On 8/8/05, Sarah Henning <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Dear All
>
> What do people think about differentiating between retention periods for the
> same types of documents produced by different departments? Our Finance
> department has queried the idea of keeping their Quarterly reports long term
> as they are of less historical interest that the reports issued by our
> exhibits/exhibitions departments. While I take their point (Finance is
> crashingly dull), I'm wary of making distinctions in this way.
Although they are both called quarterly reports each is vastly
different since they are produced by different business functions
within your organization. The Finance department's reports report on
(I assume) the financial health of the organization i.e. profit/loss,
how much was spent etc. If that is the case I agree that they are not
of long term value.
On the other hand quarterly reports issued by the exhibits department
report on activities conducted by the department. Activities that may
not be repeated in the next quarter.
When establishing retention periods one should always take into
account the Business Process that produces, uses or maintains the
records. A classic example of a document serving multiple functions
is the purchase order. A Purchase order (in my experience) contains
the five parts 1) kept in Purchase dept, 2) sent to vendor), 3) sent
to Receiving dept, 4) sent to original requester 5) sent to
Accounting.
Each of the above maintains their copy for different periods of time.
Peter
--
Peter Kurilecz
Richmond, Va
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