Electronic Bookkeeping Law (電子帳簿保存法) — what Dokolo handles for you
What we take care of automatically, and what you still need to do yourself.
This guide is for informational purposes only and is not legal advice. For definitive guidance, consult a tax professional or the National Tax Agency.
What is the Electronic Bookkeeping Law?
When you exchange invoices, receipts, or estimates electronically — by email or by downloading them from the web — Japanese tax law requires you to keep them in that same electronic form rather than printing them to paper. Since January 2024 this rule applies to every business in Japan, including freelancers and sole proprietors. There are three core requirements: integrity (the file can't be silently rewritten after the fact), visibility (you can pull it up on screen when asked), and a retention period (seven years as a rule).
What Dokolo handles for you, automatically
The four built-in features below mean you don't need to write your own internal procedures to satisfy the law:
- Every issue, correction, and send action is logged automatically, and once written the entry can't be edited or deleted. This format is what the National Tax Agency calls 訂正削除履歴保持システム方式 — the most common way SaaS products satisfy the integrity requirement.
- Issued documents are searchable by counterparty name, transaction date, and amount, with both range queries and combined filters. A request like "all invoices issued to ◯◯ Co. for 100,000 JPY or more in April 2024" pulls up the matching documents in one step.
- Issued documents can't be deleted by design — they stay in your library for the legally required seven years, no exceptions. Draft documents can be restored from the trash anytime if you delete one by mistake.
- Every invoice ships with the registration number, per-rate consumption-tax breakdown, and applicable tax rate that the Qualified Invoice System (適格請求書 / インボイス) requires — already filled in, no separate setup needed.
Issuance can be cancelled before delivery — corrections after delivery go through 修正交付
Downloading a PDF is free to do at any time, as many times as you like — it never changes the document's status. The document becomes "Issued" and stops being directly editable at exactly one moment: when you press the "Issue" button. Obligations under the Qualified Invoice System attach not to the moment a file is created, but to the moment you actually hand it to your counterparty — 交付 (NTA Q&A No. 32 and No. 33). Before delivery, you can always undo issuance with "Cancel issuance" and return the document to a draft (the cancellation itself is recorded in the audit log — nothing is erased). Sending by email issues and delivers the document in a single step. If you deliver it by post, in person, or from your own mail client, record that delivery yourself with the "Mark as delivered" button. Either way, once delivery is recorded, cancelling issuance is no longer possible. If you spot a mistake after delivery, open the document in the library and click "Create correction (修正交付を作成)". A new corrected draft is created automatically, and the original document is switched to "Corrected". The corrected PDF carries a "Correction" tag and a back-reference to the original document number and issue date — the format described in NTA Q&A No. 33 (Method A) — so you can resend it cleanly to your counterparty.
What we cover, and what you still need to do
Dokolo is a software provider — we run the storage, audit log, and search infrastructure. The legal duty to keep the data, though, sits with you as the business operator. Even after you cancel your Dokolo account the seven-year retention duty remains yours, so at least once a year you should hit the per-type bulk-download buttons in the library (one ZIP for invoices, one for receipts, one for estimates) and stash those PDFs somewhere you control — your laptop, a cloud drive, whatever your accountant prefers. A metadata CSV (one row per document, UTF-8) downloads from the same place — open it in Excel for ad-hoc analysis or hand it to your tax advisor. Direct accounting-software 仕訳 CSV (freee, Money Forward, etc.) is on our roadmap, not yet shipped. For tax-position questions — deductibility, consumption-tax treatment, and similar — please ask your tax advisor.
If your sales are under 50 million JPY, the search requirement doesn't apply to you
If your taxable sales in the base period (two fiscal years prior) are 50 million JPY or less, you're exempt from the search-functionality requirement. Most freelancers and small companies fall into this group. Note that integrity and visibility still apply regardless of size — those are universal. Because Dokolo provides search by default for every plan, you won't need to change how you operate the day your sales cross the 50 million JPY line.
Frequently asked questions
- What actually happens if I don't comply with the Electronic Bookkeeping Law?
- The most commonly cited consequences are revocation of blue-form (青色申告) status, additional tax assessments, and disallowance of the consumption-tax input credit. The NTA does provide a relief measure for cases with "reasonable cause," but the obligation has been in force since January 2024, so the safer move is to comply now rather than rely on relief.
- What about invoices I receive on paper?
- Paper invoices can stay on paper, the way you've always handled them. The electronic-storage obligation only applies to documents that were exchanged electronically — email attachments, web downloads, and similar.
- Does downloading a PDF lock the document?
- No — downloading a PDF never changes the document's status. You can download a draft as many times as you like and keep editing it afterward. The document only becomes "Issued" (and locks) when you press the "Issue" button in the library or the editor, and Dokolo shows a confirmation dialog before that happens, so a stray click won't issue it by accident. If it does get issued by mistake, use "Create correction" to produce a corrected version. The original stays in the audit log with a link to the latest revision, which makes it easy to explain to your counterparty.
- If I cancel Dokolo, what happens to my past documents?
- Before you cancel, go to each tab in the library (invoices, receipts, estimates) and click that tab's bulk-download button. You'll get one PDF ZIP per type, plus a metadata CSV (one row per document, UTF-8) from the same spot — Excel-ready for ad-hoc analysis or for your tax advisor. If you also want the full issue / correction / send audit trail, grab a JSON dump from the Profile page's "Export my data" button — that one covers your whole account in a single file. The seven-year retention is your duty, not ours. Direct accounting-software 仕訳 CSV (freee, Money Forward, etc.) is on our roadmap, not yet shipped.
- What do I show during a tax audit?
- Open any document in the library and the issuance time, correction history, and send history are visible right there. You can show that view directly, or hand over a per-type PDF ZIP from the bulk-download button — the manifest.json inside has each document's metadata.