What is a Receipt?

A receipt — kvittering in Danish — is a written confirmation that a payment has been made. It serves as proof of purchase for the buyer and proof of sale for the seller.

In everyday use, a receipt is the paper slip you get after paying at a shop. In a business context, however, a receipt carries a more specific meaning: it is a bookkeeping document (bilag) that must meet certain legal requirements before it can be used to document a company expense — and before VAT can be reclaimed.

Receipt vs. Invoice: What Is the Difference?

A receipt and an invoice serve different purposes:

For a company to use a receipt as a valid VAT document — allowing it to reclaim input VAT (moms) — the receipt must include the seller's CVR/SE number and a specification of the VAT amount. A standard supermarket receipt without these fields is sufficient for consumer returns but is not sufficient for VAT reclaim in a business context.

What Must Be on a Receipt Used as a Business Document?

For a receipt to function as a valid bookkeeping document and VAT basis, Danish tax rules (Skattestyrelsen) require:

• Date of purchase
• Seller's name and address
• Seller's CVR or SE number
• Description of goods or services
• Amount paid
• VAT amount specified separately (or stated as included with percentage)

If any of these elements are missing, the receipt can still be used as a bookkeeping document — but you cannot reclaim VAT on it. For smaller purchases (under approximately DKK 3,000 incl. VAT), a simplified receipt may be acceptable, but the rules on this are nuanced and it is safest to request a full receipt or invoice.

Receipts in Employee Expense Management

For finance teams, the biggest challenge with receipts is not the consumer case — it is the employee expense case.

When employees travel, entertain clients, or make purchases on behalf of the company, they collect receipts. These receipts must then:

1. Be submitted as part of an expense claim
2. Be reviewed and approved by a manager
3. Be checked for compliance (correct seller information, VAT specification, business purpose)
4. Be entered into the accounting system as a bookkeeping document (bilag)
5. Trigger reimbursement to the employee

When this process is manual — employees emailing photos of receipts, managers approving via spreadsheet, finance teams re-keying data — it is time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult to audit.

A study by the Global Business Travel Association found that the average cost of manually processing a single expense report is USD 58. For a company with 100 employees submitting five expense claims per month, that is a significant operational cost — before accounting for errors and audit risk.

Digital Receipts: What Is Legally Valid in Denmark?

Skattestyrelsen accepts digital receipts as valid bookkeeping documents, provided:

• The digital version is a true and legible copy of the original
• It contains all required fields (see above)
• It is stored in a way that prevents alteration

This means an employee photographing a paper receipt on their phone and uploading it through an expense app is legally valid — as long as the image is clear, complete, and stored securely. The original paper receipt does not need to be retained once a valid digital copy exists.

Email receipts (e.g., from online purchases, hotel bookings, airline tickets) are also valid, provided they contain all required fields.

OCR and Automated Receipt Processing

Modern expense management systems use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to extract data from receipt images automatically:

• Date, amount, VAT, and vendor name are read from the image
• The system categorises the expense and checks VAT eligibility
• The employee confirms or corrects the extracted data
• The receipt is routed for approval and then posted to the accounting system

This eliminates manual data entry, reduces errors, and creates a complete digital audit trail — from receipt capture on a mobile phone through to G/L posting in the ERP system.

Retention Rules: How Long Must Receipts Be Kept?

Under the Danish Bookkeeping Act (Bogføringsloven), all accounting documents — including receipts — must be retained for five years from the end of the financial year in which the transaction occurred.

For digital receipts stored in an expense management system, this retention is typically automatic. For paper receipts, the company must ensure they are stored securely and remain legible for the full five years.