Elaine,
We have encountered the same problem here with regard to EU funded projects. The solution we came up with was to keep the original finance records with the rest of the project files and keep copies with the General Finance Payment files. This allows the longer retention to be implemented on the EU records and a shorter retention to be implemented on the General Payment files. This is by no means an ideal solution but it was the best we could come up with to ensure that the EU payment records are not mistakenly destroyed with the General Payment files. It also means the EU payment records are identified by staff at the point that the project is still underway and the information on payments is readily available. If we were to wait until the General Payment files were due for destruction to find and remove EU funded payments for the longe!
r
retention required the staff and the information on the project would not be as easy to find.
I would be very interested to hear if anyone else has come up with any other solution.
With regard to retention for EU funded projects, the Society of Archivists, Ireland held a workshop at one of its conferences on this topic and the information from this workshop is (I think) still on the Irish region's web pages on the SoA website.
Regards,
Joanne Rothwell
Archivist/Records Manager
Waterford County Council
Davitt's Quay,
Dungarvan,
County Waterford
Telephone: 00353 58 23673
--- On Fri 11/18, Elaine Forbes < [log in to unmask] > wrote:
From: Elaine Forbes [mailto: [log in to unmask]]
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 14:19:47 +0000
Subject:
Finance records for European-related projects
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
|