Record Keeping Requirements for Businesses: What You Need to Know

Published on: October 10, 2026

Record-Keeping Requirements for Businesses

Businesses create records every day: contracts, invoices, receipts, approvals, board resolutions, meeting minutes, employee documents, policies, correspondence, reports, and other operational information.

But keeping records is not only an administrative task. Depending on the type of record, the organisation, the industry, and the applicable jurisdiction, the law may require certain records to be created, retained, protected, and made available when needed.

Why do businesses need to keep records?

Business records help demonstrate what happened, when it happened, and who was involved.

Good records can help an organisation:

Demonstrate compliance with legal and regulatory obligations
Support tax, accounting, and financial reporting
Confirm contractual rights and obligations
Preserve evidence of approvals and business decisions
Respond to audits, investigations, or regulatory requests
Resolve disputes
Protect the organisation from unsupported claims
Support continuity when employees or advisers change
Retrieve important information efficiently

Records may be needed long after the original transaction, decision, or communication has taken place.

Is there one legal retention period for all records?

No. There is usually no single retention period that applies to every business record.

The appropriate retention period may depend on:

The type of record
The organisation’s activities
The industry in which it operates
The applicable jurisdiction
Tax and accounting requirements
Employment and workplace obligations
Corporate and governance requirements
Contractual obligations
Regulatory requirements
Pending or anticipated disputes
Data-protection and privacy obligations
The organisation’s own approved retention policy

For this reason, businesses should not apply one blanket retention period to every document. Different categories of records may require different retention rules.

What types of records may need to be retained?

Corporate and governance records

These may include:

Board resolutions
Shareholder or member resolutions
Meeting minutes
Registers
Corporate approvals
Governance correspondence
Constitutional and organisational documents
Records of significant business decisions

These records may help demonstrate how the organisation was authorised to act and how important decisions were made.

Accounting and financial records

These may include:

Invoices
Receipts
Payment records
Expense records
Purchase documents
Financial statements
Bank records
Payroll-related records
Supporting records for financial transactions

Financial records may be required to support accounting, tax, audit, reporting, or regulatory processes.

Contracts and commercial records

These may include:

Customer contracts
Supplier agreements
Leases
Service agreements
Statements of work
Purchase orders
Amendments
Renewals
Notices
Related correspondence

Businesses may need to retain these records for as long as the agreement is active and for an appropriate period afterwards, particularly where rights, obligations, warranties, claims, or disputes may continue.

Employment records

These may include:

Employment agreements
Personnel records
Policies and acknowledgements
Leave and attendance records
Performance records
Disciplinary records
Payroll-related documents
Workplace incident records
Termination records

Employment records may be subject to specific legal, regulatory, privacy, and workplace requirements.

Tax and compliance records

These may include:

Tax filings
Tax calculations
Supporting invoices and receipts
Regulatory submissions
Licences and permits
Compliance reports
Audit correspondence
Risk assessments
Internal compliance reviews

The required retention period may depend on the relevant tax or regulatory obligation.

Operational records

These may include:

Policies and procedures
Reports
Project documents
Meeting records
Client communications
Supplier communications
Internal instructions
Approvals
Technical specifications
Business continuity records

Operational records help preserve organisational knowledge and support consistency, accountability, and continuity.

What does the law expect from retained records?

Legal requirements may differ, but a proper record keeping system should generally help an organisation ensure that records are:

Accurate

The record should reflect the relevant transaction, communication, decision, or event accurately.

Reliable

The organisation should be able to explain how the record was created, received, approved, or maintained.

Complete

Important supporting information should not be separated from the main record without a clear reason.

Accessible

Authorised people should be able to retrieve the record when it is needed.

Protected

Records should be protected against unauthorised access, accidental loss, inappropriate alteration, and destruction.

Traceable

The organisation should be able to identify relevant activity, such as uploads, changes, approvals, sharing, or signing events.

Understandable

A record should retain enough context to show what it relates to, who was involved, and why it matters.

Retained for an appropriate period

Records should be kept for as long as required by law, contract, business need, dispute risk, or an approved retention policy.

Does a record have to be kept in paper form?

Not necessarily. Many organisations create, receive, store, and manage records electronically.

However, an electronic record should remain accessible and capable of being used for future reference. The organisation should also consider whether it can demonstrate:

When the record was created or received
Whether it has been changed
Who had access to it
Whether approvals were given
Whether signatures were requested or completed
What supporting documents relate to it
How the record was stored and protected

The legal acceptability of an electronic record may depend on the applicable law, the type of record, and the circumstances in which it is being used.

What is a legal hold?

A legal hold is a direction to preserve relevant records because litigation, an investigation, an audit, or another formal process is pending or reasonably anticipated.

When a legal hold applies, an organisation may need to suspend ordinary deletion or destruction processes for relevant records. This can include records that would otherwise be deleted under a routine retention schedule.

Relevant records may include:

Contracts
Emails and correspondence
Meeting records
Board resolutions
Policies
Reports
Invoices and receipts
Internal messages
Project documents
Supporting files

A retention policy should not be used to destroy records that must be preserved for a legal or regulatory matter.

What happens if records are not properly maintained?

Poor record keeping can create practical and legal risks, including:

Difficulty responding to audits or investigations
Missed deadlines
Inability to prove an approval or agreement
Disputes about the correct version of a document
Loss of important business knowledge
Unauthorised disclosure of sensitive information
Accidental destruction of relevant evidence
Delays in responding to customers, suppliers, regulators, or advisers
Reduced confidence in the organisation’s records

A missing, incomplete, or unreliable record may make it more difficult for an organisation to establish what happened.

How should a business create a records retention policy?

A records retention policy should be based on the organisation’s activities and legal obligations. It should identify:

The categories of records the organisation creates or receives
The person or team responsible for each category
The applicable retention period or trigger
Where records should be stored
Who may access or manage them
How records should be protected
How legal holds will be implemented
When records may be securely deleted or destroyed
How exceptions and extensions will be approved
How the policy will be reviewed and updated

Retention periods should be determined with appropriate input from legal, tax, accounting, compliance, records-management, and information-security professionals where necessary.

How Lexkeep supports business record keeping

Lexkeep helps businesses organise and manage important records in a controlled workspace.

Depending on the applicable plan, Lexkeep may support:

Structured record organisation
Secure document storage
Controlled access
Version management
Event logs and audit trails
Record retrieval
Secure sharing
E-signature requests
Signing workflow tracking
Retention workflows
Legal holds
File integrity verification
Hash anchoring and File Integrity Certificates

Lexkeep can help an organisation maintain a clearer history of its records and related activity. It does not determine the retention period that applies to a particular record and does not replace legal, tax, accounting, compliance, or records-management professionals.

Conclusion

The legal requirement for keeping records depends on the type of record, the organisation, the industry, the applicable jurisdiction, and the circumstances in which the record may be needed.

Businesses should maintain records that are accurate, reliable, secure, accessible, and retrievable. They should also establish appropriate retention policies, preserve records subject to legal holds, and avoid deleting information that must be retained for legal, regulatory, contractual, or operational reasons.

A structured records-management system can help an organisation protect important information and demonstrate what happened when it matters.

This article provides general information only. It is not legal, tax, accounting, compliance, or records-management advice. Organisations should obtain advice on the specific retention obligations that apply to their activities and jurisdiction.