Small business owners tend to land on one of two extremes here — a shoebox that never gets emptied, or a habit of tossing receipts the moment the till closes for the day. Neither serves you well, and the useful answer sits somewhere in between.
A commonly used baseline: several years
Many tax authorities expect business records, including receipts, to be retrievable for several years after filing — commonly somewhere in the 5-7 year range, though this varies by country and by the type of record.
Digital storage makes "keep longer" nearly free
Unlike a physical shoebox, digital receipts cost almost nothing to retain for years — there's little practical reason to delete old records early once they're stored digitally rather than as fading paper.
Organize by year, at minimum
Even a simple folder structure by year (not by month, not unsorted) makes it possible to actually find something years later if a tax authority or auditor asks — an unsorted archive of thousands of receipts is barely better than having none.
Some receipts matter longer than others
Receipts tied to large equipment purchases or anything depreciated over several years often need to be kept as long as that asset is on the books, which can be longer than the general retention period for routine expenses.
When genuinely unsure, keep it
Storage is cheap; reconstructing a missing record during an audit is not. When in doubt about whether something needs to be retained, the safer default is simply to keep it.