Storing Documents – Legal Requirements And How To Solve The Paper-mountain Issue

By Author: Donald Nason
Total Articles: 48
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Having to deal with mountains of paper documents can be one of the biggest problems facing an organisation. Paper documents are expensive to process, can be misplaced or lost, and further down the line issues arise concerning storage.

A number of types of document have a storage life defined by law – many of those found in Finance are an example. Invoices and VAT related documents must be stored for six years and PAYE details, wages and income tax records for three. HR (Human Resources) must ensure accident reports are kept for three years and records referring to medical issues have various lengths of storage specified.

Certain industries have their own defined retention periods for documents. GPs are required to hold records until 10 years after a patient's death (or after the patient has left the UK, unless they stay in the European Union.

But in addition, every organisation will have its own document business storage needs.

The challenge – storing paper documents is costly as well as hard to manage

How much valuable floor-space does your organisation have to allocate to filing cabinets ...
... – and cabinets often containing documents which may never even be looked at again until taken out to be destroyed at the end of their storage life? What about those documents which do require access at some time? How long does your Accounts Payable (AP) team spend rooting around in cardboard archive boxes searching for that illusive invoice? Never mind the time delay and expense in requesting and chasing up delivery of items archived off-site.

Then there are the privacy and security, data protection issues, and all the resulting problems associated with room access, combination locks – and mislaid keys.

Plus, what about ensuring protection for these vital documents from fire and flood? It doesn’t take much water to ruin a paper record.

Which is where a document management solution comes in – storing documents electronically, safely and securely, and providing instant access 24/7 to the users you authorise.

How a document management solution can help

In advice to organisations, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) says that VAT records, PAYE details, wages and income tax records stored electronically must be “easily accessible to you and to a VAT officer when they visit”.

With a document archiving solution documents can be scanned into the system, enabling staff – and authorised visiting officials – to easily locate specified documents as and when needed.

However, archiving is just the start (albeit that it comes at the end of life for the document). It’s useful, but moving document capture to the beginning of the process and adding workflow processing brings even more benefits, saving time and costs.

For example, with an invoice management solution, invoices are stored electronically (paper invoices scanned as they enter the AP department), allowing instant access during the business process to resolve queries immediately, etc, and retrievable via IMS or integrating line of business systems.

One of the reasons behind a Midlands’ police force’s decision to automate their accident report processing was the amount of physical space needed to store the documentation – accident records (some containing up to 30 different documents) are required to be retained by law for 10 years.

Having implemented their automated accident reporting solution the police force has indeed been able to lose the rows of filing cabinets. But, in addition, by investing in a solution which captures the documents at the start of the process, workflow software could be included to ensure compliance with best practice, eliminate some of the manual work, and allow the team to monitor and meet critical KPIs – all resulting in a much better service.