recipient's retention obligation belongs on the invoice. It is one of the ten mandatory details in §14 para. 4 UStG, number 9 specifically, and it is missing from a lot of templates. Typical cases are trade, renovation, landscaping, or cleaning work on a building or plot of land, including the planning work that goes with it.
What Happens If Documents Are Missing?
First a practical problem: during an audit the tax office can demand digital access to your tax-relevant data (§147 para. 6 AO). What cannot be found cannot be produced.
The real consequence is estimation. If your bookkeeping cannot be verified because vouchers are missing, the tax office may estimate the tax base (§162 AO). Estimates do not tend to land in your favour. An administrative fine for endangering tax revenue can come on top. In practice the damage is almost always the estimate, not the fine.
And After You Close the Business?
The retention obligation does not end when you deregister the business. It attaches to the documents, not to an ongoing operation, and simply keeps running. Someone who ends their self-employment in 2026 still has to keep invoices from 2025 until the end of 2033.
Plan for that before you cancel your cloud subscription on the last day. A full export onto storage you own, plus a second backup, is the simplest route.
Checklist
- Keep invoices for eight years, counted from the end of the year they were issued
- Keep the EÜR and financial statements for ten years, counted from the year they were prepared
- Keep contracts and business correspondence for six years
- Archive digitally received documents digitally, not just on paper
- Before deleting, check whether anything is still open for those years (audit, appeal, assessment subject to review)
- Know your storage location, and notify the tax office if it is outside Germany
- For property-related work for private clients, put the §14 para. 4 no. 9 UStG retention note on the invoice
- Once a year, ideally in January, clear out the year that has just expired
Further Reading
- Writing invoices correctly: mandatory details, e-invoicing, and numbering.
- GoBD-compliant invoices: immutability, archiving, and process documentation.
- Kleinunternehmerregelung §19 UStG: what applies to invoices without VAT.
- Writing a cancellation invoice: correcting without touching the archived invoice.
- Automated invoicing: archive and numbering handled as you go.
- Free templates: invoice, quote, reminder, and cancellation invoice to download.
Would you rather not think about filing, numbering, and exports at all? Try revoBill, the free invoicing tool for freelancers and small businesses in Germany.