No you don’t – but you do need to keep some records for certain periods of time – by law.
It can be a bit daunting as you see the piles of paper building up and wonder where you’re going to store it all year after year. I know one business where the records are kept in a cupboard (locked!) under the stairs in their building because the business owner doesn’t know what to do with them. She figures when the cupboard gets full, she’ll biff the older stuff. Really? Hmmmm!!!
You will be aware that you need to keep your financial records for seven years. Your accountant will have told you that – that’s governed by the law. After that you can destroy them. Or you can keep them longer if you want to.
It’s the same with personal records if you employ staff; you need to keep records relating to your staff for six years after they leave. That’s also a legal requirement.
The legislation gives you these guidelines for the minimum time for the core information in case of a future audit or a staff grievance. If you want to keep it for longer you can. For example you might want to be able to do an historical comparison of the financial position of your business after 10 or even 20 years. Or look back on the sort of staffing roles you had 10 years ago compared to today. It can be very illuminating to look back, and can help you with forward planning when you see how far you’ve come.
What the law doesn’t cover is all the other information that is necessary to run your business. I’m thinking of your business plans, marketing plans, your contacts database, web site content, business cards and brochures and any other information you collect in the day-to-day running of your business.
You only need to keep this sort of information for as long as you need it for your business. For example unless you have an historical bent and want to compare your current situation with what went before, you can destroy your business, marketing etc plans as soon as you have replaced them with a more up-to-date version. You can go through your business card folder from time to time and remove those that are no longer relevant to your business.
The way I see it is that you really need to keep some core information, such as financial and staff files, business plans, for as long as you need to for good business reasons.