DriveHubCountry guide · Sweden
Sweden says where your körjournal must be kept, not only for how long
Sweden sets a retention period like everyone else, and it also says where the records must be kept: in Sweden, with the means to print them. For a sole trader whose log lives in the cloud, that is a real question.
The short answer
If you are bokföringsskyldig, which for most readers means you run a sole trader business, bokföringslagen 7 kap. 2 § requires you to keep your records for seven years and in Sweden, together with the equipment needed to print them. 7 kap. 3 a § permits storage elsewhere in the EU only if you notify Skatteverket and the records stay immediately available electronically. And 7 kap. 1 § requires an electronic record to be kept in the format and with the content it had when it was created.
An employee with a förmånsbil is not bokföringsskyldig, so the storage rule does not reach an employee's own körjournal at all.
Most retention rules say only how long. This one also says where.
Who does the storage rule bind?
The storage rule sits in the bookkeeping act, so it binds whoever that act binds. Under 2 kap. 6 § that is the sole trader, not the employee.
For a sole trader the körjournal is part of the records behind the business's books. It follows the whole of 7 kap.: seven years from the end of the calendar year in which the räkenskapsår closed, in Sweden, printable, and in its original form.
For an employee with a förmånsbil the answer is different on every count. Skatteverket's körjournal page prescribes no retention period. Skatteförfarandelagen 39 kap. 3 § imposes a documentation duty and names no number of years. The practical horizon is the six-year efterbeskattning window of SFL 66 kap. 27 §, which counts from a different event than the seven. The bookkeeping act's rule on place does not apply, because the bookkeeping act does not apply.
On the own-car side there is no prescribed form at all. Skatteverket asks only for "ett underlag som visar hur mycket du har kört i verksamheten", a record of how much you drove in the business. Where that business is a sole trader's, the underlag is part of its records and follows 7 kap. like the rest.
In Sweden, with the means to print it
7 kap. 2 § ties the records to a place and to a capability: stored in Sweden, together with the equipment needed to print them. An electronic record you can view only through one service, on one device, with no way to produce a paper copy does not obviously meet the second part.
7 kap. 3 a § is the exception, and it has conditions. Storage elsewhere in the EU is allowed on notification to Skatteverket, with immediate electronic access to the records from Sweden. The rule does not say "anywhere is fine as long as it is safe". It permits a specific alternative that you have to announce first.
For a sole trader whose mileage log lives in a cloud service, this is a compliance question, not only a technical one. Where does the service keep the data? Is that inside the EU? Has Skatteverket been told? Those are three questions, and only you can answer the third.
As it was when it was made
7 kap. 1 § adds a requirement about form. An electronic record must be kept in the format and with the content it had when it was created. A spreadsheet re-typed in March from a trip list is a new document. The record the rule means is the one produced at the time.
This fits closely with what the körjournal itself has to hold. For an electronic körjournal Skatteverket makes every heading of its example a ska, and those headings are listed in what an electronic körjournal must hold. A journal that meets the field list and is then lost, rewritten or stored somewhere nobody told Skatteverket about still fails, on 7 kap. rather than on the list.
The Netherlands, by contrast, says nothing about place and a great deal about time. Its seven years start only when a record stops being current. See when the Dutch retention clock starts.
Before you rely on a cloud copy
- Are you bokföringsskyldig? If you are an employee, 7 kap. does not reach your own körjournal. Six years from the relevant event is the horizon to plan for.
- Is there a copy in Sweden that you can print? If the only copy is in a cloud service, find out where that service stores it.
- If it is stored elsewhere in the EU, has Skatteverket been notified, and can the record be opened immediately from Sweden?
- Is the kept file the one produced at the time, unchanged, and not a later retyping?
- Will the copy outlast the phone and any app on it? Seven years from the end of the year the räkenskapsår closed is a long time.
What DriveHub changes, and what it does not
A paper körjournal in a drawer in Sweden meets 7 kap. 2 § without trying. Software does not make the storage question easier. What software changes is the record: nobody reconstructs a year of start addresses and odometer readings in March, and a reconstruction is not the record 7 kap. 1 § asks you to keep.
DriveHub records each trip in the background and asks afterwards which were business. The report prints, among Skatteverket's headings, the date, both addresses, distance, odometer at the start and end of each trip and at the year's boundaries, the purpose in your own words, and the company or contact you visited.
Where DriveHub keeps it, stated plainly. Your trips are created on your iPhone and stay there, or in your own private iCloud database, which belongs to your Apple Account. DriveHub does not choose where Apple stores that database, and it cannot tell you whether a copy there counts as stored in Sweden. DriveHub cannot read it. PDF, Excel and CSV exports are made on the phone and work offline. That gives a sole trader a file to keep as it was produced, in Sweden, on a printer or on paper. That step is yours to take, and nothing here claims that the cloud copy alone meets 7 kap.
This page states what bokföringslagen and Skatteverket say, and names the paragraphs so you can check. It is not tax advice. It can't account for your circumstances. Where money is involved, ask your revisor, and bring the körjournal.
The full rule for Sweden, with the instruments it comes from: mileage log requirements in Sweden.