Record Retention in Businesses – A Basic Overview

Records are an important part of any individual or companies existence. Records act as the proof for the transactions, legal obligations or the being itself of anything significant. Actually, our world would spiral into a chaos without these records to keep track of historical data and become a mess.

Retention of the important records is a very essential part of any individual or entity's professional life. Actually this record maintenance does aid the individual or the company with a lot of assistance for future reference. A lot of decisions depend on these data and create a base for the future path of the company.

Companies have a dedicated staff for the purpose of records retention which is specifically trained to do so. Even then it becomes quite difficult to manage these data entries perfectly because of their sheer numbers. Companies have hundreds of records, if not thousands coming into existence daily.

It can be divided into parts to understand the concept better. Actually for record retention functions, one must be able to first identify the data of importance. As hundreds of daily transactions take place inside the company as well as the outside, it becomes a peculiar job to find out the right ones to save for future reference.

Secondly comes the part of classifying these records in accordance with their usage and the departments involved. It may make a world of difference if the records are not properly classified as the person looking for them would have to deal with a lot of trouble finding what he/she is looking for.

Then comes the part of storing these records as to how it is to be done. Records can either be physically or digitally stored and to make this decision it depends partly upon the nature of the data. Some records are bound to be maintained in their physical form while others are to be digitally stored.

Securing these records is one tough job to do. Physical records have to be very carefully handled and have to undergo a few procedures to be properly maintained for a long period of time. Digital data can be stored on either physical storage disks or in cloud storage. No matter in physical or digital state, these records are to be secured against loss, damage and theft.

Retrieving the saved records is also an important job as usually these records are of crucial data and are needed quickly when the need arises. These records are also to be kept a regular track of to ensure their safety and well being. A regular check also maintains their proper storage.

Some of the records have their life periods such as licenses, warranty cards etc. These are to be destroyed or removed from the storage as they remain of no further use and only bulk up the storage. A timely scanning and removal of such records is also necessary so as to avoid unnecessary maintenance costs. Some documentations are of extreme importance are to be kept safe lifelong and hence must be properly taken care of. Therefore a records retention and disposition schedule is also important.

To know more about your business’ record retention policy, 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.

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