How to digitise company archives, from the first inventory to destroying the originals

Archive digitisation often starts with buying a scanner and asking one team to work through every cabinet. The usual result is thousands of PDFs with random names that are still hard to find, while nobody dares to throw away the paper. This guide sets out the steps in order. It starts with the inventory and sorting against the retention schedule, then covers scanning standards and metadata. The last steps deal with the legal side of transferring documents to other media and destroying the originals.

This guide is general information and is not legal advice. The rules can change and every company's situation differs, so confirm anything important with your lawyer or accountant.

Why digitise your archive

Search is the most common reason. With paper, only the person who knows the right cabinet can find a file. Once a file has been through OCR, anyone with access can search its content. The other reasons are just as practical. You can set access per document and keep backup copies in another location, storage space shrinks, and branch offices no longer have to request photocopies by courier.

Digitising does not tidy an archive by itself. If you scan a disorganised cabinet as it is, you get the same disorder in file form. That is why most of the work happens before the scanner is switched on.

Step 1: Take an inventory

Start by recording what you have. The inventory does not need to go down to single pages, and the box or folder level is usually enough.

• Where the archive sits, such as a central records room, divisional cabinets, a warehouse or a third party.
• The document types and the division that owns them.
• The range of years.
• The rough volume in boxes or shelf metres.
• The physical condition, such as fragile, mouldy or bound.
• How often the documents are still opened.

The inventory becomes the basis for the budget and the schedule. Documents that are opened often usually come first, while documents that are almost never touched can wait or may not need scanning at all.

Step 2: Sort against the retention schedule

Before scanning, match each group of documents against the company's retention schedule. Under UU 8/1997, the company keeps supporting finance data outside the bookkeeping evidence for as long as it needs it. Other documents, such as contracts and correspondence, are kept according to their continuing usefulness. Both go into a retention schedule set by a management decision. In practice, finance and tax records are kept for at least 10 years. If your company has no retention schedule yet, draw one up first with the help of the guide to how long to keep company documents.

Sorting puts each group of documents into one of four decisions.

Scanning documents that could already be destroyed only adds cost. Equally, do not throw documents away just because they are old, because destruction has its own procedure.

Step 3: Scanning standards

The resolution, format and OCR settings in this section come from common digitisation practice and are not legal requirements. Treat the figures as recommendations, and test them on samples of your own documents first.

• Resolution. 300 dpi is usually enough for normal-sized text and gives good OCR results. Go up to 400 to 600 dpi for small print, technical drawings or faded ink.
• Colour. Use colour or greyscale when a document carries stamps, seals or coloured signatures, because black-and-white mode can lose them. Black and white is fine for plain text and produces smaller files.
• Format. PDF/A is a version of PDF designed for long-term archiving, because the fonts and other elements it needs are stored inside the file. For an archive it is a safer choice than loose JPGs or ordinary PDFs.
• OCR. Run OCR so that the text inside each scan can be searched. If your archive is in Indonesian and English, make sure the OCR supports both languages, and check its output on samples that are hard to read.
• One document, one file. Do not merge a whole box into one PDF. A contract and its attachments should become one file of their own.

Physical preparation often takes longer than the scanning itself. Staples and clips come off, folded sheets are flattened and torn pages are repaired first. After that, run quality control by checking a sample from every batch for page count, legibility, page order and OCR output.

Step 4: Metadata and folder structure

A file without metadata can only be found through its content, which is not enough when you need "every vendor contract that ends this year". Agree on the minimum metadata before scanning starts.

The folder structure should follow functions or document types rather than the names of whoever holds a post today. A common pattern is division, then document type, then year, such as Legal / Vendor Contracts / 2019. Write the file naming convention into the SOP as well, for example 2019-03-12_CTR_Sample-Vendor_Warehouse-Lease.pdf, so that every scanning operator names files the same way.

Step 5: The legal side of transferring to other media

UU 8/1997 on Company Documents allows company documents to be transferred to microfilm or other media, which covers electronic media. The transfer can happen from the time the document is made or received. Several conditions apply.

• Legalisation with a berita acara. Every transfer must be legalised with a berita acara, a signed official record. It states the place and date, declares that the transferred copy matches the original, and carries the signature and name of the officer. In practice, attach a list of the documents transferred so that the scope of the record is clear.
• Evidence. The transferred documents and their printouts are recognised as valid evidence. The Electronic Information and Transactions Law separately supports electronic documents as evidence.
• Originals that must be kept. Management must consider whether the originals still need to be kept. Originals that have authentic evidentiary force and a continuing legal interest must be kept even after they have been scanned.

One point is unresolved. Article 10(1) of UU 8/1997 says the signed annual balance sheet and profit and loss statement must be made on paper. Other records may be made in other means. How this interacts with signing financial statements electronically is not settled. Do not assume that a fully paperless archive is always compliant, and check with your accountant before you destroy a paper balance sheet or profit and loss statement.

Step 6: Destroying originals by the rules

After a transfer, originals may be destroyed unless management decides otherwise, with the exception of the originals that must be kept as described above. Destruction still follows the general rules for destroying company documents.

• Finance records past their required retention period are destroyed by a management decision, and other documents follow the retention schedule.
• Every destruction is recorded in a berita acara.
• An officer who destroys documents too early, or destroys a document known to be still needed, is liable for the resulting losses.
• In practice, destruction should be suspended during a dispute or an audit, even if the retention period has ended.

A safe order starts with scanning and checking the results. Next, legalise the transfer with a berita acara and store the files in a system you can account for. The originals that may be destroyed come last. Do not destroy paper before the digital files are proven complete and readable.

Step 7: Run the project in phases

Digitisation projects that try to scan the whole archive at once tend to stall halfway. This order is easier to control.

1. Start with new documents. Set a start date, and from that date every incoming document is scanned and given metadata straight away. That stops the paper pile from growing.
2. Pilot one division. Choose a division whose archive is opened often, such as Legal or Procurement, and run every step above on part of its archive.
3. Review the pilot. Check scan quality, metadata completeness, the time per box and whether the team can actually find what it looks for. Fix the SOP before you scale up.
4. Work through the backlog in batches. Process older records by division or by year, and reconcile the file count against the inventory for every batch.
5. Legalise and destroy per batch. Prepare a transfer record for every batch, then propose destruction of the originals that may be destroyed under the retention schedule.

How Obscura helps

Obscura is a document management system, so it helps you store and manage the results of digitisation. Legalisation, the berita acara and decisions to destroy remain the responsibility of your company's management.

• Searchable scans. Scanned PDFs and image files go through Indonesian and English OCR, with per-page detection for mixed documents, and the extracted text is searchable straight away.
• Bulk upload. Many files can be uploaded at once with shared metadata. With the AI module, Obscura suggests a folder for every file in a batch, your team reviews the list, and nothing is filed until someone selects Create all.
• Document types and metadata. Document types, tags and Document IDs are configured to your organisation's rules, and you decide who can view and change each record.
• Retention. The retention catalogue is organised by document type, legal holds prevent deletion, and reminders appear for records that are due to be reviewed, destroyed or extended. See document control for the details.
• Migration in batches. Migrating an archive is project work that we agree with you. Structure, metadata, access, OCR results and file counts are checked on a sample first, and the migration then runs in batches with file counts reconciled before the cutover.

The capabilities available depend on the modules you choose, and the capabilities page lists them in detail.