[Retention Schedule] – [December 11, 2015]
Topic:Retention Schedule
Question by:Tammy Mower
Jurisdiction:Maine
Date:December 11, 2015
Jurisdiction / Question(s)Maine is in the process of defining the retention schedule of corporate records. We have a couple questions we’d like to ask the group.
1.What is your retention for corporate documents that have been scanned?
2.What is your retention for corporate document that have been delivered electronically?
3.Is your retention of documents that have not been scanned or delivered electronically very different?
Manitoba
Corporations Canada
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona / In Arizona, our retention schedule does not distinguish between the source of the document. All of our documents are to be retained on a permanent basis. “Permanent” means microfilm – it’s the only approved medium to store records permanently (other than the original paper).
We do work from scanned images, or in some cases from electronically-generated images on the e-files, but those images all have to be microfilmed at some point.
Have any states approved using some electronic medium for storage of permanent records? My understanding was that it was frowned upon, due to the changing nature of technology.
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut / The basic rule in CT is “Anything born digital may be stored and archived in digital format and anything born on paper must be saved to microfilm.” We can save paper to scanned images for convenient use, BUT we still need to keep the original paper warehoused off-site. Frankly, these rules make no sense to me because, once something is scanned, it exists in the same digital state as something “born digital.” Well, technically one is in a .pdf or .tif format, while the other is in original data code, but it is all a binary series of 1’s and 0’s, so what’s the diff?
Because off-site storage in controlled climates is becoming expensive and because digital data storage makes so much more sense and is easy to back up for redundancy these days, one of my goals has been to move as much as possible to online filing. This saves us time and money in a variety of ways (including that the interface eliminates many traditional rejection reasons, such as no signature, missing data field, etc), but one big way is that we will not need to print out and save permanent copies of paper for all the docs filed online. And there is a good chance that we do not even have to convert born-digital docs to microfilm images, either (stay tuned – we are debating that now and think we will be okay not converting so long as we back up our data redundantly).
Good luck with your planning, but my advice would be: go digital!
Delaware
District of Columbia / 1.)Permanent. We cannot destroy any records without the exception of trade name records that have 2 year retention schedule.
2.)Same as above.
3.)No it is the same. All paper records are scanned and then we destroy paper records and keep digital copies only.
Florida / Florida retains scanned corporate documents for 5 years. Digital corporate filings are permanent. Correspondence is retained for 1 year.
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana / In Indiana, we retain the paper copies of the documents that have been scanned for 1 year. All images are verified after the original scan.
We permanently retain images delivered electronically. All of our business, UCC and trademark filings are either scanned or delivered electronically. Notary filings are required to be filed online.
We send data files annually to Archives. When we offered to share our data with Archives they agreed that we would no longer need to retain paper permanently, and work with us to amend our retention schedule.
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana / Montana is reviewing retaining the hard copy documents for five years and the scanned images permanently.
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio / In Ohio, we retain the paper copies of the documents that have been scanned for 5 years. We do occasionally have an issue with the scanning and we need to retrieve the original document t re-scan. We permanently retain images delivered electronically. All of our business and UCC filings are scanned or delivered electronically. We do still have some documents submitted on paper that we are not yet scanning, but intend to start at the beginning of January (ministers license applications, etc.) but otherwise we do typically retain any official paper documents permanently. Correspondence is not scanned and we only retain those documents for 6 months.
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania / 1.)Permanent retention of documents once they are accepted for filing and indexed. Temporary retention (30 days) of the originals (prior to filing) that were mailed in or dropped off.
2.)Permanent retention of electronic documents once they are accepted for filing and indexed. Temporary retention (30 days) of the electronically transmitted information that goes into the filing.
3.)no
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah / In Utah, at the moment, everything for corporate records is perpetual. We are looking at the electronic records and those records that have historic significance for the first changes....Keep us posted on what you're doing,
ermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
Additional comments:
Full text of email:
Maine is in the process of defining the retention schedule of corporate records. We have a couple questions we’d like to ask the group.
1.What is your retention for corporate documents that have been scanned?
2.What is your retention for corporate document that have been delivered electronically?
3.Is your retention of documents that have not been scanned or delivered electronically very different?
Sincerely,
Tammy Mower
Supervisor of Corporations
Division of Corporations, UCC & Commissions
Department of the Secretary of State
Bureau of Corporations, Elections & Commissions
Telephone: 207-624-7744
Fax: 207-287-5874
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