Choosing a retention setting that fits your firm's record-keeping policy.
Your retention setting decides how long Cartenda keeps what clients send you. Too short a window can lose records you are required to keep. This article gives general guidance on choosing one that fits your firm's record-keeping policy.
It is general guidance, not legal or compliance advice. Your compliance officer or consultant should decide your retention period, and your written policies should record it.
Most firms already have a books-and-records policy saying how long each kind of record must be kept. Choose your Cartenda setting to match it.
For SEC-registered investment advisers, Rule 204-2 under the Investment Advisers Act generally requires many books and records to be kept for five years from the end of the fiscal year in which the last entry was made. The first two of those years must be in an appropriate office of the adviser. Which client submissions count as required records depends on your business. State-registered advisers and firms with other obligations may have different or longer requirements.
That is why the Retention page offers 6 years: six years from a client's last reply is meant to cover that period. Check it against your own obligations before relying on it.
Whatever your kind of firm, choose a window at least as long as the longest rule that applies to what clients send you.
Only the workspace owner can change retention. Open Settings → Retention and choose under Keep documents for:
The window counts from each client's last reply, not from when a request was first sent. When it runs out, the documents and the answers that came with them are permanently deleted. This cannot be undone. Owners and admins get an email each week listing anything due to be deleted in the next two weeks.
If you shorten the window, the page tells you how many submissions are already older than the new limit. Those are deleted that night, without further warning.
Some things are kept whatever you choose: a record of what you asked each client for, what arrived, what you decided and why, and every document you gave a client and when they acknowledged it. The audit log is kept too. A signature is deleted along with the answers it signed.
A form a client started but never sent is deleted after 90 days, or sooner if your window is shorter. It was never sent to you, so it is not part of your records. Documents a client emails in reply to a request were sent to you, so they are kept on your window like the rest of your records.
Delete client details along with their documents decides whether a client's record goes when their last submission is deleted. It is off unless you turn it on, so you keep a history of who you have worked with, and the page suggests telling your clients if you rely on this. Turned on, past requests and file shares still keep the name and address they were sent to.
Keep indefinitely is the safer choice while you work out your policy, because nothing is lost by accident. The trade-off is that storage only grows, and storage past your allowance is billed (see Usage and allowances). Six years of records for forty clients is under five gigabytes. Once your policy is settled, a window makes sense: holding client data longer than you need carries its own risk.
If you want a second copy, take an export before anything is due for deletion. Owners and admins can open Settings → General and press Prepare an export under Export everything. This makes one download of everything in the workspace. See Exports and reports for smaller exports.
The audit log can be exported for an examiner at any time. See The audit log.
For more detail on the setting itself, see Retention.
Still stuck? Write to hello@cartenda.com and a person will answer.