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What financial records to keep and how long
to keep them
By Bankrate.com
You can't take everything with you, but the
following are suggestions about how long you should keep business
records on file:
One year
- Personnel employment applications
- Purchase orders (except purchasing department
copy)
- Stenographers' notebooks
- Stockroom withdrawal forms
Three years
- Bank reconciliations
- Duplicate bank deposit slips
- Expired insurance policies
- General correspondence
- Internal audit reports and working papers
- Petty cash vouchers
- Physical inventory logs
Seven years
- Accident reports and claims (settled cases)
- Accounts payable ledgers (computer runs)
- Accounts receivable ledgers (computer runs)
- Automobile logs
- Bank statements
- Bills of lading
- Cash books
- Commission records
- Contracts and leases (expired)
- Employee personnel records after termination
- Employment tax reports
- Expense reports
- General journals
- Inventory records
- Invoices to customers and from vendors
- Payroll records and summaries, including
payment to pensioners
- Personal property tax returns
- Purchase orders
- Sales tax returns
Permanently
- Articles of incorporation
- Audit reports of public accountants
- Canceled checks for important payments such
as taxes, property acquisition, etc.
- Capital stock and bond registers
- Copyrights
- Correspondence (legal and important matters
only)
- Deeds and mortgages
- Depreciation schedules
- Financial statements (year-end -- other months
optional)
- General ledgers and year-end trial balances
- Licenses and permits
- Patents
- Property appraisals by outside appraisers
- Property records -- costs, blueprints and
plans
- Tax returns and worksheets, revenue agents'
reports and other documents relating to determination of tax liability
- Trademark registrations
Source: Sidney Morgenbesser,
CPA
--Updated: May 4, 2001
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