Retaining Fiscal Documents - How Long and How
Document retention is one of the less-discussed requirements, but it’s checked in practice during every income tax or VAT audit.
How long you need to keep them
Fiscal documents (tax invoices, transaction invoices, receipts, and credit notes) must be kept for 7 years from the end of the tax year they relate to. This applies even if the business file was closed before that period ended - closing the business doesn’t shorten the retention obligation.
Why 7 years and not less
The Israel Tax Authority can request documents for an audit years after a transaction took place. A document deleted or lost before the 7 years are up can be treated as if it was never issued at all, which exposes the business to an assessed tax estimate instead of one based on what was actually reported.
What the retention duty covers - not just the invoice itself
- The digitally signed document file itself, including a full snapshot of its state at the time.
- The record of sequential numbering, so you can prove there were no gaps in the sequence.
- Credit notes tied to those documents.
- Open Format (מבנה אחיד) export files, if and when they were submitted.
What isn’t covered by the same duty
Non-fiscal information (like a customer record with no active documents) isn’t subject to the same retention requirement, and can be deleted at the customer’s request (subject to privacy law), unlike the fiscal documents themselves.
What happens if you switch bookkeeping systems partway through
Moving between systems (for example, from an older system to Slate) doesn’t exempt you from keeping documents issued in the previous system. Make sure to fully export the old documents (including historical Open Format files) before abandoning a previous system - don’t rely on being able to access the old account later.
How Slate keeps documents for 7 years
Once a document is issued on Slate and gets the “issued” status, it can never be deleted or edited, not by the user and not through support. That’s how the 7-year retention duty is preserved structurally, not just as a policy. Historical documents imported from a previous system (including Open Format files) are kept separately from Slate’s live numbering, so the historical record never gets mixed up with new documents.