Legally scanning my documents

s4lvatore

Hi guys

I wanted to get round to scanning all my old documents (credit card, bank statements etc) and digitally storing them on my pc in order to get rid of loads of old paperwork I got.

Now what I was wondering was is it as straight forward as just scanning them in and saving them or are there other things I need to do in order to keep them legally admissable so to speak?

Any advice would be great. Also if I have posted this in the wrong section do feel free to move it.

DevilGoesDown2Bristol

The admissibility of most documents that matter in the event of a dispute is a tricky one. The plus point in your favour is that the companies issuing the documents are required - particularly with respect to financial transactions - to keep originals for various minimum periods, often as long as 7 years.

Companies House made this statement in relation to the way information they hold may be used in evidence:

"If a document is admissible in evidence, then an electronic image of that document may be treated as secondary evidence in the same manner as a photocopy or a microfiche image. It will be subject to the provisions regarding authentication contained in the Civil Evidence Act 1995 in England and Wales and the Civil Evidence Act (Scotland) 1988 in Scotland."

If you're really concerned, you could check out the British Standard BS 10008:2008 "Evidential weight and legal admissibility of electronic information". I doubt you're concerned enough to buy it though... it's £100 to non-members!

s4lvatore

Thanks for the speedy reply.

Is it best to store as pdf or jpeg you think. Most of my documents will be from banks etc, although there are a few solicitors letters and stuff.

timbim_2

PDF every time.

DevilGoesDown2Bristol

I think that for most people, for most purposes, electronic storage of documents is adequate. Bear in mind that the evidence in a civil suit of any kind is admissible by agreement from both parties: or in other words, it'll only be thrown out for being an electronic copy if the other party in the dispute claim that it isn't genuine.

As for pdf or jpeg, unless you're thinking of digital watermarking the documents I don't believe the format will make a difference. Use your best judgement: if there's something really important that you think could possibly be the subject of a legal dispute, don't get rid of the originals. Otherwise, go ahead.

You might find this page useful; it contains a fair bit of information about the legally-mandated minimum periods for document retention, which will help give you an idea of how long various organisations are themselves required to keep original records.

Usually, it's the responsibility of the business or government department you're dealing with to produce original (or properly authenticated replica) documentation as required... but if you're running your own business you need to let the VAT man know what format you're keeping your records in. Even the Inland Revenue have finally caught up with the notion that people store things in electronic format these days

esuhl

timbim wrote: »

PDF every time.

Why so? Is it because PDFs likely to take up less disk space... or support optical character recognition... or because PDF format is now an open standard...?

[Deleted User]

JPG is likely to take up less space (although, it'll be marginally less since I suspect PDFs store images as JPGs anyway)

I've used Microsoft OneNote in the past for document storage. It automatically OCRs them and makes them searchable - sadly it's a pain to put lots of documents in bulk, so i've resorted to storing them in Google Picasa (i can always port them over to OneNote as images if I want)

It's worth remembering that it is easy to turn a JPG into a PDF, but hard to do the reverse

isofa

There seems to be little point to storing a saved image as a PDF file, as it'll be bigger than the original JPEG, and you are just wrapping one around the other.

PDFs should be used for workflow from creation applications (DTP, illustration etc), in this way they are highly efficient and used nowadays for computer-to-print as well as for local low-res client side versions. But embedding as scan as a PDF - I can't see the point, as it's not OCRed, not searchable nor editable.

It's very different to having the original (such as e-bills) delivered as PDF, as these are output from the master as a PDF which is editable and efficient (as above).

PDFs and JPEGs are likely to be around for many years.

s4lvatore

but if I were to make pdf doc could i not keep adding the following months statement onto them?

s4lvatore

s4lvatore wrote: »

but if I were to make pdf doc could i not keep adding the following months statement onto them?

on second thoughts I don't think it is possible

Moneymaker

s4lvatore wrote: »

but if I were to make pdf doc could i not keep adding the following months statement onto them?

Yes, Adobe acrobat lets you add or insert pages.
It can also extract JPEGs.
I do both, frequently.
Virtually all my documents are stored as PDF because it's a common standard that is easily read by MacOSX, Windoze etc.