Organizations of all sizes accumulate paper records: it’s not unusual for a company to have upwards of 200 boxes full of contracts, agreements, and other items.
There are two kinds of documents: ‘live’ files, which are consulted, amended, and added to on a regular basis, or ‘dead’ files, which are kept for the sake of accuracy, consistency, and legal compliance.
Separating these files can be something of an ordeal – particularly if your records aren’t organized in any order or according to any system. If you can want then you can check online to get Archive storage services in Perth.
Though dead files have no apparent use, the law may demand that you hold on to them for years, and possibly decades: for example, if you’re running a building company, an asbestos incident document must be kept for 40 years.
The penalties for failing to produce a document on request can be severe, so it’s important to know how long you have to hold on to a file – and when you can or should destroy it.
Though it’s an extreme and perhaps unrepresentative example, the Enron scandal was partially caused by the mismanagement of financial records.
The other issue companies struggle with is simple document retrieval – days spent searching through archive storage is time wasted and often detrimental to business, as rapid retrieval is required.
Deep storage is a legal business requirement but it shouldn’t come at the detriment of business operations.