Records Management Program at MIT
Institute Archives and Special Collections
Departments, Laboratories, and Centers: How Long to Keep Financial Records
About Financial Records | Record-keeping practices | About the Retention Schedule
Retention Schedule for Department, Laboratory, and Center Financial Records
| Record | Description | Local Retention |
Location of Official Copy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accounting Documents | Prior to implementation of FRC, January 2001: |
Current fiscal year plus 4 years. |
Controller's Accounting Office |
| After January 2001: Monthly Review Sign-off Form |
Retain reconciled, signed, and dated Monthly Review Sign-off Form, or other evidence of review, for current fiscal year plus 4 years. DTR's can be destroyed once verified. | Administrative and academic departments, laboratories, and centers | |
| Purchases of Materials and Services (including travel) | Supporting documentation including requisitions, purchase orders, vouchers, paid invoices, and travel financial documents. | For convenience, retain non-official copies until the detail transaction reports for the month have been reviewed, then destroy. | Controller's Accounting Office |
| Receiving Documents | Packing slips, credit card receipts, sole source justification documents, and other records reflecting the receipt and inspection of materials and supplies | Retain official copy for the current fiscal year plus 4 years, then destroy. | Administrative and academic departments, laboratories, and centers |
| Payroll Documents | DINDIs - Distributions by individuals, SANDIs - staff appointments and distributions, payroll vouchers, weekly time reports, and monthly staff research vacation reports | Verify amounts paid are accurate and retain until any needed corrections are processed, then destroy. | Payroll Office |
| DACCAs - Consolidated Salary Expense Analysis | Retain signed official copy of DACCA for the current fiscal year plus 4 years, then destroy. | Administrative and academic departments, laboratories, and centers | |
| Time sheets/Time cards (paper) | Retain for the current fiscal year plus 2 years, then destroy. | Administrative and academic departments, laboratories, and centers | |
| Credit card documents - MIT office as vendor | Customer credit card receipts - foreign sales |
Retain for the current fiscal year plus 7 years, then destroy. | Administrative office serving as vendor |
| Customer credit card receipts - domestic sales |
Retain for 18 months, then destroy. | ||
| Any correspondence which was not submitted to CAO with the deposit should be retained in the department. | Retain for current fiscal year plus 4 years, then destroy. |
About Financial Records [return to top]
Financial records, in paper or electronic form, are maintained by most academic and administrative offices at the Institute. Copies of the same record often exist in several locations, but not all copies need to be retained for the same length of time. The official copies of most financial records are maintained for extended periods of time to meet the legal and fiscal obligations of the Institute.
Strong financial accountability is a shared responsibility between central administration and individual departments, laboratories, and centers. However, as delineated in the records schedule, non-official copies of the records should be destroyed when report verification for the period has been completed.
Exception: Upon notification of legal process or upon learning of investigation or audit (formally or informally), the record retention schedule shall be suspended and no records related to subject action should be destroyed.
Should an office need a financial record after the office copy has been destroyed, the official copy of the record is available centrally in accordance with the Institute's overall retention period. Questions regarding the implementation of this schedule or destruction of records not included on the schedule should be directed to the Records Management Program.
Record-Keeping Practices [return to top]
Filing records: Do not mix financial records files in with other office files. Keep like groups of records together (see record descriptions in schedule) with a separate file within each group for each year. Annual review and destruction of files will then be easier to manage.
Records destruction: Certain types of financial records contain confidential data, e.g., payroll time card information, customer and staff credit card numbers. When their retention period ends, those records containing confidential data should be shredded.
About the Retention Schedule for Department, Laboratory, and Center Financial Records [return to top]
Important: Upon notification of legal process or upon learning of investigation or audit (formally or informally), the record retention schedule shall be suspended and no records related to subject action should be destroyed.
This schedule describes the financial records that are typically found in Institute offices. The official copy of a record is retained for the current year, plus four, if unspecified in this schedule.
Retention
periods are based upon the Federal Acquisition Regulations system (FAR).
They satisfy all MIT, state, and federal audit and record-keeping requirements
and complement the retention periods set for central administration
financial records, including the CAO Financial Review and Control Office
guidelines <http://web.mit.edu/cao/www/FRC/>.
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