Guide · 6 min
Toss them too early and it turns into a fine; keep everything forever and it turns into a chaotic archive. Every company needs to know what to retain, for how long and where. Here's a practical map, with the usual caveat: confirm the periods with your accountant.
Company documents aren't keepsakes, they're a legal duty and a defence. In an audit, a labour claim or a tax inspection, the document is your proof. Discarding it before the deadline can mean a fine and a presumption against you; keeping it with no system turns into a dead archive where nobody finds anything.
The balance is knowing three things per document type: whether to keep it, for how long, and where to store it safely. Let's take the three.
As a practical reference in Brazil, and always to confirm with your accountant or lawyer, the periods tend to run like this:
Tax records (invoices, tax filings): usually 5 years, tied to the window in which the tax authority can charge or review. Accounting records (books, balance sheets): typically kept 5 to 10 years. Labour and social-security records (payroll, contracts, FGTS and INSS): long periods, some for decades, which is why many companies keep them indefinitely. Contracts: for their term plus the window in which a claim can still arise afterwards.
The safe rule: when in doubt between discarding and keeping a bit longer, keeping is cheaper than a fine. What's expensive is storing it badly.
It helps a lot, but doesn't always remove the physical. Documents with a signature, a stamp, a notarised mark or a legal requirement for the original still need physical storage. And the digital backup has to be reliable, not a loose folder on the front-desk computer.
In practice, most companies end up hybrid: they digitise the day-to-day and store the mandatory physical records somewhere safe, away from the office space that's expensive per square metre.
A dead archive takes up prime, expensive space. A document storage unit solves it for a fraction of office rent per square metre: you get the boxes out of your room and keep everything organised, dry and reachable when you need it.
What to require from the operator: a dry, climate-controlled space (paper hates humidity), access control and individual security, and boxes labelled by year and type so you can find things fast in an inspection. Worth using organisers and rigid archive boxes.
If the archive no longer fits, ask our free search with your city and the rough number of boxes: we return real operators with climate-controlled space and monthly contracts, no guarantor. Many serve companies and issue invoices.
And first of all, confirm the exact periods with your accountant: this text is a general map, not legal advice.