Examples of the business and accounting records to be kept include:
- Orders and delivery notes;
- Purchase and sales books;
- Records of daily takings;
- Cash books and other account books;
- Bank statements and pay-in slips;
- Relevant business correspondences;
- Your GST account;
- Annual accounts, such as profit and loss accounts and balance sheet
For more information on the basic record keeping practices recommended for income tax and GST purposes, you may wish to refer to the Record Keeping Guide for GST-registered Businesses (132kB).
FAQs
You are required to keep your records pertaining to prescribed accounting periods ending before 1 Jan 2007 for seven years. For records pertaining to prescribed accounting periods ending on or after 1 Jan 2007, you are required to keep the records for five years.
Consider the case whereby you have lost some shipping record. If you are unable to provide supporting documents to prove the export of your goods, you will have to treat your sale as a local supply and account for the GST accordingly.
If you are unable to furnish sufficient documents to support your input tax clam, your input tax claim will be disallowed.
In addition, penalties may be imposed for failure to maintain sufficient documents to support your GST declaration.