Seven years, and not just the daily totals
The short answer: if you run a restaurant, café, bar or hotel in the Netherlands, you must keep your business records for 7 years, and the data in your POS system is part of those records. Not just the Z report with the day's total, but the detail: which items were on which receipt, when, for how much and how it was paid. In 2021 the Dutch Supreme Court confirmed that these transaction details fall under the retention obligation. A POS system that automatically wipes receipt lines after a few weeks does not comply.
That sounds like a lot of paperwork, but with a cloud-based POS it mostly comes down to choosing the right system and then not having to do anything yourself. Below you will find the Dutch rules, where things go wrong in practice, and what you should expect from a hospitality POS system.
What Dutch law says
The basic rule is in article 52 of the Dutch General Tax Act (Algemene wet inzake rijksbelastingen): you must keep records that show your tax position at any moment, and you must retain them. For the core records the retention period is 7 years. That covers the general ledger, purchase and sales records, debtors and creditors, stock records and payroll. For records about real estate, such as your premises, it is 10 years.
In hospitality, the POS system is the heart of your sales records. Every receipt is a sale, so every receipt belongs to those 7 years. If you close the business, the clock keeps running.
Why daily totals are not enough
The 2021 Supreme Court case concerned a restaurant that turned into a nightclub at night. Every evening the POS merged all orders into a single file with daily totals; the individual receipt lines stayed in the database for fourteen days and were then deleted. There were no backups. The tax authority (Belastingdienst) wanted to check whether all revenue had been reported by comparing purchases and sales per product type, and that was no longer possible.
The ruling: details of orders and payments are part of the records and must be kept, precisely because they make that check possible. Throwing them away means you have not met your record-keeping obligation. In practice that means the tax authority may estimate your revenue itself, and it is then up to you to prove the estimate is wrong. That is a bad position to be in, especially if you had nothing to hide.
A faded till roll in a shoebox is not a set of records. A database from which you can retrieve every receipt of the past seven years is.
What the tax authority expects from a POS system
Together with the Dutch Foundation for Reliable POS Systems (Stichting Betrouwbare Afrekensystemen), the tax authority has published guidance on what a POS system should do. The essence, translated to a restaurant or café:
- Everything is recorded, including an order that is never paid. A table you release without payment stays visible.
- Nothing disappears silently. Removing a line from a bill or correcting a payment happens through a reversal you can look up later, not by deleting the line.
- Actions are logged: who did what, and when. Which staff member gave that discount, who voided that order.
- Every receipt line gets an automatic timestamp you cannot edit.
- Data is kept in full detail; condensing it into totals where the details are lost is not allowed.
- The data stays available for 7 years, with a complete copy outside the premises in case of fire, theft or a dead hard drive.
- During an audit you must be able to hand over the detailed data, preferably in the standard Dutch XML format (Auditfile Afrekensystemen).
The tax authority advises new business owners to choose a system that carries the Dutch quality mark for reliable POS systems (Keurmerk Betrouwbare Afrekensystemen). The mark is not mandatory, but the requirements behind it show exactly what the tax authority looks at. Ask every vendor how long receipt lines are kept and whether you can export them yourself. A vague answer tells you enough.
What this looks like in a cloud POS
With an iPad POS system that stores its data in the cloud, you do not have to arrange most of those points yourself. This is how it works in Deskly:
A paid bill cannot be cancelled or deleted. If a card payment was too high or a bill was settled by mistake, you issue a refund for the whole bill, a few lines or an amount. The original bill and the refund both remain on record. If you remove a line from an open order, the POS asks for a reason and stores it with the order.
The daily close produces a Z report with a journal number that is final: you can print it or save it as a PDF, but not change it. In Horeca Manager you can look back at every close of the period, with revenue, VAT and cash difference. How you do that close in four steps every night is explained in [Daily close: from X report to Z report](/en/kb/kassa/dagafsluiting-en-kasverschil).
Under Reports you pick a period and pull up revenue, the VAT breakdown per rate, payment methods and top products, and Export CSV puts all of it in a file for your accountant or an auditor. If you would rather not export by hand every month, you can have a report e-mailed automatically.
Because the data does not live on the iPad itself but in the cloud, the off-site copy is always there. If an iPad ends up in the dishwasher, you sign in on another one and everything is back. That is exactly the off-site backup the guidance asks for, without you having to remember an external drive.
Linking the POS to your accounting
Keeping the data is one thing; the tax authority also wants your POS and your bookkeeping to match. If your POS books one journal entry per day in Moneybird, e-Boekhouden, SnelStart or Exact Online with the same amounts as the Z report, that match is there automatically. Tips and cash differences should be booked separately, otherwise your VAT return will be off. How that works in detail is covered in [Linking your POS to your accounting](/nl/blog/kassa-koppelen-aan-boekhouding-moneybird-eboekhouden-snelstart-exact) (in Dutch).
Four things that go wrong in practice
The guidance was written for software developers, but most problems arise behind the bar, not in the code.
Practice orders that stay open. A new team member rings up a few fake orders before the shift to get the hang of it, and at midnight they are still open. Every practice bill you do not cancel properly with a reason distorts your revenue and your cash difference. Practise on a dedicated table, clear it before service starts and check at the daily close that nothing is left hanging.
Parked bills you forget about. A table you leave open until tomorrow does not count today. Close every day with zero open tables, or record why one is still open.
Refunds only on the card terminal. If you give money back through the terminal but not in the POS, your revenue is overstated and your cash does not balance. Always process the refund in the POS as well.
Switching POS systems without an export. If you move to another system, first ask your old vendor for a complete export. That old data remains yours for seven years, even after the subscription has ended.
Frequently asked questions
How long do I have to keep POS receipts in the Netherlands?
Seven years, as part of your sales records. It is not about the paper slips themselves but about the data: what was sold, when, for how much and how it was paid. If that is stored digitally in your POS system and you can retrieve it, you do not need to keep till rolls.
Is one Z report per day enough?
No. The Dutch Supreme Court has ruled that the details per receipt must be kept too, because the tax authority uses them to check whether all revenue has been reported. A daily total alone makes that check impossible.
Does my POS need the Dutch quality mark for reliable POS systems?
The mark is not mandatory. The tax authority does recommend it, and the requirements behind it are the same as in its guidance: record everything, delete nothing, keep changes visible and be able to deliver the data for 7 years. Ask your vendor how the system meets those requirements.
What happens if my POS vendor goes out of business?
The retention obligation stays with you. Make sure you can always export your data yourself and keep that export outside the POS, for example with your accountant. Do the same whenever you switch to another system.
Set it up properly once
Data retention does not have to be a chore if your POS does the work: receipts that cannot be deleted, a final daily close, reports you can export yourself and a copy in the cloud. If you want to see how that works in practice, you can try Deskly free for 30 days with your own menu and your own iPad.
