Glossary
Retention schedule
Also called: records retention schedule, disposition schedule
A retention schedule sets out, for each class of record, how long it is kept, what event starts the clock and what happens when the period expires. It is the operative document of a records programme, and the trigger event is the field most often omitted and most consequential.
Retention schedule explained
Three fields per record class
Period. How long the record is kept. Usually derived from a limitation period, a statutory requirement or a contractual obligation.
Trigger. The event that starts the clock. Creation, closure, contract termination, end of employment, batch expiry, end of the financial year, or the subject reaching the age of majority.
Disposition. What happens at the end — review, destroy, or transfer to archive.
Why the trigger matters more than the period
A schedule that says "seven years" without saying seven years from what cannot be implemented consistently, and the errors are large. A contract with a five-year term and a six-year retention period triggered at signature is destroyed five years early. Customer due diligence records triggered at creation rather than at the end of the relationship miss the requirement entirely.
If a schedule has one weakness, it is almost always this field.
Building one you can apply
Write it against record classes that correspond to something the system can identify — a document type, not an abstract "correspondence of continuing value". Schedules written in archival language are precise and unimplementable, and the reconciliation between the two vocabularies is the real work in a records project.
Start with the classes that carry legal exposure, cover the rest with a default, and improve it with use. A partial schedule that is applied beats a complete one that is not.
FAQ
Retention schedule: common questions
How detailed should a schedule be?
Detailed enough that each class maps to something the system can identify, and no more. A hundred-class schedule that nobody can apply is worse than a fifteen-class one that is enforced.
What about records with no class assigned?
Report on them — that number is the honest measure of programme completeness. Unclassified records are the ones that accumulate indefinitely because nobody is willing to be the person who deleted them.
Related terms
- Audit trailAn audit trail is an append-only record of every action taken on a document — views, downloads, edits, approvals, permission changes and deletions — with the acting user, timestamp and affected version.
- Chain of custodyChain of custody is the documented, unbroken record of who has held, accessed or altered an item of evidence, and when.
- DispositionDisposition is what happens to a record when its retention period expires: destruction, transfer to an archive, or a decision to extend.
- Document controlDocument control is the discipline of ensuring only approved documents are in use, superseded ones cannot be mistaken for current, and every change is authorised and recorded.
- Information governanceInformation governance is the framework of accountability, policies and controls determining how an organisation creates, uses, retains and disposes of its information.
- Legal holdA legal hold suspends the routine destruction of records that may be relevant to litigation, an investigation or an audit.
Última revisión: 28 de agosto de 2026. Browse the full glossary.