Saving Club Records

Joan M. Hudson on

Our Club incorporated in 1994 and we have all tax records
since the beginning. We need to purge some of our other
records. I keep a file for Monthly Reports, Attendance and
Deposits (Payments) TDAmeritrade Statements and Taxes. How
long is it necessary for us to keep the Monthly Reports,
Attendance and Deposits (copies of deposited checks), & TDA
Statements? I know they can be retrieved from the bivio
program.

Thanks, Joan Hudson
Power Players Investment Club, Inc.

Laurie Frederiksen on

Dear Joan,

There is no single answer to this question. It depends on the reliability and accuracy of your record keeping.

Your investment in your club is an investment in a capital asset. The general rule is to keep any records that substantiate the basis in that asset until you dispose of it. In the case of a club that would be when it disbanded. Everything in your clubs accounting history is still impacting your current accounting.

Based on issues we deal with with clubs fairly regularly, I wouldn't be too quick to dispose of historical records. We find issues often where availability of historical information has turned out to be very valuable to help clubs sort through current issues.

If you have duplicate information, for example deposit records and also brokerage statements that show deposits, perhaps you can consolidate things a bit. You could also scan and store electronic versions of the papers in your files area in bivio.

Laurie Frederiksen
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On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 9:18 PM, Joan M. Hudson <joanharryhudson@att.net> wrote:

Our Club incorporated in 1994 and we have all tax records
since the beginning. We need to purge some of our other
records. I keep a file for Monthly Reports, Attendance and
Deposits (Payments) TDAmeritrade Statements and Taxes. How
long is it necessary for us to keep the Monthly Reports,
Attendance and Deposits (copies of deposited checks), & TDA
Statements? I know they can be retrieved from the bivio
program.

Thanks, Joan Hudson
Power Players Investment Club, Inc.

Mike Jones on

It seems to me that retaining old records should based on legal requirements or for the convenience of members in discussion.

Retaining copies of checks that have already been deposited and verified provides no value to a club, so I don't see any reason to save them. Attendance should be recorded in meeting minutes which should then be saved in Bivio for legal reasons but I question the value of retaining separate attendance records. We store our TDA statements in Bivio purely for convenience but since TDA stores them for us, it is not at all necessary. We save tax returns for obvious reasons

I have made it a practice to save all files onto a CD every few years and provide copies to all members. Then we clean up convenience copies and streamline our record-keeping.

Mike Jones

Wall$treet Wannabees

From: Joan M. Hudson <joanharryhudson@att.net>
To: club_cafe@bivio.com
Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2015 9:18 PM
Subject: [club_cafe] Saving Club Records

Our Club incorporated in 1994 and we have all tax records
since the beginning. We need to purge some of our other
records. I keep a file for Monthly Reports, Attendance and
Deposits (Payments) TDAmeritrade Statements and Taxes. How
long is it necessary for us to keep the Monthly Reports,
Attendance and Deposits (copies of deposited checks), & TDA
Statements? I know they can be retrieved from the bivio
program.

Thanks, Joan Hudson
Power Players Investment Club, Inc.