What it costs to lose them
Take a freelancer with €6,000 of annual business costs who cannot evidence 15% of them — a normal proportion for anyone relying on a wallet and good intentions. That is €900 of unclaimed deductions, worth €225 to €360 in tax depending on the rate, every year, for the entire life of the business.
It is not a dramatic number in any single year, which is exactly why it never gets fixed. Over a decade it is a car.
How long to keep them, and in what form
| Country | Retention | Digital copies |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 5 years after the filing deadline (self-employed) | Accepted, provided they are readable and complete |
| United States | 3 years generally, 7 in some circumstances | Accepted since the late 1990s |
| Germany | Up to 10 years for accounting records | Accepted under GoBD rules, which require the copy to be unalterable |
| Switzerland | 10 years | Accepted, with integrity requirements |
A digital receipt has to be legible, complete and unmodified: supplier, date, amount, tax where applicable. A photograph with the total cut off is not a receipt. Thermal paper, which most card terminals still use, fades to blank in one to three years in a warm room — so photographing it is not merely convenient, it is the only way the record outlives the retention period at all.
The two-minute weekly routine
- Photograph at the till. Not later. The moment you put the paper in a pocket, it is gone.
- One inbox for everything. Digital invoices forwarded to one address, photos into one folder. Two places to look becomes zero places to look.
- Fifteen minutes on Friday. Enter the week's costs with client, category and billable flag. A week is small enough that you still remember what the €38 was for.
- Reconcile monthly against the bank. Every business card transaction should have a receipt behind it; the gaps are your missing 15%, and you find them while they are still findable.
The reconciliation step is what makes the system honest. Without it you only ever record the receipts you happened to keep, and you have no way of knowing what that is a proportion of.
Doing it in one place
Flowzivo stores the photo or PDF against the expense, with the client, category and billable flag on the same record. The receipt is therefore attached to the thing it evidences rather than living in a parallel folder that has to be matched up later.
Because expenses, invoices and clients share one file, the expense report at year end is produced rather than assembled — and a billable cost still sitting unrecovered is visible instead of buried. You can export the lot, receipts included, and hand it to an accountant without a reconstruction exercise.
Log the expense instead of reading about it
The demo is the real product with example data in it. No account, nothing to install, and anything you add you can keep when you sign up.
No account to look around. Example data, and anything you add is yours to keep.
Questions
Can I throw the paper away after photographing it?
In most countries yes, provided the digital copy is complete and readable and you keep it for the full retention period. Germany and Switzerland add integrity requirements, so check before you shred anything material. Given how fast thermal paper fades, the photograph is usually the more durable record anyway.
What about a receipt I genuinely cannot get?
Record it anyway, with the date, amount, supplier and what it was for, and note that no receipt exists. A contemporaneous note is far better than silence, and for small cash costs it is often accepted. Do not let it become the norm.
Do I need to keep receipts for tiny amounts?
Some countries have a de minimis below which a simplified record suffices, but the amount is usually low. The practical answer is to keep everything, because deciding case by case costs more attention than photographing it.
Bank statement instead of a receipt?
A statement proves you paid someone; it does not prove what you bought or how much tax was on it. It is supporting evidence, not a substitute, and it is not enough to reclaim VAT.