When we negotiate leases, we often do so for long periods. Sometimes five or ten years or even longer. In many cases the contracts go into the safe, but often they are also scanned and stored. It is not uncommon that if you need the rental contract, it is nowhere to be found. The longer it has been, the more chance that it will disappear with a major clean-up. Or it was on a hard drive of a colleague who has not been working there for a few years. Today is world backup day. A good time to reflect on the storage of your rental data. What should you pay attention to?
There is a legal retention period of seven years for your financial administration. But you also have a retention obligation for other documents that have to do with the rights and obligations of your company. You must keep all data that is important for the levying of tax. Whether you keep these documents in an office filing cabinet or in the cloud, the legal retention period is always the same.
There is no statutory retention period for contracts. Still, it is important to keep a lease. Especially if the contract is still running and even if the term has expired, it is better to keep the contract for a few more years. You may just need it again. For example, if you still get into a dispute about the settlement of the service costs.
To have an accurate file, you should at least keep:
Fortunately, most leases stay in the filing cabinet, especially if they have been negotiated properly. But unfortunately, sometimes there are conflicts. If the dispute comes to court, the judge will not just look at the agreement. If it is unclear what the parties intended, it can come in handy if you also have the correspondence and notes from the negotiation phase. Not infrequently, this has been of decisive importance in a court decision. It is therefore certainly advisable to also keep (signed) rental proposals, correspondence and transaction reports in your file. You never know.
To ensure that you always have a good backup of your important data, it is advisable to have a digital backup. For the data that is in the cloud, the same regulations apply in terms of retention obligation. After all, your cloud backup is nothing more than the backup copy of your archive, which you can use in real time to consult data.
At Redept we use MyLeaseAdmin. A handy cloud solution in which we store all relevant rental documents. Clients of Redept can always consult this information online with their own account. New colleague? They have an immediate overview of the entire rental administration.
In addition, all relevant data is included. Should a lease be cancelled? You will receive an automated email on time to remind you of this. But also with rent adjustments, break options, et cetera. So two birds with one stone. Because nothing is as painful and expensive as forgetting a notice period.
If you do not have access to an expensive contract administration system, this is a good alternative. So no more Excel sheets of which no one knows the latest version. Or important data that is noted in Outlook. Because if that colleague leaves the company, you will also lose all important data with their agenda.
And best of all: MyLeaseAdmin is completely free for our customers.
