The beginning of a new year is a great time for deep cleaning at your home, so why not do the same at the workplace? Many think of dusting or organizing as part of a deep clean, but decluttering digitally is equally important. Businesses collect and store valuable customer data so the managing/purging of it securely is key to building and keeping a business’s trust.
Your business likely doesn’t need 15 years of old sales data and you may not look at your paid invoices from 10 years ago ever again. There are many different strategies and techniques for data purging, which is often contrasted with data deletion. Deletion is often seen as a temporary preference, whereas purging removes the data permanently and opens up memory or storage space for other uses.
How much data should you keep? That boils down to a business needs and personal preference.
Here are some suggestions:
- Accounts Receivable, Order & Sales History – 4 years
- Inventory History – 2 years
- Purchasing & Payables History – 4 years
- General Ledger History – 7 years
Create a backup of your business data and begin purging obsolete information. Once you are done removing the old history and reorganizing your data files, business systems should run smoother and more efficiently.
Review the Remove Unwanted History steps on integraLink or contact integraSoft 563-332-5030 with questions.