Guides · Keeping receipts
A receipt has a job. Keep it until the job is done.
Most households keep everything for a month and then throw everything away, which is exactly backwards. The slips worth keeping for years go in the bin with the coffee receipts, and the coffee receipts fill the drawer.
The right question
Not how long. What for.
There is no single number, and anybody who gives you one has skipped the only step that matters. A receipt is evidence, and how long you keep evidence depends on what you might have to prove.
So the useful move is to ask, once, at the moment you put the slip in your pocket: what could I possibly need this for? For most receipts the honest answer is nothing, and they can go as soon as the card payment has settled. For a few, the answer is one of six things — and those six set their own dates.
The return window is still open
Days to a few weeks, set by the shop and not by anybody else. This is the one everybody remembers, and it is the shortest of the six. Returning something you bought goes through it properly.
The warranty is still running
Months to years — and this is the one almost everybody throws away too early, because the slip goes in the bin on the day the return window closes and the warranty has four years left on it.
You might make an insurance claim
For as long as you own the thing. A bicycle, a laptop, a camera, tools, jewellery. After a break-in or a fire, the receipt is the difference between a settled claim and an argument about what you owned.
A dispute is still possible
Weeks to months. If a charge is wrong, if the thing never arrived, or if you were billed twice, the receipt is what turns your account of it into evidence. Card disputes have time limits of their own, and they are shorter than people expect.
A shared cost is not settled
Until the balance is closed. A receipt somebody else has not paid their share of yet is not a receipt, it is an open account. Splitting a bill covers the rest of that.
It may matter years from now
Large things in a home you may one day sell, and anything that improves a property rather than repairs it. These are rare, and they are the ones where a missing slip is expensive.
The one people get wrong
The warranty outlives the return window by years.
Here is the pattern, and it happens in every household. Something is bought. For three weeks the box and the slip sit in the hall, in case it goes back. It does not go back. The box is broken down, the slip goes in the bin, and everyone feels tidy.
Fourteen months later the thing fails, inside a three-year warranty, and the first question is: do you have proof of purchase? Very often the answer is no — not because anybody was careless, but because the slip was thrown away at the return window and nobody connected the two dates.
The fix is one habit and it is free: for anything with a warranty, photograph the receipt on the day, and write down when the warranty ends. The paper can then go whenever you like.
And the tax question
Briefly, because for most households it is not the reason.
Most people never hand a receipt to a tax authority. Record-keeping rules for tax are aimed mainly at businesses and at people who are self-employed, and what an ordinary employee keeps is usually only the receipts behind something they actually claimed.
The rules also differ from country to country — how many years, when the years start, whether a photograph is accepted in place of the paper — so there is no answer here that would be true for everybody reading this. If you claim expenses, or you run anything on the side, check the tax authority where you live before you throw anything out.
We are not accountants and this is not tax advice. If you run a small business, the answer is different, longer, and worth getting from somebody qualified.
If you want one rule
Photograph everything. Keep the paper for six things.
Photograph every slip on the day you get it. It costs four seconds, it works for the ones you did not expect to need, and it is the only thing that survives a receipt that has faded — which most till slips do, in months rather than years.
Then keep the paper only for the six above, and only while their reason is live. Everything else can go the moment the payment has settled.
That is the whole system. It is not tidy because it throws less away; it is tidy because it knows why it is keeping anything.
Straight answers
Common questions
How long should I keep an ordinary grocery receipt?
Until the payment has settled on your card and you are sure nothing is going back — usually a few days. There is no reason to keep a slip with nothing on it that carries a warranty, a return or a shared cost.
Which receipts are worth keeping for years?
Anything with a warranty, anything you might claim on insurance, and anything large enough to matter if you sell the home it is in. Those three cover almost every receipt that is expensive to lose.
Is a photograph enough, or do I need the paper?
For your own records, for a warranty claim and for most insurance and reimbursement purposes, a legible photograph is enough and is far better than a slip that has faded. Whether a particular shop accepts one for a return is the shop’s own policy. Tax authorities have their own rules about images, and those differ by country.
What about receipts for tax?
That depends on where you live and on whether you claim anything. The rules are aimed mainly at businesses and the self-employed, and they vary by country, so check the tax authority where you live rather than a general figure from the internet.
Do I need to keep the box as well?
For the return window, often yes — for anything where the box is part of the product, a shop’s rule for a boxed item is frequently not its rule for an unboxed one. For a warranty claim, the receipt usually matters and the box usually does not.
What is the simplest rule that mostly works?
Photograph everything on the day; keep the paper only while a return, a warranty, an insurance claim, a dispute or a shared cost is still live. If none of those applies, the slip has already done its job.
Where ExpenseGauge fits
It keeps the reasons, not just the receipts.
A photograph is only half of it. ExpenseGauge reads what is on the slip — the shop, the date, the tax, and every line — so the receipt is searchable years later instead of being a picture you have to find first.
And the dates that matter are kept beside it. You set the day a return window or a warranty ends, and it tells you while there is still time, nearest first, rather than being something you work out afterwards.
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