"There is no such thing as keeping books in Excel. No such thing. It's like writing in the sand." That was how Tamar Bracha, head of the bookkeeping department at the Israel Tax Authority, answered a tax adviser in the association's webinar in May 2025. He wanted to know whether a client who keeps their own books in Excel has to move to software.
Her explanation rests on one idea, a fixed file. A receipt or invoice produced on a computer has to come from a file that cannot be changed after it is produced. A receipt written in Word does not meet that, even if it was printed and handed to the customer, because the file can be opened later and the amount or the payee changed. A spreadsheet can serve as a helper list, for example to add up turnover. The invoices themselves have to come from another system.
"Registered software" does not mean anyone checked it
Invoicing software sold to others must be registered with the Tax Authority. Bracha made clear what that registration does not do: the Authority does not assign programmers to check the software's quality. Registered software can allow deleting a document or changing it after it was produced, and the Authority will not know in advance.
When it does find out, during an audit of a business, it disqualifies the software and issues a warning. The software house must give the Authority its customer list, and the Authority notifies them, directly or in a general notice if there are many. Bracha said they had found software that offered, for an extra fee, to delete documents and to "tidy up" income at the end of the month.
The law places the duty to use registered software that meets the rules on the business itself. Still, according to her, a business that worked in good faith with registered software, did not manipulate it and could not have known manipulation was possible, will not have its books disqualified. "My goal is not to disqualify the books," she said.
The mini-market with the general item
In the same webinar Bracha described an appeals committee case in Haifa. A mini-market grew, moved from an old cash register to a computer used as a till, and kept printing "general item" on every sale. The audit found that nothing could be checked, neither stock nor sales. The books were disqualified. The committee granted relief only for the first year after the switch.
The rule she repeated: an old cash register connected to no computer has its own lighter rules. A system that produces an invoice is a computer, and the computer rules apply to it. The general-item relief does not.
A document that came by email
For a supplier invoice that arrived as a digital file, the file is the original. Someone who prints it and keeps it in a binder is keeping a copy only, and according to Bracha that is not what the law requires. The duty to keep it belongs to the business itself, even when the material went on to the accountant or tax adviser. Sending an invoice to a customer by email is also allowed only with the customer's consent.