An old inbox, a shared folder and a former employee’s account can all contain personal data long after the immediate task has ended. A retention schedule helps a business decide what to keep, why and who will review it.
What the legal principle says
Article 6 of Albania’s Law No. 124/2024 requires storage to be limited to the period needed for the purpose, subject to the law’s qualifications. It does not provide one universal retention period for every business file. Sector, tax, employment and other requirements need separate review.
Start with record categories
Group records by business use rather than by application. A personnel file, a recruitment application, a customer invoice and a marketing contact list serve different purposes. Identify the owner, location and access for each category. Keep the inventory useful enough for staff to maintain.
Record the reason for the period
Create a schedule with the category, purpose, proposed period, event that starts the period and responsible owner. Add a column for the source or reasoning and unresolved questions. Ask counsel and the relevant business specialist to check the entries before treating them as an approved rule.
Choose a clear starting event
A period counted from an account closure is different from one counted from the last purchase. Tell the team which event applies and how it will be recorded. If the event cannot be reliably found, resolve that process problem before automating deletion.
Separate active use from restricted storage
A business may no longer need a document for daily work while a specific reason for preserving it remains under review. A practical response is to assess access separately: who still needs the file and for what task? Avoid leaving historical material available to every user by default.
Handle exceptions deliberately
When a dispute, request or investigation concerns a record, seek advice before applying routine deletion. Document the decision, its scope and the next review date. An exception should have an owner and a reason, rather than becoming an indefinite instruction to retain everything.
Check systems and suppliers
Ask how the proposed schedule affects email, shared drives, exports and backups. Identify what the business can delete directly and what needs supplier assistance. Record completion and limitations so the schedule describes the real operation.
A useful first step
Start with one record category, test the workflow and refine it before extending it across the company. Alba Legal can help review the proposed schedule alongside the relevant obligations and contracts. This is general information, not a determination of the period for a particular record.
Official source: Law No. 124/2024, Article 6.
