How long a workshop should keep job cards and invoices
How long a South African customer's claim against a workshop or dealer can run, and a retention plan for job cards, estimates and invoices that follows.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Automotive businesses in South Africa
Workshops generate paper at a remarkable rate: check-in forms, job cards, estimates, signed authorisations, parts requisitions, photos, invoices, and the occasional angry e-mail. Most of it is never looked at again. The temptation is to clear out the filing room every year or two, or to delete old scans to tidy the shared drive.
The trouble is that the one job card you need is the one you threw away. A customer who claims, years later, that a repair caused an engine failure is not interested in your filing policy. This article explains how long a claim against a South African workshop or dealer can stay alive, what the Companies Act says about records, and a sensible retention plan that follows from both.
Prescription: the three-year rule for most claims
Section 11 of the Prescription Act 68 of 1969, as published by the Department of Justice, sets out how long different debts take to prescribe. It gives thirty years for debts secured by a mortgage bond, judgment debts and tax debts; fifteen years for certain debts owed to the State from loans or the sale or lease of land; six years for debts on a bill of exchange, other negotiable instrument or notarial contract; and three years for any other debt, unless an Act of Parliament provides otherwise. You can read the Act on the Department of Justice's copy of the Prescription Act.
A customer's claim against a workshop over a repair, and a workshop's claim against a customer for an unpaid invoice, is likely to fall into that last, general category, though your lawyer is the one to confirm it. When the period starts to run, and whether something has interrupted it, depends on the facts of each case and is a question for a lawyer. For record-keeping purposes, the point is simple: a claim can surface years after the work was done.
A complaint does not stop the clock
Some workshops assume that once a customer has complained to the Motor Industry Ombudsman, time stands still until the complaint is decided. MIOSA says otherwise. It states that lodging a complaint with MIOSA or the National Consumer Commission does not interrupt prescription, and cites NCC v The Turbo Man CC, in which the National Consumer Tribunal held that it cannot entertain a matter referred to it more than three years after the cause of action.
For the workshop, the lesson cuts both ways. A customer's claim can still be pursued in other forums while a complaint runs, so the records must survive the complaint. And a workshop chasing its own unpaid invoice cannot assume that a customer's complaint has paused the time it has to sue.
The Companies Act's seven-year rule
If the workshop is a company, the Companies Act adds its own requirement. Section 24(1) of the Companies Act, 2008, as published on Acts Online, requires records that a company must keep under the Act or any other public regulation to be kept in written form, or a form convertible into written form within a reasonable time, for seven years or any longer period another applicable regulation sets. Section 24(3) requires every company to keep copies of its annual financial statements for seven years after each was issued, and its accounting records for the current financial year and the previous seven completed financial years.
Invoices are accounting records. Job cards that support an invoice are part of the evidence for it. For a company, the safest course is to keep the whole job file for at least as long as the accounting records it supports.
Tax law may set its own retention periods. Ask your accountant which applies to your business and keep records for the longest of them.
Electronic copies that still count
Few workshops want to keep years of paper. The ECT Act allows electronic retention where a law requires information to be kept. Section 16(1), as published on Acts Online, provides that keeping the information as a data message meets the requirement if it is accessible for later reference, is kept in its original format or one shown to represent it accurately, and its origin, destination and the date and time it was sent or received can be determined.
In practice that means a scan must be legible, complete and findable, and should not be edited after it is filed.
A retention plan for the workshop
| Record | Suggested minimum | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Invoices, credit notes, receipts | Current year plus the previous seven completed years | Companies Act accounting records |
| Job cards, estimates, signed authorisations | As long as the invoice they support | Evidence for the invoice and for any claim |
| Photos and inspection reports | As long as the job card | Evidence of condition before and after |
| Complaint correspondence | As long as the job file, and until any claim is finally closed | Prescription does not pause for a complaint |
| Annual financial statements | Seven years after issue | Companies Act |
Keep it simple: one job file per job, kept as a unit, destroyed only when every record in it has passed its period.
Keeping files intact in Achekam
Document Centre is a folder-based store where a business uploads files or whole folders, previews, downloads, renames, moves, tags, archives and searches them, and a new version of a file keeps the earlier ones. Every stored file gets a SHA-256 fingerprint, executable files are refused by default, and every upload passes a malware check; the check uses ClamAV only when the server is configured for it, and otherwise a built-in heuristic check runs. The fingerprint is useful evidence that a file is the one originally filed.
The books behind old invoices matter too. Months can be soft-closed, hard-closed and locked; a closed month refuses postings from every source, and reopening a hard close needs a second approver. Locking past months means the ledger that supported an invoice years ago still says what it said then.
For responding when a complaint arrives, see answering a Motor Industry Ombudsman complaint; for what the invoice itself should show, read parts on workshop invoices.
A filing room is cheaper than a claim you cannot answer. Decide the periods once, write them down, and let the plan do the clearing out.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
