Disposal of old bills and receipts.

[Deleted User]

Not sure which Forum to post this on, so, if it's on the wrong one, Mods please move it.

For how long should I retain the following bills and receipts?

Rent for a Council house, run by an ALM company.

Council Tax.

Water.

Thanks.

Annie1960

I don't retain council tax or water bills, but I pay by direct debit so would have evidence via my bank if needed. Having said that, I've been a home owner since the 1980s and have never needed to produce receipts, and can't imagine how the need would arise.

arsenalboy

It would always be helpful to keep copies of water bills.

I had a leak, which was on the water authorities side, it was very useful to be able to calculate the excess charge that I had been paying because of the leak which was repaid.

[Deleted User]

Being in a rented (Council) property, I don't pay for repairs.

DaftyDuck

Can you scan to a PDF document? I do batches of bills (not even separating electricity from C/T), and keep the PDFs in a folder. That way, I have searchable (they OCR) bills going right back to the 90's.

Annie1960

DaftyDuck wrote: »

Can you scan to a PDF document? I do batches of bills (not even separating electricity from C/T), and keep the PDFs in a folder. That way, I have searchable (they OCR) bills going right back to the 90's.

Interesting. Have you ever needed to use these for anything?

DaftyDuck

Needed... not quite sure, but used, oh, yes! Endless entertainment - of a sort!

I do work in a so-called "paperless office" (and the last bit of paper I saw from work would be last year some time...), so I'm used to doing this for so many purposes (and I get all the software and hardware for free as a result). But it is useful, even if just in an informative way to be able to check who the house insurance was with any particular house, how my electricity consumption (or gas or oil) has changed over time... Mainly, I just know that, if needed, it's all there.

Most printer scanners, even the cheap ones, come with perfectly fine software that'll convert most bills into passably readable OCR'd documents. You don't need a posh scanner & software - although a sheet-feeder scanner and document storage software does help.