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Business Records and Their Importance

Author: Information Requirements
by Information Requirements
Posted: Sep 08, 2015

Document retention means what it sounds like – keeping or retaining documents from the past and the present in the event they are needed. For every business, this has now become a mandatory activity due to the new introduced regulations. Agencies like Internal Revenue Service mandated records retention practice for each business. Why exactly is this important?

Keeping records of things at your business place is just like your home – it requires spring cleaning each year. Just imagine what your home would look like if you just keep accumulating things and do not get rid of the old, useless stuff. It will look cluttered, getting about will become difficult, and most of all, the residents will suffer. Similarly, keeping records of your business dealings and every other thing in record and just forgetting about it will make your business and your employees suffer. Your business records need spring cleaning too.

The same agencies that mandate records retention requirement provide guidelines as to which kind of record is to be kept and for how long the organization needs to retain it. These guidelines form the base for the policy of each company’s own business records retention schedule, which functions according to this policy. This policy contains protocol that the records retention schedule needs to follow according to various situations that arise in a business. Some information needs to be retained for four years while other information needs to be disposed of in just two. This is all taken care of through records retention and disposition schedule. The best part is that having this schedule on board the company’s ship will please the authorities that come for audit at times, and even more so, seeing it functioning properly will make them satisfied with the way you handle your data.

Document retention schedule is important also because it results in optimizing the use of available space in the company. The space available may be physical or digital – using efficient practices and tools to maintain records can prove to be beneficial to both. Deleting unnecessary data frees up server space to feed and store new incoming relevant data, thus making space saving possible. Had the deletion policy not been in place, anything and everything could have ended up in the storage rooms and would have resulted in wastage of both space and intelligence.

Having too much data on board proves to be detrimental to the progress of the company. It is therefore necessary to draft an efficient document retention policy that falls under the ambit of all the related regulations going around and also fits well with the company’s own practices. This policy is an indispensable tool that helps in managing data that no man would ever want to deal with. A software properly designed to take care of this follows the policy protocol when a record has lived its validity period and is closing in on expiry. Small businesses may find this too much of an extravaganza, but big businesses need the aid of this facility in order to be able to make informed decisions.

To know more about business record retention requirements, visit IRCH.com.

About The Author

Sarah Jones is an expert on business data management and records maintenance who also likes to write many interesting articles and blogs, helping enterprises in coming up with the best business record retention schedule and document preservation guidelines. She recommends IRCH.com as the best source of information on the subject.
About the Author

IRCH provides market-leading products and services enabling customers to reduce costs and risks through implementing legally-defensible records retention and destruction practices.

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Author: Information Requirements

Information Requirements

Member since: May 29, 2015
Published articles: 27

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