Records within an office fall into two categories - active or inactive - and these categories can be in paper or digital format.

 
Active records are documents which are still actively being used by an office. They are usually referenced frequently and conveniently located within the office.
 
Inactive records are documents that are no longer referenced on a regular basis and tend to be stored in a less accessible location. 

Records become eligible for disposition upon or after a specific triggering event / cut-off-date. When a record has reached its cut-off date, it is time to start monitoring the retention period for the records series. It is during this time records may be moved to inactive storage. To free up physical office space, inactive paper records may be moved to an approved off-site storage facility. To release electronic storage on desktop workstations, digital records may be moved to network drives.

Retention periods are located on the USG Records Retention Schedules webpage.

To Calculate Triggering Event / Cut-off-Date

To calculate a records destruction eligibility date use retention period + 1 day.

Examples of a Triggering Event or Cut-off-date are:

End of Fiscal Year - June 30th
For records filed by fiscal year, the cut-off-date is June 30th.
Records are eligible for destruction based on retention period + 1 day.

End of Calendar Year - December 31st
For records filed by calendar year, the cut-off-date is December 31st.
Records are eligible for destruction based on retention period + 1 day.

End of Semester (summer, fall, spring)
For records filed by semester, the cut-off-date is the last date + 1 day

Triggering Event
·        Date of Separation/Termination
·        Ending date of contract
·        Close date of a Hiring Search

Until Obsolete or Until Superseded 
For the retention period, until obsolete or superseded, records are eligible for disposition whenever they are no longer of any use or value to the university.

Remember, retention periods must be followed according to record series.