Learn How Your Business Can Store Its Important Older Documents in an Efficient and Easy-to-Locate Way and Compliance Practices
An auditor asks for a contract signed five years ago, and no one knows which cabinet, drive, or inbox it lives in.
Between invoices, records, contracts, reports, letters, and other documents, your business needs a variety of paperwork to run efficiently. After you’ve finished working with these resources, you often can’t simply throw them away. You may need past documents for future reference, or you may be legally required to hang onto them. A smart document archiving strategy can keep this information secure and easily accessible for years to come.
Document archiving is all about creating a purposeful, systematic way to manage your old files. To make the most of your company’s valuable data, you may need to move beyond simple document storage. For that, you can invest in the right document archiving software and develop a few best practices.
Want to learn more about document security? Read our guide, Document Security: A Guide for Modern Businesses.
Key Takeaways
- A document archiving system gives inactive records a structured, searchable, long-term home, which everyday document storage does not.
- Archiving can improve document security, speed up retrieval, support legal compliance and audits, lower staffing and space costs, and protect records from loss.
- Look for indexing and full-text search, access controls with audit trails, retention rules, version control, and integrations with your scanners and software.
- Setup often starts with a records inventory and retention schedule, followed by scanning, indexing, and permissions.
- Our RICOH fi Series scanners and PaperStream Capture Pro software help you digitize paper records and route them into your archive.
Document Archiving vs. Document Storage
A document archiving system is a structured, long-term repository that indexes, protects, and retains inactive records so they stay searchable and support compliance.
When you’ve gathered the information you need from a document, you file it away in a specialized location. There, the document doesn’t get in the way of your day-to-day operations. However, it’s still easy to access in case you need it in the future.
While the two concepts are related, document archiving is not quite the same thing as document storage. Document storage refers to the everyday process of keeping documents in a safe location, whether that’s in a locked drawer or a password-protected digital folder.
Document archiving, on the other hand, is more structured. Instead of a locked drawer, you might use a set of alphabetized filing cabinets. Rather than poring through individual digital documents, you could run a text search in an organized database.
In other words, most businesses have a document storage solution by default. Creating a document archiving solution requires deliberate planning and specialized tools.
| Document Storage | Document Archiving | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Holds files in everyday use | Preserves inactive records for future reference |
| Organization | Set by each user, often inconsistent | Consistent naming, indexing, and folder rules |
| Search | Manual browsing of folders or drawers | Text and metadata search across the archive |
| Retention | Files kept or deleted ad hoc | Retention periods applied by record type |
| Compliance | May or may not meet regulations | Often requires designing to meet regulatory standards and legal requirements |
Document archiving also has legal implications. Some fields, such as healthcare and accounting, are subject to rules about how sensitive patient or financial records are stored and retained. For example, the IRS generally ties tax record retention to the period of limitations for each return. Document storage may or may not meet these standards, while a document archive is often built to meet them.
Did You Know?:Ricoh created a helpful list of modern business document management best practices, and put them into a free, easy-to-read ebook. Click here to learn more.
Benefits of a Document Archiving System
Safer Documents
In a physical office, locking files in dedicated, organized cabinets is much safer than jamming them all in a drawer. The same principle is true for digital files.
In traditional digital storage systems, employees can save files in any folder they like. That folder may or may not be password-protected, encrypted, or limited to the right people. It may not track when users open or change files. If your company ever suffers a data breach, the results could be disastrous.
A document archiving solution works differently. Good document management software can automatically route files to a secure folder protected by document encryption. Access can be limited to authorized users, and the software can record exactly what actions they took. This helps keep your files, and your employees, safe from potential data breaches.
Easier Access to Information
Traditional document storage leaves a lot of room for user error. Your staff could save documents in dozens of different locations with inconsistent names and file formats. Scanned documents might be raw image files or contain searchable text. Workers might miss vital information in one file or accidentally duplicate another.
Document archiving removes the guesswork from this process. An archival system can name files consistently and then direct them to specific folders. You can also convert scanned text into a digital format and add it to a searchable database while cutting down on transcription errors and duplicate files. With better-organized documents, your staff can more easily find the specific data they’re looking for.
Legal Compliance Practices
Managing digital data isn’t just about convenience. In certain industries and locations, it’s also a legal issue. Regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the United States and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe govern how organizations handle sensitive personal information, such as protected health information or personal data.
Guidelines like the Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) are federal technical guidelines for digitizing archival content, not privacy regulations. Learn how our scanners support these guidelines on our FADGI page.
Each regulation or guideline has its own specific set of standards. Under the HIPAA Security Rule, encryption is an addressable safeguard, and GDPR lists encryption among appropriate security measures. GDPR also limits how long personal data may be kept, while other rules set minimum retention periods, such as six years for required HIPAA security documentation.
Depending on its features and configuration, a document archiving system can help organizations implement certain retention, access-control, security, and audit requirements . That could help your company avoid a costly government sanction and help protect your customers from potential cyberattacks.
An archive can also make audits easier. Auditors often ask for expense receipts, invoices, payroll reports, and signed contracts on short notice. When those records are indexed and searchable, your team can pull them in minutes instead of digging through boxes. Audit trails can also show who accessed or changed each file. To go deeper on regulatory requirements, read our overview of document compliance.
Reduced Costs
One disadvantage of traditional document storage is that it requires a lot of manual input. Employees need time to transcribe, name, sort, monitor, and eventually delete files. That can be costly, especially if your staff needs to work overtime or you need to hire more hands. Furthermore, your staff may not be able to do more specialized tasks if they’re stuck doing simple clerical work.
Because document archiving can automate much of this work, it can help you save money on staffing costs. Your employees can also have more time to do the challenging, interesting work that you hired them for. When staff members are efficient, the overall business can be more efficient, too.
Paper archives also take up physical space. Filing cabinets, storage rooms, and offsite boxes all carry a cost, and so does the time spent copying and transporting documents. Digitizing older records and moving them into an archive can free up that space for more productive uses.
Protection From Loss and Damage
Paper records are vulnerable to fire, water damage, and misfiling. A single incident can destroy years of records that have no other copy. Digital archives can be backed up and stored in more than one location, so a damaged office or a misplaced folder doesn’t have to mean lost information. Many archiving tools also keep previous file versions, which can help you recover from accidental changes or deletions.
Did You Know?:Our complete guide to records management can walk you through every stage of the document life cycle. Learn about the tools you’ll need to get the job done, as well as the best practices you can implement to operate more efficiently.
Key Features of a Document Archiving System
The right document archiving system can make records easy to find, difficult to tamper with, and simple to retain on schedule. When you compare options, look for these capabilities:
- Indexing and full-text search: Optical character recognition (OCR) turns scanned pages into searchable text, and metadata such as date, client, or document type lets you filter results quickly.
- Access controls and audit trails: Role-based permissions limit who can view or edit each record, and activity logs can show who opened, changed, or shared a file. See our secure document management best practices for more on setting permissions.
- Retention and disposition rules: The system can flag or remove records when their retention period ends, which helps you avoid keeping data longer than regulations allow.
- Version control and tamper protection: Archived files can be locked against edits, or every change can be tracked, so you can identify which version is the original.
- Duplicate detection: Identifying redundant copies helps keep the archive clean and reduces storage needs.
- Integrations: Connections to your scanners, capture software, and document management system help documents move into the archive with fewer manual steps.
How to Set Up a Document Archiving System
Setting up a document archiving system often works best as a series of small, planned steps. Here is one process you can adapt to your organization:
- Inventory your records. List the document types you create and receive, where they live today, and who uses them. Then set a retention schedule for each type with input from your legal and accounting advisors.
- Choose your software. Select a document management system that supports the features above and fits the tools your teams already use.
- Scan and capture paper records. Digitize paper files with a high-speed desktop scanner such as our fi-8170 document scanner, and apply OCR so the text is searchable.
- Index and name files consistently. Use a standard naming convention and metadata fields so every record can be found the same way.
- Set access permissions. Give each role access to only the records it needs, and turn on activity logging.
- Review and dispose on schedule. Check the archive regularly, and securely dispose of records once their retention period ends, where appropriately configured,in accordance with the organization’s retention schedule, legal holds, and other preservation requirements.
Document Archiving Tools and Software
The document management software used for archiving is called a document management system (DMS). These programs can name, sort, and extract data from digital documents with less manual work.
There are many DMS options on the market, all with different pros and cons. We have partnered with a variety of DMS companies, including:
Each of these companies can provide tools for a comprehensive document archiving solution. If you need to begin this process by scanning and digitizing large quantities of paper records, consider a RICOH fi Series scanner.
Archive Your Documents With Our Capture Solutions
If your business is ready to implement a smart document archiving plan, we can help. Our PaperStream Capture Pro software helps you digitize documents, extract data, and send files to your existing systems. Book a document capture assessment to set up a consultation and find the right solution for your business.
Note: Information and external links are provided for your convenience and for educational purposes only, and shall not be construed, or relied upon, as legal or financial advice. PFU America, Inc. makes no representations about the contents, features, or specifications on such third-party sites, software, and/or offerings (collectively “Third-Party Offerings”) and shall not be responsible for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of such Third-Party Offerings. Please consult with a licensed professional regarding your specific situation as regulations may be subject to change.
