Records retention schedules, explained
A retention schedule is a list of the record classes an organization holds, with a retention period, a trigger that starts the clock, a final action and the source that justifies each period. It is the document that lets you delete records on purpose, and prove you did it properly.
What a retention schedule contains
One line per record class. An illustrative line: vendor contracts, retained seven years after the contract ends, then destroyed, on the authority of the finance policy and counsel’s note on limitation periods. The four parts that matter are the period, the trigger, the final action and the source.
The trigger is the part people skip. “Seven years” means nothing until you say seven years after what: creation, the last transaction, the end of employment, the closure of a file. A schedule without triggers cannot be automated.
The source is the part a reviewer asks for. Some periods come from statute, some from limitation periods, some from contracts, and some are a business decision. Each is fine if it is written down.
Retention schedule vs classification plan
A classification plan says where a record belongs. A retention schedule says how long it stays there and what happens next. Most working systems combine them, so each class in the plan carries its retention rule.
The BC government’s ARCS and ORCS schedules work this way: each entry carries a classification number and its retention rule together. A private organization can borrow the shape without the bureaucracy.
How long Canadian privacy law expects you to keep personal information
Mostly, not longer than you need it. PIPEDA says personal information is kept only as long as necessary for the purposes it was collected for. BC PIPA adds a floor: information used to make a decision about a person is kept at least one year, then destroyed or de-identified once it is no longer needed for legal or business purposes. BC FIPPA sets the same one-year floor for public bodies.
Periods for tax, employment and sector records come from other statutes. We are not lawyers; those periods are confirmed with your counsel. Which Act reaches you in the first place is covered in which Canadian privacy law applies.
Why over-retention is a security risk
Because every record you no longer need is still a record an intruder can take and a breach notice has to count. Over-retention widens the blast radius of an incident and gives you nothing back.
Picture a shared drive holding a decade of payroll exports. The business needs the last few years. An intruder who reaches that drive takes all ten, and your breach assessment now covers former employees who left long ago. The schedule is the control that would have shrunk that folder.
This is why retention belongs in a security programme and on a risk register, not only in a records policy.
Legal holds
A legal hold suspends disposition for records relevant to litigation, an investigation or a regulatory inquiry that is underway or reasonably expected. It overrides the schedule until someone with authority releases it.
Apply the hold in the system, not by email. A hold that depends on staff remembering a memo fails the first time an automated disposition job runs. After an incident the same logic protects evidence, as set out in preserving evidence after a breach.
What makes disposition defensible
Three things. The schedule was approved by someone with authority to approve it. It is applied consistently rather than when someone has a free afternoon. And each disposition leaves a record of what went, under which rule, and who signed off.
Consistency is what separates routine disposition from destroying evidence. Records deleted on schedule, with no hold in place, are the normal operation of a records programme. Records deleted after a demand letter arrives are a very different conversation.
Questions we are asked
What is a records retention schedule?
A retention schedule is a list of the record classes an organization holds, with a retention period, a trigger that starts the clock, a final action and the source that justifies each period.
How is a retention schedule different from a classification plan?
A classification plan says where a record belongs. A retention schedule says how long it stays there and what happens next. Most working systems combine them, so each class in the plan carries its retention rule.
Why is keeping records too long a security risk?
Because every record you no longer need is still a record an intruder can take and a breach notice has to count. Over-retention widens the blast radius of an incident and gives you nothing back.
What is a legal hold?
A legal hold suspends disposition for records relevant to litigation, an investigation or a regulatory inquiry that is underway or reasonably expected. It overrides the schedule until someone with authority releases it.
Building a schedule you can enforce
We build schedules, file plans and the Content Manager or SharePoint configuration that enforces them, described under records management and retention. More explainers are indexed at writing.