bewaartermijnen
Bewaartermijnen are legally prescribed periods during which documents and data must be retained before they may be deleted or archived. They serve to ensure compliance with tax, accounting, legal, and administrative obligations, as well as to protect privacy and enable accountability. The exact term depends on the type of document and the regulation that applies. In the Netherlands, many financial and tax records must be kept for several years, with seven years being a common retention period for books, accounts and supporting documents calculated from the end of the calendar year to which they relate. Other documents may have shorter or longer terms depending on sector and purpose, such as employment records, contracts, or civil- and criminal-procedure materials. In addition to statutory obligations, privacy law requires organisations to retain personal data only as long as necessary for the purpose for which they were collected; archiving for historical or statistical purposes may permit longer retention under safeguards such as anonymization or consent.
To manage bewaartertermijnen, organisations typically develop retention schedules that classify records by type, assign a retention