How long to keep receiving records, and what the periods actually rest on
The retention periods that apply to delivery paperwork in a US small business, where each one comes from, and why the longest requirement is rarely the tax one.
In short
- There is no single retention period for receiving paperwork. There are several rules running at once, and you keep to the longest one that applies to that document.
- The tax clock is usually not the binding one. Contract limitation periods and warranty terms often run longer.
- A defined, written, actually-followed period beats a longer one nobody honours. Keeping everything forever is a policy right up until somebody has to find one document.
The honest answer to “how long do we have to keep this” is a question back: what is the document being kept for. A goods received note is doing at least three jobs, and each job has its own clock.
The clocks
| Because it supports | Rough period | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| A tax deduction or a cost of goods figure | 3 years from filing, 6 if income was substantially understated | IRS period of limitations for assessing tax |
| Payroll or employment tax records | 4 years | IRS employment tax record requirement |
| A contract claim against a supplier | Commonly 4 to 6 years, set by state law | State statutes of limitation on contract and on sale of goods |
| A warranty or product traceability obligation | As long as the warranty, plus the claim window after it | Your contract and your own quality system |
| An ISO 9001 quality system | Whatever period you documented | Clause 7.5.3: you define it, then you have to hold to it |
Read down that column and the practical answer falls out. Most small manufacturers settle on seven years for anything that supports a payment or a claim, because it clears the tax periods comfortably and covers most contract limitation periods, and because one rule that everybody remembers beats five rules that nobody applies.
Worth knowing
“We keep everything” is not a retention policy, it is the absence of one. It is fine as a storage decision and useless as a compliance answer, because the question an auditor asks is not how much you kept, it is whether you can produce a specific record for a specific delivery on a specific day.
What retention actually requires
- 1Findable, not merely stored. By purchase order number and by date, which are the two ways somebody will come looking. A box of paper in date order fails the first of those.
- 2Legible for the whole period. Thermal delivery receipts fade, sometimes within a year. Photograph or scan anything printed on thermal paper on the day it arrives.
- 3Complete as a set. A receiving record without the photographs it refers to is half a record. Keep them together, not in somebody’s phone.
- 4Written down as a policy. A sentence naming the period and who is responsible. That sentence is the thing an ISO auditor asks for, and it takes a minute to write.
Digital copies
The IRS accepts electronic records provided they are complete, accurate and retrievable in a legible form. In practice that means a scan or photograph of the signed paperwork is fine, and is usually better than the original because it does not fade, does not get filed in the wrong month, and can be searched. What it does need is a backup that is not the same phone.
This describes how the rules generally work in the United States and links to the primary sources so you can read them yourself. It is not legal advice, and your contract with a supplier or carrier can change any of it. For money that matters, ask a lawyer.
What a record needs to contain in the first place, before anybody worries about how long to keep it: what to keep in a receiving log, and the form itself in the goods received note template.
Sources
- 01How long should I keep records? · Internal Revenue ServiceThe period of limitations table: three years generally, six where income is understated by more than 25 percent, four years for employment tax records.
- 02Publication 583, Starting a Business and Keeping Records · Internal Revenue Service
- 03ISO 9001:2015, clause 7.5.3: control of documented information · International Organization for StandardizationRequires documented information to be available, protected, and retained for a defined period. The standard does not name a number; you do, and then you keep to it.
DockCount does this job on a phone at the bay: count a delivery against the order it was placed on, photograph anything wrong, and the record writes itself. What receiving software costs, and the free tier.