Retention period for invoices in Belgium: how long does a service company keep what?

Why keeping documents gets messy in a service company

In a service company, documents are created in many places at once:

• Invoices in the invoicing software, their PDFs in a mailbox, the purchase invoices with the accountant.
• Work orders on paper from before the app, and now digital reports with photos and a signature.
• Quotes and contracts in the folder of a salesperson or the managing director.
• Payroll documents with the social secretariat (payroll provider).
• Retention periods that someone once read and that have changed since.

What you throw away too early, you will miss in an audit or a dispute. What you keep too long and without order takes up space and makes searching hard.

Seven or ten years? What changed

You still often read ten years, and for a while that was correct. The law of 20 November 2022 extended the tax retention period from seven to ten years. The law of 18 December 2025 (in Dutch), published in the Belgian Official Gazette (Belgisch Staatsblad / Moniteur belge) of 30 December 2025, brought that period back to seven years:

• VAT: in article 60 of the VAT Code, “ten” becomes “seven” again, for VAT that became due from 1 January 2023.
• Income taxes: in article 315 of the Income Tax Code (WIB 92 / CIR 92), “tenth” becomes “seventh” again, from assessment year 2023.

Websites, templates and even internal agreements from before 2026 therefore sometimes still mention ten years. Ask your accountant which period they apply to your file.

The retention periods in one table

The periods as the official sources state them on 30 October 2026:

For some documents, for example those relating to real estate, longer periods may apply: ask your accountant what applies to your company. The texts of the Code of Economic Law come from the Accounting Standards Board (Commissie voor Boekhoudkundige Normen / Commission des normes comptables), which publishes them as an unofficial consolidation. Your accounts kept with your accountant remain the reference: set the periods for your company together with them, and those for the social documents with your social secretariat.

And work orders, reports, quotes and contracts?

The sources above do not give these documents a period of their own. So look at them through three questions:

1. Does the document support an accounting entry? Under accounting law, every entry is made on the basis of a dated supporting document. If a signed work order or an order form supports an invoice, ask your accountant whether they treat it as a supporting document. It then follows the period in the table.
2. Do you need it for your work? A report is also the memory of an installation: what was replaced, which fault keeps coming back. How long that is useful is your decision, for example as long as you maintain the installation.
3. Could a dispute or a warranty claim still come up? Put that to your legal adviser before you destroy a contract or a signed report.

If they contain data on private individuals, also check what the GDPR requires. Which questions to ask a software supplier about your data is explained in company data in the cloud.

Keeping documents digitally: findable and readable

What the official sources say about the form:

• Accounting: supporting documents may be kept as originals or copies. For the books, the medium must ensure that the data cannot be altered and remains accessible for the full retention period (Royal Decree of 21 October 2018, art. 8, in Dutch).
• Social documents: they may be kept in any form, provided the copies are legible and allow effective inspection.
• VAT: in which form you keep invoices, including the e-invoices arriving via Peppol since 2026, is something to agree with your accountant. More on those invoices in e-invoicing and Peppol.

Practical arrangements that make searching easier:

1. One place per type of document. Invoices in the accounts, work orders and reports with the intervention, certificates and manuals with the installation.
2. Readable formats. You will still be able to open a PDF in seven years; a file from a program you no longer have, perhaps not.
3. Named access. Not everyone needs to see everything or be able to delete it.
4. A copy outside the office, and now and then a test to check you can find something in it.
5. Export before you change software or end a contract. Keep what you need in a place you manage yourself.
6. One clear-out a year, for example in January, using the list you drew up with your accountant.

An example: a water treatment company clears out its archive

A company that installs and maintains water softeners has a basement full of boxes: invoices, till receipts and paper work orders from the days before the app. The office manager wants to make space, but without throwing away anything still needed.

She makes a list per type of document and puts it to the accountant. The accountant confirms which years of invoices and accounting documents can go, and which work orders belong with an invoice. The social secretariat confirms that it keeps the payroll documents. The paper work orders for installations the company still maintains do not go to the shredder: the technicians still use that history. The rest is destroyed once the managing director agrees.

For the future, they agree that every report, photo and certificate is kept in the software with the intervention or the installation, and that the list is reviewed again every January.

How it works in Digitalnatie Service Suite

Service Suite keeps the documents of your work with the record they belong to. It is not a legal archive and does not guarantee that you meet your retention obligations: the accounts kept with your accountant remain the reference.

• Archive: archiving takes a record out of the work lists without deleting anything. In the archive, you find the archived interventions, installations, customers, sites, maintenance contracts and other records, with filters such as the archiving date and who archived it. Each record still opens with its history, documents and links, and can be restored to the work lists.
• On the installation: a documents tab keeps manuals, certificates and photos, and a switch decides whether the customer sees a document in their portal. In addition, the interventions, the maintenance history and the log show what happened.
• On the intervention: the report, the photos and the signatures have their own tabs, and other documents go as attachments in the log (10 MB at most). Once the intervention is fully completed, the evidence is locked. A correction to the report goes through a correction action, with a required reason and a new version; the signatures, who signed and when, never change. The PDF of the report is the one the customer receives.
• In the customer file: a files section keeps the customer’s documents, up to 10 MB per file. Reports, quotes and invoices stay with their intervention, quote or invoice.
• Invoices: quotes and invoices are not archived and stay in their own screen. You download the PDF of each invoice from there.
• Hours: closing a period keeps the figures and the exports and locks the time entries. The payroll export creates an Excel file for your social secretariat, which you send on yourself.
• Backups: according to the frequently asked questions, an encrypted copy leaves the server every night, with one copy per day for the last 7 days, per week for the last 4 weeks and per month for the last 6 months. Restoring is tested regularly.

Good to know:

• A backup is for restoring after a problem and goes back six months at most. Anything changed since the copy is not in it.
• After the end of the contract, you can export your data for 30 days. After that, it is deleted within 90 days. So export what you want to keep in good time.
• You do not delete an intervention: you cancel it.
• The automatic archiving rule for interventions is switched off for everyone.

How to keep a unit’s history usable is explained in the service history per installation, and how the signed report reaches the customer in the intervention report to the customer. What the customer file brings together is described on the page of the 360° customer file.

Frequently asked questions

How long do you have to keep invoices in Belgium?

For VAT, seven years: the law of 18 December 2025 brought the period in article 60 of the VAT Code back from ten to seven years, for VAT that became due from 1 January 2023. Accounting law and income taxes also work with seven years. Check the period for your file with your accountant.

Why do I still sometimes read ten years?

A law of 20 November 2022 had extended the tax retention period from seven to ten years. The law of 18 December 2025, published in the Belgian Official Gazette of 30 December 2025, brought it back to seven years. Older sources therefore still mention ten years.

Can you keep invoices and supporting documents digitally?

Accounting law allows supporting documents to be kept as originals or copies. For the books, the medium must keep the data unalterable and accessible for the whole retention period. How you keep invoices for VAT is something to agree with your accountant.

How long do you keep social documents?

You keep the staff register, the individual account and their annexes, such as copies of pay slips, for five years, according to the FPS Employment. They may be kept in any form, provided the copies are legible. If you work with a social secretariat, ask what it keeps for you.

What happens to my documents if I stop using Service Suite?

You can export your data for 30 days after the end of the contract; it is up to you to keep what you need within that period. After that, the data is deleted within 90 days.