Records retention for HOAs

Minutes have to be kept forever. bookkeeping 4 years(IRS) WE KEPT 5 YEARS

ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS FROM DEVELOPER WE KEPT

we scanned everything but also kept original minutes on paper in a binder; someone could change a scanned copy.I

First you should check Florida statutes to see how much you actually need to retain. Condos and HOAs in your state sometimes have different requirements - hopefully one of our FL people will chime in.

In addition to USB drives, think about uploading to the cloud - USB drives are small and can get lost, stolen or damaged.

Scanning is also time-consuming. There are companies that will do this for you, but it will cost money. You may want to think about scanning only the most recent few years, or the most frequently requested items, and leaving the rest for now. As your HOA continues to conduct business, it's likely that your records are transitioning themselves to online storage, which means that aside from those records that must be retained permanently, this issue will solve itself.

More info here:

https://www.floridahoalawyerblog.com/ommunity-associations-official-records-require-effective-document-management-storage/
https://www.floridahoalawyerblog.com/responding-to-records-requests-by-florida-community-association-unit-owners/
https://www.hoaleader.com/public/What-HOA-Records-Should-You-Keep-What-Can-You-Toss.cfm

We have 20 bankers boxes in storage right now. Yes, scanning will cost money but we pay nearly $700 a year for the storage unit year after year, so I am willing to drop some coin to close out the storage unit.

I don't have time or interest to look into Florida statutes. I suppose we could have our association attorney just tell us how long we need to keep the documents? Or just scan everything.

I have looked a little into cloud storage but haven't found an optimal cloud solution. Do you know of one? I can look into it more.

I just got an estimate back from one firm. They want between $1200 and $3000 to scan and shred the documents. That works out to be a 3 to 5 year payback period, which is less than optimal.

What have others done? Do all HOAs have storage units filled with records? What are our most viable options?

In Florida the official records have to be maintained for 7 years. Bids must be retained for 7 years in a condo and 1 year in an HOA. I thought the condo statute had changed to require indefinite retention of records, but I just looked at FS 718 and it still says 7 years. Maybe I'm thinking about proposed changes to the statute over the last few years that were never enacted.

We did a big "purge and scan" project 3 years ago. Conceptually simple, it turned into a gigantic PITA. However, at the end of the day we had 5 or 6 bankers boxes full of paper scanned and OCR'ed onto a few CDs. The company we used was regional and when the boxes were ready, they came and picked them up. They then returned the burned CDs to us by mail. 7 years of records (documents) cost us $450 to have scanned, OCR'ed, and burned onto discs.

The scanned documents were only loosely categorized and labeled according to what "Box #" they were in when we sent them out. Anyone looking for anything would face a big task of manually searching through the .PDF files that were returned to us. It's as if all the paper documents were thrown up into the air (after removing the staples) and were picked up and stacked together without any real control over what document was what. Something meant to make the process of quickly locating official records from the past 7 years ended up being, like I said, a giant pain in the ***. There's no division of anything into any sort of meaningful categories.

Plan carefully if you're going to do it. Sort carefully, too, ahead of scanning. Have a game plan for what to do with the scanned files after you get them back.

Good grief ... I’m reading this thinking ... “why not just spend a few hours/days scanning and save everything, then scan each year from now on?”

I don’t get it ... sure, hard work, but ... am I missing something?

Have a scanning party? Break up the material, to be scanned into 10 units and get volunteers.

And, not being able to find an online cloud storage “system” that works? Seriously?

Good grief!

OK.

Well, good luck, then.

Sorry, but this a tough love situation ... lots of hard work is required to govern and maintain an HOA.

You must either accept the actions required, after evaluating options, and get moving. Or, just drop it and make do.

I’ve spent thousands of hours over the past 30 years doing all sorts of things for the HOAs where I’ve lived - from document administration, to road repairs. Two years ago I spent two weekends scanning docs, and putting them in our online archive - all accessible by owners. Hard work? Sure. But, had to be done. Also, saved to flash drives. CDs no longer a suitable, long term media. Hard drive with common interfaces would be another option.

Lots of work. Yep. Organization will help.

OMG ... I guess this means they aren’t gonna scan their docs?

It still is. However, occasionally some posters come here with a particular agenda and are upset when people don't give them the answers they're looking for. Or they want some magical way to cut through the hard work they don't want to do. Or they just want to vent but people respond with helpful suggestions rather than saying "oh you poor dear your HOA is SO TERRIBLE". This is definitely not a Let's Gripe About How Awful HOAs Are site.

Even experienced board members and property managers will learn new things by reading the various threads. I find most discussions to be very interesting, even those from states that do things differently from mine.