Heads up:Your employees’ laptop and PC recycle bins are a potential record retention trouble spot.
You probably don’t think too much about that little trash can in the corner of your computer screen.
But if you – and the other members of your finance team – don’t pay it a little attention now and then it could cause some big (and potentially costly) exposures.
That’s the warning from the folks at CCH. Here’s the scoop.
Your best protections
Keeping deleted files in your trash folder causes you problems on two fronts:
- It eats up server space, and, more importantly,
- It creates liability issues.
You don’t have to empty the recycle bin every time you trash something – CCH recommends you do it once a month.
You might even send out a reminder every month to your entire staff to do a “group dump.”
Don’t want to leave it up to others? Talk with IT about setting up your systems to automatically purge. (Though you also want some restore capability in case something’s purged by mistake.)
Adapted in part from “Document Management Maintenance Tips to Get Ready for Tax Season,” by Aimee Hall, at cch.com.