I am the treasurer of an online investment club in it's
second year. Because we have members in multiple states I
put almost everything online so that any member can look and
see everything that is gong on. All of our communitcation
is through our Bivio address which is how we keep a record.
I do keep a hard copy of any signed paperwork, tax returns,
broker statement, and such. Before each online meeting I
email everyone the Bivio reports. Should I make a hard copy
of the monthly reports and store them with the monthly
broker statements or should I just keep the end of year one?
As for voting, we each send out our votes thru email. Do I
need to write down and keep a hard copy even though we have
the votes online?

Thanks,
John Rice
ABODI Investment Club

On 11/29/09, John Rice wrote:
> email everyone the Bivio reports. Should I make a hard copy
> of the monthly reports and store them with the monthly
> broker statements or should I just keep the end of year one?
> As for voting, we each send out our votes thru email. Do I
> need to write down and keep a hard copy even though we have
> the votes online?

I would like to commend your diligence. It sounds like you are doing
great things, and it also sounds like you have a successful club.

Many businesses have gone completely digital. Paper is, well, paper,
and it burns, molds, decays, etc. Businesses have begun to realize
this, and the fact is that you can store the entire history of most
companies' financial records on a USB memory stick. The only thing
you have to worry about is backups.

Since you are an online club, you can share your records over the
internet with your members. Each of you could keep an archive on CD.
Just burn a CD every quarter, and put it somewhere safe. If three of
you have archives, in three different locations, you are doing better
than most businesses.

As to bivio.com records, I don't think you need to save the monthly
reports. You could save reports to PDF quarterly. That would be good
enough to protect you as treasurer in the event of a legal dispute, I
would think. I'm not a lawyer, just my personal rule of thumb.

As for me, all my financial records are scanned and (except important
contracts) shredded. We save a PDF directly of most of our
bills. This includes my personal and my businesses. It's very
convenient,because I can get at the records from anywhere there's an
Internet connection, which means just about anywhere nowadays.

Thanks for being a long-time bivio user. We greatly appreciate your
trust in us, and we hope that you will be a customer for many, many
more years!

Cheers,
Rob

Disclaimer: statements are opinions expressed by bivio Customer
Support and are not official statements from the IRS. These
statements are not intended to replace professional tax or
accounting advice. When in doubt, follow the advice of your
local tax advisor or accountant who is familiar with your
particular circumstances.