What Is a Document Retention Schedule (TRD) and How to Build One
A retention schedule isn't a list of time periods copied from the internet — it's an instrument that describes, series by series, what your company actually produces and how long each thing must be kept. How to build a real one.
Searching "document retention periods" online turns up generic tables promising to solve the problem in a spreadsheet. The catch is that a real Document Retention Schedule (TRD, its Spanish acronym under Colombian archival practice) isn't a universal list of time periods — it's an instrument built on an organization's actual structure: which document series it produces, in which department, and under what criteria each one's retention period gets decided.
What a document series actually is
Before assigning any period, you have to define what's being classified. A document series is the set of documents produced repeatedly as the result of the same function — "service contracts," "payment vouchers," "committee minutes" are series; a single contract isn't, it's a document unit within the series.
The real first job of a retention schedule isn't deciding periods, it's building the classification scheme: identifying which series each department actually produces. Without that map first, any table of time periods ends up disconnected from what the company actually generates.
How each series' retention period gets assigned
Every series gets evaluated against three types of documentary value: administrative (is it still needed to operate?), legal or fiscal (which regulation requires keeping it, and for how long?), and historical or cultural (does it have value beyond its original purpose, even after the other two reasons no longer apply?). The final period for each series is almost always the longest of the three — not an average, not an estimate.
That's exactly why a retention schedule copied from another company doesn't work as-is: the mix of series a construction company produces isn't the same as a professional services firm's, even though both have "contracts" and "payment vouchers" somewhere in the list.
What happens once the period expires
A complete retention schedule doesn't just say how long to keep something — it also defines each series' final disposition once that period expires: permanent preservation (lasting historical value), destruction, selecting a representative sample, or migrating to a different medium. A table with periods but no final disposition is incomplete; "and then what?" is as much a part of the instrument as the number of years.
Why a spreadsheet isn't enough
A retention schedule in Excel correctly defines what should happen, but doesn't execute it. Someone still has to classify each real document into the right series, calculate its individual expiration date, and carry out final disposition on time — without a system to do that, the schedule turns into a reference document nobody checks day to day, and deadlines get met, or missed, by chance.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use another company's retention schedule in my sector as a starting point?
As a reference for which series tend to exist in your sector, it can help you avoid starting from zero. But it doesn't work as a final schedule without adapting it: the classification scheme has to reflect your organization's actual structure, and the periods have to respond to the regulations that specifically apply to your activity, not someone else's.
Who should approve the retention schedule inside a company?
For entities directly bound by Law 594, the Internal Archive Committee approves it. For a private company adopting one voluntarily without being required to, there's no formal requirement for who approves it — but it helps for it to be an explicit decision made by someone with the authority to enforce it, not a document one department puts together on its own without the rest of the organization backing it.