SharePoint list limit 5k or 30 million

Question

I created an intense invoice form using SharePoint SPFx. The invoice form has many fields. When the user submits the invoice I have it adding to a SharePoint list called "invoice".

I underestimated how many invoices would be added to this list. We are looking at about 3k items added to the invoice list a year. I need to keep record of all invoices for a 10 year period.

Looking at the documentation here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/SharePoint/install/software-boundaries-and-limits and reading some articles I'm still a bit confused if for a single list if the limit is 5k or 30 million. I guess I just don't understand what List View Limit really means.

Answer 1

Basically the "List view limit" is concerned on how the users can interact and access the items on the list (in this case your invoice list). Lets say that you want to have users see their own invoices you can set up a view (basically a filtering on what items to show) on the list. The views wont work when you have 5000+ items on the list. Basically you would have to set up an index on the list (can be done through the UI or programatically).

So the load of approx 30.000 items you would see over a ten year period wouldnt make me worry. But you have to have a plan for how you display these items and make the searcheble for the end users and ensure that this will work with the number of invoices.

Also, in some cases an organization have a regulatory compliance requirement to keep invoices for 5-10 years, but business wise the end users might only be interested in having access to the invoices for the current and former financial year, so perhaps you can investigate if it makes sense to drop off some of the invoices to an archive to keep it "fresh" for the end users.