How long to keep signed contracts

Keep a signed contract for the whole time it runs, then for at least six more years after the last date anything under it could be breached. Six years is the limitation period for ordinary contract claims in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, and it runs from the breach, not the signature. Three other rules set floors of their own: the ATO wants most tax records for five years, company records and employee time and wages records need seven, and a deed can need twelve or fifteen years depending on the state.

This is general information about Australian rules, not legal advice. Your industry, your regulator and the contract itself can all require longer, so treat the numbers below as minimums.

Statutory record keeping periods

Two sets of rules apply to contracts whether or not anyone ever argues about them.

Tax. The ATO’s record keeping rules say you need to keep most records for five years, and that the period generally starts when you prepared or obtained the record or completed the transaction it relates to, whichever is later. A signed contract is a tax record whenever it supports income, an expense, GST or an asset: a supplier agreement, a lease, a sale of equipment. The ATO also notes that some records must be kept longer than five years, including where they support an assessment still open to review.

Companies. The same ATO page reminds businesses to check other regulators, and gives the example that ASIC requires companies to keep records for seven years. If you trade through a company, seven years is the more useful default for anything financial.

The ATO adds a condition that matters for electronic contracts: the relevant information must not be changed, must be stored so it is protected from change or damage, and you must be able to reconstruct the original data if your system changes. A signed PDF that has been re-saved, flattened or compressed after signing can fail that test in a practical sense, which is covered under storage below.

Limitation periods: the clock starts at breach

Statutory periods tell you what a regulator can ask for. Limitation periods tell you how long someone can sue, which is the real reason to keep a contract.

In all three eastern states an action founded on a simple contract must be brought within six years: section 14 of the Limitation Act 1969 in New South Wales, section 5(1) of Victoria’s Limitation of Actions Act 1958, and section 10(1) of Queensland’s Limitation of Actions Act 1974. The wording that matters is when the cause of action accrues or arose. For a contract that is usually the breach.

That changes the arithmetic. Take a fictional three year cleaning contract signed by Harbourline Facilities in March 2026. If the last invoice is disputed in March 2029, a claim can be brought until March 2035. A retention rule of “six years from signing” would have destroyed the contract in 2032, three years before the risk ended.

Obligations that outlive the contract push it further. Confidentiality, indemnities and restraints commonly continue after termination under a survival clause, and each one can be breached years after the main deal ends. The NDA signing example is a document whose useful life is mostly after the relationship.

Deeds

A deed has its own limitation period, and the states disagree about it.

• New South Wales: 12 years for an action on a cause of action founded on a deed, under section 16 of the Limitation Act 1969.
• Victoria: 15 years for an action upon a bond or other specialty, under section 5(3) of the Limitation of Actions Act 1958.
• Queensland: 6 years under section 10(3) of the Limitation of Actions Act 1974, but only for deeds made after the Property Law Act 2023 commenced. The transitional provision in section 51 leaves older deeds on the earlier period.

Guarantees, releases and deeds of settlement are commonly signed as deeds, and they tend to be relied on late, when something has already gone wrong. The loan agreement example carries a guarantor who initials the guarantee clause itself; if that guarantee had been executed as a deed in Victoria, the file would need to last fifteen years after a default, not six.

Employment contracts

The Fair Work Ombudsman says employers have to keep time and wages records for seven years, that they must be legible, in English and readily accessible to an inspector, and that they cannot be changed except to correct an error. The list of what those records contain includes the employee’s commencement date and whether they are full time or part time, permanent, temporary or casual.

The signed employment contract is where those facts come from. In the employment contract example, the start of the Operations Coordinator’s employment is fixed by her stamped signing date on page 3 and repeated in the certificate, and the employer countersigns only after she accepts. Keep that contract for at least seven years after employment ends, and keep variations, offer letters and policy acknowledgements with it, because a later claim about pay or classification will ask for all of them.

Storage format: keep the file that proves itself

Retention is not only about how long. It is about keeping something that still proves what it claims to prove when you finally need it.

Keep the certified file as delivered. A completed envelope produces a PDF certified with DocMDP at P=1, which means the file declares that no changes are permitted after certification, and a PDF reader’s signature panel shows whether that still holds. Print it to PDF, run it through a compressor, or add a stamp and save, and you have a new file whose certification no longer validates. How to read that panel is explained in how to check if a PDF is signed.

Keep the certificate of completion next to it. The certificate records how the signing happened: each signer’s verification method, signing time, IP address, the consent they accepted and its version, and the document hashes. It is a separate download unless the sender ticked the option to append it before sending.

Keep paper originals for anything signed in ink. A print, sign and scan copy shows a mark without showing who made it or whether a page changed, which is why a wet signature is worth keeping as the physical original when a document was signed that way.

Name and index. A contract nobody can find is as good as destroyed. Use one naming pattern, such as party, document type and completion date, and keep a register of what exists and when it can go.

Destroy on a schedule, not on a whim. When a period ends, destroy by the register and record that you did. The ATO specifically asks businesses to keep information about their routine procedures for destroying digital records.

The table below sets out the minimum period for each kind of record, when the clock starts and the rule it comes from.

Common mistakes

• Counting from the signature date. The limitation clock starts at breach.
• Treating a deed like a contract. Check the execution block; 12 or 15 years may apply.
• Keeping only the PDF. The certificate is the evidence of who signed and how.
• Re-saving the signed file. Anything that rewrites the PDF breaks the certification.
• Relying on an inbox. The completion email is a delivery, not an archive. File the attachment.
• Deleting declined or expired requests at once. They can show what was, and was not, agreed.

Build it

When every signer finishes, the completion email carries the certified PDF to every recipient and the sender. The certificate of completion is always written as its own PDF, and can be appended to the signed file if that box is ticked before sending. The uploaded document is never overwritten, each signature writes a new working copy, storage is versioned, and only draft envelopes can be deleted. Downloads are not recorded in the audit trail, so keep your own register of who holds copies. See the signed document download page for the three files, and the tutorial send a document for e-signature for preparing the envelope.