Record retention
How long award records must be kept after closeout — generally three years from the final financial report, longer where litigation, an audit or a property disposition is unresolved. The clock starts at the report, not at the end of the work.
Part of the GrantTrove grant funding glossary — one entry for every field the catalogue stores.
Also called Records retention · Document retention
In detail
The distinction between the two start dates matters on an award whose final report is late: a report filed a year after the work ended pushes the retention period out by the same year.
Real estate and equipment records run on their own clock, tied to disposition rather than to the financial report. That is the part organisations most often get wrong when they clear out storage: the general award file and the property file do not expire together.
Against our own verification history
Retention is a duty on a recipient. What we keep is a different thing entirely: a stored snapshot of the source page behind each record, referenced by `source_snapshot_key`, with `last_verified_at` and `verify_method` saying when and how it was checked. That is our evidence for what a page said on a date, and it is not a compliance record for anyone else.
How GrantTrove stores it
- `source_snapshot_key` points at the captured source behind a record, so a claim on a page can be traced to the document it came from.
- Those snapshots are treated as evidence and are not deleted, which is why a figure that changed can be shown to have changed rather than merely asserted.
Common questions
When does the retention clock start?
Generally at the final financial report, not at the end of the project.
Do electronic records count?
Yes, if they are complete, readable and accessible.
Do you keep the source pages you read?
Yes. Each record references a stored snapshot of its source.