Good record keeping is the mainstay of accounts management. It assists you to both meet your compliance obligations and provide verification for all your business transactions.

The Government requires that relevant records exist to support all business transactions – purchases, sales, payroll, and other business matters such as loans or foreign currency dealings. It is a business owner’s responsibility to maintain and store accurate records for all financial transactions.

Did you know that you are allowed to store all business records digitally? This is both more efficient and sustainable than having to keep years’ worth of paper records at your office.

The most important thing to take care of if you are moving to electronic record keeping is the security of your information.

Using systematic electronic record keeping makes it so much easier to run your business, as you will not waste time trying to find documents when you need them — whether that’s for yourself, your bookkeeper or your tax agent.

Most government departments allow business records to be either in paper or digital format. The legal requirements for record keeping are the same, regardless of format.

All records must be:

• True and correct
• Unaltered once stored
• In English and legible
• Stored in a secure system, whether physical or digital
• Easily accessible if required
• Held securely for the statutory five to seven years, depending on the type of record.

For best protection, store records both locally on your business computers and secure external online storage. This makes the records easily accessible from anywhere at any time. Always take care of who has what level of access to your documents and manage user access accordingly.

If you need help setting up digital business systems, we’d love to hear from you. We can also get you set up with encrypted digital signature technology to streamline your business admin even further.