# Records retention glossary

> The words you'll meet when you decide how long records stay and who can see them, each in a line or two, with what it will mean in folio.

Source: https://unforged.ai/folio/glossary

**Custodian**: The person who looks after a set of records day to day, and who'll be told in writing when a legal hold covers them.

**Disposal**: What will happen to a record at the end of its retention period: it's destroyed, returned or passed on. In folio, disposal will happen when a record's class ends, and each one will go in the ledger.

**Ledger**: In folio, the ledger will be the running history of your records: each filing, view, change, hold and disposal, with who did it and the reason given.

**Legal hold**: An instruction that will stop records being disposed of, by a schedule or by anyone, while a claim, an investigation or a request is open. In folio, releasing one will take two people.

**Limitation period**: The time someone has to bring a claim. In England and Wales it's six years from when the cause of action accrued for a claim in contract, under section 5 of the Limitation Act 1980.
Source: [Limitation Act 1980, section 5](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1980/58/section/5)

**Matter**: A piece of work a law firm does for a client, usually with its own number. In folio, everything on a matter will sit in one folder.

**Record**: A document you have to keep, together with what's known about it: when it was filed, its class and its history. In folio, the record will be what's kept, held and accounted for.

**Retention class**: In folio, a named rule for one kind of record: how long it will be kept, the date the period will count from, and whether it will be Retained or Locked.

**Retention period**: How long a record should stay before it goes, and the event the period counts from, such as the end of a tenancy or of a tax year.

**Retention schedule**: A written list of the kinds of record an organisation has, how long each should stay and what happens at the end. It's where your retention classes will come from.

**Subject access request**: A request from a person for a copy of the personal data you have about them, under Article 15 of UK GDPR.

**Time-stamp**: A time-stamp from an outside authority will show that a fingerprint of a file existed at a given moment. folio will time-stamp each receipt and the ledger, so the dates won't rest on our word.

**Write-once**: Locked records in folio will be write-once: nobody, including you and us, will be able to change or delete one before its retention ends. Retained records won't be, and that's the difference between the two.