Dear All,
I am in the process of updating our organisation's retention schedule and I
have come across an 'interesting' dilemma. As it is nigh-on impossible to
establish definitive retention periods for projects with European funding
we have signposted staff to the relevant Programme Management Executives in
Scotland for advice. However, we are now considering how to deal with
finance records related to European funding.
All finance records are held centrally with a copy of relevant documents in
the European project files. Our financial record-keeping systems at
present do not and cannot distinguish between European records and other
general records.
If European project files are audited then it is possible that the original
financial records will have to be recalled from the central finance
centre. As all financial records are treated equally the concern is to
avoid the situation where an original financial record may have been
destroyed before the European project file itself, leading to possible
issues with auditors. A lengthy retention period (e.g. 15 years) may cover
any European requirements but this would mean keeping all financial records
not related to European-funding for an overly long period of time.
I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has encountered a similar
situation? If so how did you deal with setting a retention period for
financial records?
If anyone has any thoughts/advice on this issue I'd be interested to hear
it.
Many thanks,
Elaine
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