Information is an important asset of our firm. These policies apply uniformly to documents retained in either paper or electronic format.  Our policy pertaining to the retention and destruction of email documents mirrors the policy for documents in other electronic or paper formats.

DOCUMENTS TO BE RETAINED

In relation to the professional services we provide, our policy is to retain documentation necessary to support our work (including opinions, resolution of differences, conclusions and research utilized in analysis), our correspondence with clients, our work product and items of continuing significance.  Drafts or other documents not utilized should not be retained.  Documents transmitted as attachments via email should be considered separately from the email messages to which they are attached.  Original client records will be returned to clients and will not be a part of our ongoing files.

PROCEDURES FOR DOCUMENT STORAGE

Documents attached to and transmitted by email should be stored in machine readable format in the firm’s electronic document management system in the appropriate client folders. Those email messages which contain information pertinent to the completion of a tax return or financial statement, such as a client’s responses to a list of questions, should be copied in PDF or other machine-readable format and included in the source documents folder.   Email messages not saved for filing in the correspondence file or other appropriate folder should be deleted.