How long do you retain your audits? We're wondering how long we should hang on to the paperwork for our daily audits - customers' accounts, teller details, NSFs, etc....

If you are referring to your documentation of file maintenance review, I don't believe there is any prescribed retention period. I would say keep them six months or a year.

(Your file maintenance reports themselves, however, should probably be kept longer. If you only have the printed report - not imaged - then I would keep it longer.)

Teller blotters I think are required to be kept two years in our state.

Thanks for the input!

If your external auditors rely, or review, your work you might want to keep them from audit to audit.

I like to keep mine at least 3 years. Enough time to get me through at least 2 exams. I'd also check your state's record retention requirements. Some areas are very specific.

It sounded to me like the poster was not asking about internal audit workpapers, but about documentation of daily processes such as file maintenance reviews and teller balancing.

Jokerman, I believe you are right. I read it too fast. However, examiners will ask for some of this stuff. I stick by my answer. Of course a lot of this is imaged for us, so I don't have to find a physical space for them.

In my opinion, for something like file maintenance review, as long as you have enough documentation to prove that you have a process in place, that's good enough for me. I am never going to test that a particular change was reviewed from two years ago.

Now, there may be an occassion where I want to know who made a change two years ago, and that's why I said that if the reports themselves weren't available other than in paper form, they should be retained longer.

Depeding on the specific area, your state banking code should have record retention requirements for these items and they are generally spelled out by function (reconciliations from due froms, etc.).