What Documents Should Be Kept and Disposed of to Start the New Financial Year Back

Documents You Should Keep for the New Financial Year

There are many important documents you should keep for the new financial year. We understand that having paper stored in your home can be messy and leave you feeling cluttered and overwhelmed, but should the government need to access your financial information for any reason, it’s important you have the necessary documents to hand. You should keep these important documents safely stored for five years after filing your tax records.

First, keep receipts for everything you’ve purchased for your business. You should highlight the key products you bought from your business on the receipt to make any searches clear for you and those involved. You should also keep any utility and gas bills from the previous five years so that you can claim any tax deduction from these. Many services are now paperless so you may have this information on your e-mails or via your online account with them. If this information isn’t in a paper format, we advise that you store in a secure folder on your computer so you can readily access them.

Bank statements are also important to keep, although you might have online statements. This is a great way to cut down on paper and help you shift through any specific dates for key searches online. Another example of documents you should keep for the new financial year is copies of agreements with clients. This proves that you completed work for a company and should also state their details in the agreement so you match up these details to your tax return information.

Finally, another category of essential documents you should keep is any money you have received that isn’t classed as income. For example, this could include Gift Aid payments or any personal pension plans. If so, you should have the sufficient certificates to match up with these payments to prove the money sent to your bank account wasn’t income.

Documents to Dispose of for the New Financial Year

After the five years has passed for the above documents, you no longer need to have them as proof of payments and receipts. You should take into great consideration that any document that includes names, addresses or private information about clients or staff who you no longer have a business relationship with should be permanently destroyed. By not doing so, you’re at risk of a data breach.

You should also responsibly dispose of any expired insurance documents or those that no longer carry any cash value or hold little or no purchase to your finances. For example, if you’re recently changed your home insurance provider, you no longer need to keep your previous insurance information if this has surpassed the five years.

How We Can Help Properly Secure Your Documents

For the documents you should keep to start the new financial year, it might be challenging to find a suitable source of location to store them. At Secure Storage Services, we will place your important documents into an archive storage where your information is not available to the public. We know that security and privacy is of the upmost important in such cases, which is why we are protected from both unauthorised access and accidental damage. We take every step possible to keep your documents secure ready for when you next need to access them.

So, how do we achieve this exactly? Well, all of our storage facilities are equipped with both internal and external CCTV. The environment features an intruder alarm and fire detection system which is regularly and closely monitored 24 hours a day. Should there be anything suspicious happening in the storage facilities, a member of our security team will inspect the area and check accordingly.

Also, only authorised staff can physically access these high-security areas which makes it impossible for anyone else to obtain access. It’s important to us that as little people as possible handle any important documents our clients leave with us. This means we never outsource any duties to contracted staff so you only people working for Secure Storage Services can obtain any form of access. Even when entering our premises, there’s a monitored electric gate system to deter any thieves or anyone with bad intensions.

Disposing of Unimportant Documents

We mentioned earlier about which documents should be kept and disposed of to start the new financial year. This doesn’t mean simply throwing the documents into a bin or ripping up them up before doing so is an efficient way of destroying personal information.

At Secure Storage Service, we take care of properly destroying any legal documents and personal details you no longer need on your records. This might be in paper, discs, hard drives or more formats. During our initial conversation with you, we’ll discuss a fixed price for your shredding needs and pick up your documents in a secure vehicle to transport to our facility. You don’t need to organise the materials into a specific format, and we’ll even remove any post-it notes paperclips and other accessories attached to these files.

Once we receive the documents you need disposing at our Wirral depot, we will abide by the Environmental Agency requirements and British Standard BS 160 laws to ensure that we remove any confidentiality associated with your documents. Unlike home shredders, ours are optimised to meet all standard and regulations and do so in a safe and efficient manner. Using our own shredder as an alternative would be at time-consuming and finicky task.

If you’d like any more information about how we securely store or dispose of personal documentation for any purpose, give us a call on 0151 293 4000, and we’d be happy to discuss your options.