This is the period of time during which a record is maintained.

Retention schedule – this schedule lists the records and estimates the period of time each type of record is to be held in active storage for day-to-day operations and in inactive storage for occasional reference, and if and when records may be purged (deleted from disk) or destroyed (burnt, shredded).  Nowadays there are many software vendors who would be able to customise or sell a records management system to you but in the meantime you can keep a retention schedule of your records on an excel spread sheet.  It would take a lot of discipline to keep it up to date but will be well worth the effort!

The records retentions schedule should address the following topics:

• The period of time during which records have operational, legal, fiscal or historical value
• The period of time records are considered active and must be maintained in the primary (active) filing area
• The point in time when records can reasonably be transferred to a secondary storage facility
• The method of records disposal or disposition i.e. purging, shredding, incinerating
• The procedures for operating and ensuring compliance with the retention and disposition programmes
• The relationship between records retention and other aspects of the records management program such as microfilm, filing, data processing and historical archives
• Retention of records and information, regardless of the format of that record g. microfilm, magnetic media, email or the storage location e.g. offsite storage, file servers and electronic documents.