Why do you need to “document” everything, and what does that even mean?
Primarily, it means to have a written record as proof of something. for example, a contract. You engage another party to do something for you. You want to “document” the responsibilities of each party. What you expect them to do for you and what they expect you to do in return. Often, the contract is as simple as one party cutting the grass and the other cutting a check!
What about things that aren’t reduced to contractual language; that don’t necessarily need to be so formal? How can you prove a conversation? One option is to record the event in a contact management system like ACT!. I can record the gist of a conversation and hit “save” and my note will be time/date stamped. Is it as strong as contractual language? Of course not, but it does show what at least one party to the conversation believed the outcome to have been. The use of time/date stamping simply serves to reinforce the validity of the assertion. If one party can recall exactly when the conversation took place, it may bolster their side of the argument.
Next to a detailed contract, a note/email/text-message is the best documentation. As a rule, if I negotiate with, let’s say, a contractor to do work for me, and we already have an overall contract, I will follow-up any conversation with a confirming email. “Here is what I believe we decided to do. If your interpretation of the conversation is different, please let me know ASAP.” or words to that effect. The key is to have something in writing that you can refer to as the operational outline.
Recording the actual conversation works, too, and with many of today’s cell phones, it’s an easy function to access, but there are laws governing the recording of conversations. Be sure you know what they are, and if the recording is even admissible in court, if things get that far.
Another benefit to email is, at least with Outlook, you can receive a “receipt” from the system telling you, if nothing else, that the intended recipient has opened your message. That way, if the issue ever comes up, you can at least prove that the message was sent and received, even if you can’t prove that it was read and/or understood! At that point, it would be incumbent upon the recipient to let you know that there is a misunderstanding.
Of course text-messages must be saved in your phone or computer to be of value, and most systems have a way to get the message from the phone to another storage medium, so a backup file may be maintained for that correspondence, too. Otherwise, you may run the risk of accidental erasure, particularly on a cell phone.
Some banks and attorneys have told me that they don’t like to send confidential information via the internet, such as email, for fear that the confidentiality may be compromised, preferring to rely on a fax instead. Whereas an email goes out over the web and may be subject to interception, a fax goes from one machine to the other, via telephone lines. General broadcast versus point-to-point communication. Could a phone line be tapped and a fax intercepted? Sure. But there’s much less randomness to that method than broadcasting over the internet, especially if one party uses WiFi which broadcasts wirelessly, leaving the transmission open to interception.
Once you’ve committed your thoughts to writing, you need to save the document. What if you drop your laptop? What if your hard drive crashes? What if someone breaks into your office one night and steals all of your computers? First, of course, everything needs to be password protected. That way, even if someone steals the storage medium, they can’t erase or access your information. Next, all important information needs to be backed up and taken off-premises. Yes, you can use a fireproof safe on the premises, but if someone breaks in and steals the safe, too, you’re still in trouble.
The best backup methods, in my opinion are a combination of redundant copies (having the information on more than one hard drive), a portable storage device, such as an external hard drive, a flash drive; or even one of the off-premises storage services. So-called “cloud” storage.
Multiple copies protect you against a single hard drive crash. The off-premises storage protects you against things like fire or theft of the computers.
Back in the early 90′s when we first automated our insurance agency, we would do a daily, “end-of-day” backup tape, which was put into a fireproof safe the next morning. On Friday afternoon, my father would do an end-of-week backup, and take that tape home with him. And then we did an end-of-month backup, which went into a different fireproof safe. Personally, I don’t think that, in the event of a fire, the tapes would have been usable; recording tape being rather susceptible to heat, and the fireproof safe being probably 30 years old when we had it, but it was better than nothing.
Now the question becomes how long to retain the records. If you ask the IRS, they will give you one answer, and it will only pertain to your taxes. An attorney recently told me to just keep everything for ten years, and you should be safe. That seems to be the longest, reasonable expectation for record keeping.
The bottom line: Document your commitments, conversations, suggestions, via text, email or fax; retain the records with multiple copies, and get the backups away from the originals, preferably to a different location. It will seem like a lot of unnecessary work, until some requires you to provide the documentation!
