The short answer
Under Uganda's Tax Procedures Code Act, a business must keep every record it used to work out a tax liability, accounts, invoices, receipts and other supporting documents, for 5 years after the end of the tax period the record relates to. If URA opens an audit, an objection or an appeal before that 5 years is up, you keep the records tied to it until the case is fully closed, even if that runs past 5 years. A registered company also has to keep proper books of account under the Companies Act 2012 and have them audited every year, with no small-company exemption.
In practice that means keeping your EFRIS e-invoices and e-receipts, your supplier invoices, your bank and mobile money statements, your payroll and NSSF records, and your stock records, filed so you can hand them over quickly if URA asks. See bookkeeping for a small business in Uganda for the day-to-day system behind this, and our EFRIS in Uganda guide for who must issue e-invoices and e-receipts. This page sets out our reading of the published rules, checked September 2026; for a ruling on your own records, go to URA or a registered tax adviser.
How long to keep records in Uganda: the URA rules
URA record keeping requirements, in plain terms
The 5-year rule comes from the Tax Procedures Code Act: keep accounts, documents, receipts, invoices and any other record relevant to working out a tax liability for 5 years after the end of the tax period it relates to. A VAT period is a month, so a sales invoice from September 2026 needs to be kept until roughly the end of September 2031. If a record is still needed for an audit, objection or appeal that started before the 5 years run out, you keep it until that proceeding is fully concluded, even past 5 years.
URA's own EFRIS system issues electronic invoices and receipts, so electronic records are clearly workable in practice, and we have not found anything requiring paper-only books. That said, the exact statutory wording on acceptable record formats was not something we could confirm, so if URA specifically queries the format you keep records in, check with them directly rather than assume.
If you run a registered company rather than a sole proprietorship or partnership, two more rules apply. Section 154 of the Companies Act 2012 requires every company to keep proper books of account, and every company must appoint an external auditor each year, there is no exemption for small companies the way some other countries allow. Under section 167(1), the company must deliver its audited accounts, the auditor's report and the directors' report to the Registrar of Companies at URSB: a private company within 10 months of its year end, a public company within 7 months. All companies must also file beneficial ownership information with URSB, a separate filing that is easy to overlook alongside the accounts themselves.
| Record | How long | Why URA asks for it |
|---|---|---|
| Sales invoices, EFRIS e-invoices and e-receipts | 5 years from the end of the tax period | Proves the income and output VAT you declared actually happened |
| Purchase invoices and supplier EFRIS receipts | 5 years from the end of the tax period | Backs your expense deductions and input VAT claims (the input VAT claim itself must be made within 6 months of the invoice date) |
| Bank and mobile money (MTN MoMo, Airtel Money) statements | 5 years | Lets URA, and you, check declared sales against money that actually moved |
| Payroll, PAYE and NSSF records | 5 years | Supports the PAYE you withheld and the NSSF you remitted for each employee |
| Stock and inventory records (bin cards, stock counts) | 5 years | Supports your cost of goods sold and explains stock losses or shrinkage |
| Any record tied to an open audit, objection or appeal | Until the case is fully concluded, even past 5 years | The law requires you to keep it for as long as the proceeding is live |
Documents for a tax audit: what URA actually wants to see
Invoice records: sales and purchases
A URA audit almost always starts with your invoices. On the sales side, that means your EFRIS e-invoices or e-receipts and the sales day book behind them: a dated list of every sale, cash, mobile money or credit, that lets you reconstruct a month's trading even before it is posted to a ledger. On the purchase side, it means every supplier invoice, again backed by their EFRIS e-invoice or e-receipt where they were required to issue one. Comparing your declared sales to your bank and mobile money statements is one of the most common checks an auditor runs, so the two need to tell the same story.
Where an audit turns into a dispute, what usually decides it is not the tax rule itself but whether your invoices are credible: sequentially numbered, from a real supplier, with a traceable payment behind them rather than unexplained cash. See how a URA tax dispute actually works for the process and real decided cases, and claiming input VAT correctly for the specific rules on what URA will and will not let you deduct.
EFRIS receipts, reports, and what to do when a supplier will not e-invoice
URA uses two names for the same idea: an e-invoice is issued through EFRIS by a VAT-registered taxpayer, an e-receipt by a taxpayer who is not VAT-registered. Either way, when a sale is made, EFRIS sends back a Fiscal Document Number (FDN), a verification code and a QR code attached to the document, and that combination is what makes it a genuine EFRIS document rather than an ordinary receipt. Keep the e-invoice or e-receipt itself, not just a summary of the sale, since the FDN is what URA's system recognises.
When a supplier gives you no e-invoice
If a supplier is required to issue an EFRIS e-invoice or e-receipt, because they are VAT-registered or in one of the 12 sectors URA named from 1 July 2025, and they do not give you one, the risk sits with you as the buyer: under Income Tax Act section 22(3)(m), you cannot claim an income tax deduction for that expense. As an illustration, UGX 5,000,000 paid to a supplier who should have issued an EFRIS document but did not can cost you about UGX 1,500,000 in extra income tax at the 30% company rate, because the expense is simply disallowed. We have not found a separate fine for a buyer who fails to demand a receipt, but losing the deduction is real money on its own.
In practice: ask for the e-invoice or e-receipt before you pay, not after. If a small supplier says they cannot issue one, check whether they are actually required to, use do I need EFRIS if you are not sure your own business is covered, and if they are, point out that URA's own web portal and desktop app carry no charge and cover a business with no billing system of its own. If a required supplier still will not issue one, keep whatever else you have, a contract, a delivery note, the bank or mobile money payment trail, but treat the deduction as at risk rather than assume the paperwork will save it. This is our reading of the published rule, not a guarantee it will hold in a specific case; for a purchase large enough to matter, confirm the position with URA or a tax adviser before you rely on it.
Payroll, bank and mobile money, and stock records
Payroll records: PAYE withheld from an employee's pay must be filed and remitted to URA by the 15th of the following month. NSSF is 15% of gross monthly pay in total, 10% from the employer and 5% deducted from the employee, also due by the 15th, and every employer with one or more employees must register with NSSF. Keep payslips, your PAYE return and your NSSF remittance schedule for each month; see our PAYE in Uganda guide for the current bands and worked examples.
Bank and mobile money records: reconcile every line on the bank, MTN MoMo or Airtel Money statement to a line in your own cash book, and investigate the difference rather than adjusting your book figure to match the statement. Mobile money transaction and withdrawal charges are one of the most commonly missed expense lines in hand-kept books, so give them their own line rather than burying them in "miscellaneous."
Stock records: a simple bin card or spreadsheet per product, showing opening stock, purchases in, sales out and a running balance, physically counted and compared to the book balance at least monthly. This matters for catching theft and spoilage as much as for the accounts, and it is usually the record that explains a gross margin URA finds unusually low or unusually high.
A simple filing system that survives an audit
The system does not need to be complicated, it needs to be consistent. A practical month-end routine: reconcile cash, bank and mobile money to statements and counts, post the sales and purchases day books, count physical stock against the book figure, review who owes you and who you owe, post NSSF and payroll deductions, check what is due to URA in the coming days, then produce a one-page profit and loss and balance sheet before you move to the next month.
- One folder, physical or cloud, per month, not per document type, so a whole month can be handed over at once.
- EFRIS e-invoices and e-receipts filed alongside the bank or mobile money statement for the same period, not separately.
- Owner drawings recorded as drawings, never as an expense, since mixing personal and business money is the single most common mistake that makes a set of books unreliable.
- A petty cash float, commonly UGX 100,000 to 300,000, topped back up to the same amount each time, with a signed voucher for every withdrawal.
A POS or accounting system that generates the sales day book, the stock record and the EFRIS receipt from the same sale removes most of the manual filing work. Where it does not, the folder-per-month habit above is what actually gets a business through an audit on time.
Set this up first, in order
This page assumes records already exist to keep. If the basics behind them are not yet in place, do them in this order first.
- Register the business: a URSB business name costs UGX 90,000 in total (UGX 35,000 to reserve the name, UGX 55,000 to register it), or from UGX 105,000 plus 0.5% stamp duty for a private company with nominal capital up to UGX 5 million. A TIN is free from URA. A KCCA or local council trading licence is not free either, the fee depends on the trade and the grade of the business area, from a few thousand shillings for a kiosk to several hundred thousand for a grocery or pharmacy. None of this is free, and many owners still pay an agent several times the official fee to handle the paperwork.
- The genuinely free habits, start these the same day: keep business money separate from personal money, write down every sale and expense daily, put the catalogue on WhatsApp Business, and claim the free Google Business Profile so the place shows on Maps, most owners still pay someone to set this up even though it costs nothing to claim, see adding a business to Google Maps.
- Once there is stock to lose, staff on the till, or more than a handful of sales a day: Growth Informer Business for sales, stock and the daily cash-up, with EFRIS switched on when URA requires it.
- Once customers look the business up before they visit, or it sells past walk-ins: a website, , see building a business website in Uganda, with a monthly care plan if you want it kept running for you.
- When the workflow is one no ready-made tool handles: a custom build, priced individually, .
- When a penalty, assessment, audit or deadline is already live: see the section further down this page, we are a URA-registered tax agent and can set EFRIS and VAT up, file, object and represent, how a URA tax dispute works.
Unsure what your own numbers support before spending on any of this? Use our business profit calculator first.
If URA has already asked for records, or an audit is already live
If a letter or a records request has actually landed, the calendar matters more than anything else on this page:
- Read exactly what URA has asked for, and the date it is due by, and send only what was requested, not your entire filing system.
- Pull the EFRIS e-invoices or e-receipts for the period in question first, since a gap here is usually what an audit is actually testing.
- If a purchase in the period has no EFRIS document from a supplier who should have issued one, expect that expense to be questioned, and see the section above on what to do next.
- If the audit turns into an assessment you disagree with, you have 45 days to object, and there is a fixed process and a set of deadlines that follow from there.
None of this is tax advice. For a ruling on your own audit or assessment, go to URA directly or to a registered tax adviser.
How Growth Informer Software Services can help
Growth Informer Software Services is registered with URA as a tax agent. On the tax side we can help you set up EFRIS and VAT on your own systems and train your staff on them, file VAT, PAYE and other returns, and, if a penalty or assessment has already landed, help with the objection and represent you in the dispute. We quote after seeing your notice or your books, since every case is different, and we do not quote a fixed price for tax work in advance.
On the systems side, Growth Informer Business, our own cloud POS, inventory and business-management platform, already issues URA EFRIS e-receipts and e-invoices, and keeps your sales day book, stock record and cash-up in one place instead of three. EFRIS is a setting you switch on when URA requires it, or voluntarily, and leave off until then, without changing systems; restaurant and hotel modules cover kitchen orders, tables, rooms and bookings, and we can show it running before you commit to anything. See our POS system for what it does day to day. If you already run a different POS, ERP or accounting system and want it connected to EFRIS, we scope the connection against URA's published specification and confirm feasibility before quoting; meeting your own fiscal obligations to URA stays your responsibility, not ours.
Message us on WhatsApp at +256 702 946 946 with what you currently keep and what URA has asked for, if anything. We reply within 6 hours and set up a meeting for the next day.
Frequently asked questions
How long do I need to keep business records in Uganda?
Five years after the end of the tax period each record relates to, under the Tax Procedures Code Act. If a record is tied to an audit, objection or appeal that started before the five years are up, keep it until that case is fully concluded, even past five years.
What are URA's record keeping requirements?
Keep the accounts, invoices, receipts and other documents you used to work out any tax you owe: for VAT, that includes your EFRIS e-invoices or e-receipts; for PAYE, your payroll and NSSF records; for income tax generally, your sales and purchase day books, bank and mobile money statements, and stock records. A registered company must also keep proper books of account under the Companies Act 2012 and have them audited every year.
What documents does URA ask for in a tax audit?
Most audits start with your sales and purchase invoices, checked against your bank and mobile money statements. Expect URA to also want your stock records if you hold inventory, and your payroll and NSSF records if you have employees. Sequentially numbered invoices from real suppliers, with a traceable payment behind them, hold up far better than cash purchases with no paper trail.
What counts as invoice records for URA?
Every sales invoice or EFRIS e-invoice or e-receipt you issue, and every purchase invoice or EFRIS document a supplier issues you, kept for five years from the end of the tax period. An input VAT claim itself must be made within six months of the purchase invoice date, but the invoice still needs to be kept for the full five years in case of an audit.
What records must a business keep in Uganda?
At minimum: a cash book, sales and purchases day books, bank and mobile money statements, stock records if you hold inventory, payroll and NSSF records if you have staff, and your EFRIS e-invoices or e-receipts. A registered company adds proper books of account and audited annual accounts on top of these.
What happens if a supplier does not give me an EFRIS receipt?
If they were required to issue one, VAT-registered or in one of the 12 sectors URA named from 1 July 2025, you risk losing the income tax deduction for that expense under Income Tax Act section 22(3)(m). Ask for the e-invoice or e-receipt before you pay, and if a required supplier still will not issue one, keep whatever other proof you have and treat the deduction as at risk until confirmed otherwise.