Records management software with retention and disposition

A retention rule belongs to a kind of record, not to a location. An employment contract is kept for the same period whether it sits in an HR folder or a legal one, and attaching the rule to the document type means moving a document cannot accidentally change how long it is kept.

Each rule defines a trigger event, a period, and what happens at the end. The trigger is the part organisations get wrong: "seven years" is meaningless without saying seven years from what — creation, last action, contract termination, or the end of the financial year in which the record was closed. DocumentMS requires the trigger to be stated, because a schedule that does not state it cannot be applied consistently.

When a retention period expires, DocumentMS raises a disposition review rather than deleting the record. Someone with authority confirms the disposal, and that confirmation is recorded with their name, the date and the rule that triggered it.

Automatic deletion is the feature most requested and least advisable. Retention periods are estimates of legal exposure made years earlier, circumstances change, and a system that destroys records on a timer will eventually destroy one you needed. A review step costs minutes and converts an irreversible automated action into a defensible human decision.

A legal hold suspends disposal for a defined set of records, regardless of what their retention rules say, and cannot be removed by the people whose records are held. Holds are applied by search — a matter, a date range, a custodian — so the scope can be described the way lawyers describe it.

Destroying records after litigation becomes reasonably anticipated is a separate and more serious problem than keeping them too long. The hold therefore takes precedence over automated retention, and the application and release of every hold is recorded.

An erasure request under the GDPR or a comparable regime does not automatically defeat a statutory retention obligation, and a system that deletes on request without checking will put you in breach of one law while complying with another.

DocumentMS surfaces the retention rule and any legal hold when a deletion is attempted, so the conflict is visible at the point of decision. The decision itself, and its reasoning, is recorded — which is what you will be asked for if the requester complains.

A retention schedule is only as good as your ability to see whether it is being followed. Records can be reported by retention class, by upcoming disposition date, by hold status and by age, which turns the schedule from a document into an operational view.

The most useful report is usually the least flattering: records with no retention class assigned. That number is the honest measure of how complete your programme is, and it should be visible rather than derived on request.