Documents and records are of valuable nature to any organization and to any business. These records help in various facets of the business such as financial & legal and maintaining them is equally important. One doesn’t know when a record with dates back to a couple of years might come in handy. But then again there are some documents whose value decreases with time and there needs to be a date of retention for those documents and within that date, they will be known as active documents.
This would enable them to be demolished when they aren’t in use or aren’t considered as active documents. In order to do this, an organization needs to maintain a record retention schedule.
What is the record retention schedule?
The record retention schedule is very important to be made for handling every record management plan. The requirements of the organization in order to keep the record are fulfilled with the help of a record retention schedule.
A Record retention schedule is a schedule which is designed by organizations and which lists down all the documents and the dates as to when they will be regarded as active documents. The reason behind maintaining a record retention schedule can be many but the most common is for financial reasons, for legal reasons, and for historical reasons as well.
Importance of record retention schedule:
A company gets its legal rights to retain the records when it uses the record retention schedule. Therefore, it is very important for an organization to use the record retention schedule. An organization is required to use the retention schedule when it wants to keep the record and decide for how long it should keep those records.
An organization should create and organise this schedule systematically so that the best benefits can be availed. As a matter of fact, the record retention schedule is essential for a sound recording system.
A Record retention schedule should be such which has details about all the documents and serves the purpose well. It should consist of a table which has details and the names of all the documents and next to each document should be the date on which they will not be known as active documents. They can be divided into various sections or according to years to make them more convenient.
Record Retention Schedule Template
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What are the benefits of using the retention schedule?
The key benefits that can be availed by using the record retention schedule are:
- This schedule ensures that the company is making the optimal use of all of its resources and none of the resources is being wasted.
- It becomes very hard for an organization to maintain the records when they grow in size. The record retention schedule never let the growth of the records go unrestrained.
- Every company has its own record keeping policies in order to ensure that the records are held and maintain effectively. Whether the company is maintaining the records consistently by implementing those policies or not can be checked with the help of a record retention schedule.
- When the record grows in size, the person responsible for holding the records feels it very difficult to locate a particular record and then retrieve it. This schedule helps the person in retrieving and locating.
- There are many risks associated with not holding the records effectively. These all risks are completely prevented with the record retention schedules are made and used.
A record retention schedule template can be used to ensure proper record keeping. Due to the effectiveness of the template, many people use this template as an essential tool.