Self Storage in Oklahoma as a Solution for Business Records Storage

Ask any business office manager who is in charge of managing the office space how they feel about records keeping and they’ll likely tell you that paper records are an unfortunate burden around the office. Storing volumes of business records can be a waste of valuable office space, especially if the business is paying good money per square foot and the records storage space is otherwise unusable by any other revenue-generating aspect of the business. But, regrettably, storing business records is a compliance necessity for many types of businesses.

Company documents and records need to be stored for a variety of reasons. If the company is a partnership and needs to keep detailed records on meeting minutes, annual reports, and partnership agreements, those records need to be stored. Federal and State Tax records have strict retention periods and must be stored until they are no longer required by law. And, due to the need for Sarbanes Oxley or HIPAA compliance, some companies or organizations must record and store a variety of additional records for numbers of years. But what can an office manager do with all of these boxes and boxes of records that simply must be retained for long periods of time? Store them off site in a climate-controlled self-storage facility, of course!

Self storage facilities, especially those that offer climate-controlled, secure, interior storage units are an inexpensive solution for records keeping. You can rent a clean, dry self storage locker that’s well-lit and accessible 7 days a week for far less per square foot than you’d pay for an office space with on-site storage. And, given that the average business only requires access to their stored records a few times per year, there’s really very little reason to house stored business records on-site.

All you need to get your business records organized at a self-storage unit, such as those available from any of the eight Storage ‘R’ Us public storage locations in Oklahoma, are enough bankers boxes (extra strength, with handles, and space on one end to write contents details) and some shelving.

A tip for those who only store records for a specific number of years: you can mark the floor of your rented self-storage unit with tape, dividing it up into a desired number of sections that represent each year that the documents must be stored. So, if you’re using your business self storage space to house Federal and State Tax records for 4 years, you can move each group of incoming boxed records into position 1, and move each of the other groups of records into the next position. As those records occupying the 4th and final position are displaced, you can simply load them into the car and drive them to the shredder to be ground up and recycled. And if you have a large number of records to be shredded each year, you can often arrange for the shredder truck to meet you at the self storage facility and shred them on-site.

If you’re looking for a business records storage solution, feel free to stop by one of our Storage ‘R’ Us locations in Moore, Duncan, Lawton, Newcastle, Norman, or Chickasha, Oklahoma today, and see what our climate-controlled, secured self-storage facilities can do for your company.