How to Archive Old Documents: 7 Steps to Secure Your Archives & Cut Costs

Is your archive out of control?

If you’re buried under piles of paper or lost in a maze of folders, you’re not alone. Tracking down what you need—or digging out a document for audit or compliance—feels impossible.

It’s frustrating when document chaos eats up your whole day and slows down the team every time someone needs old files.

The sheer scale of the problem is clear: Dataintelo reports the soaring USD 6.4 billion SaaS Archiving market in 2024 exists because everyone’s desperate for secure, scalable, and compliant archives. That shows just how many teams are fighting this same battle every single day.

But you can fix this—there are practical steps you can put in place to take control back, protect your data, and even cut long-term costs.

In this article, I’ll break down, step by step, how to archive old documents the right way—covering everything from assessing your current mess, setting real policies, tackling digitalization, to keeping your data secure and audit-ready.

By the end, you’ll know how to simplify your archives, reduce wasted time, boost compliance, and finally get your document chaos under control.

Ready to get started?

1. Assess Your Current Document Landscape

Your filing cabinets are costing you money.

Without knowing what documents you have, you’re paying for storage you don’t need and can’t find critical files when you need them.

This disorganization means hours are wasted searching for information, which ultimately slows your team’s productivity and can put you at a compliance risk.

Gartner’s research reveals that as much as 3% of a business’s revenue is wasted on paper and its associated processes. That’s a significant expense tied to outdated systems.

Understanding this hidden cost is the crucial first step toward building a better, more efficient archiving system.

So, let’s start with a document audit.

This initial assessment gives you a complete picture of your current records, helping you decide what to keep, digitize, or securely destroy.

A thorough inventory will reveal redundant and outdated files, allowing you to reclaim valuable office space and cut down on storage costs immediately.

You can start by categorizing documents by department, creation date, and type. This initial sort makes it easier to apply retention rules, which we’ll discuss when we talk about defining document retention policies.

This creates your foundation for efficient archiving.

By knowing exactly what you have, you can make informed decisions that save you both time and money down the line.

Curious which software can help? See the best document management software to streamline your HR files, cut storage costs, and boost compliance.

2. Define Document Retention Policies

Keeping every document forever isn’t an option.

Without a plan, you risk keeping files too long or deleting them too soon, inviting compliance headaches and unnecessary clutter.

This uncertainty puts your business at risk. Failing to produce a specific document during an audit can lead to hefty fines and legal trouble you want to avoid.

It also creates digital clutter and overflowing file cabinets, making it nearly impossible for your team to find what they need when they need it.

This increases storage costs and security risks, which is why a formal policy is non-negotiable before you archive anything.

This is where retention policies come in.

A document retention policy acts as your official rulebook, telling you how long to keep specific records before archiving them.

It clarifies what to save and what to toss, preventing accidental data loss and ensuring your team operates consistently.

This policy should define record types, state required retention periods, and outline the destruction process. This step is critical for learning how to archive old documents in a compliant way.

This creates a legally defensible framework.

With this policy, you can confidently reduce storage costs and mitigate the risk of keeping outdated, sensitive information.

3. Choose the Right Archiving Method

The wrong archiving method is costly.

You could be spending too much on storage or risking non-compliance by picking a system that doesn’t fit your specific needs.

This isn’t just about budget. It’s about the security of your data and the risk of critical information loss when you need it most for audits or decisions.

Even methods you might consider outdated have a place. Cloudian highlights that tape storage remains viable for many large organizations. This is because it’s a low-cost, high-capacity solution resistant to cyber threats.

Picking the wrong method leads to wasted resources and security gaps, but the right choice streamlines everything for you.

So, let’s find your right fit.

Choosing the right archiving method is about balancing accessibility, security, and cost to simplify how you archive old documents for the long term.

Consider how often you’ll need to access files. This decision directly impacts your day-to-day retrieval efficiency and overall costs.

You can weigh options like cloud storage for active archives or physical media for deep storage. I recommend you evaluate methods based on these three factors:

• Retrieval speed
• Security level
• Cost per gigabyte

It’s about making a strategic choice.

This ensures your documents are both safe and accessible when you need them, without overspending on features you don’t require.

4. Prepare Documents for Digitalization

The prep work can feel truly overwhelming.

Jumping into scanning without proper prep often leads to poor-quality, unsearchable digital files that are essentially useless for your team.

This disorganization wastes time and money on storage. A messy digitization process increases compliance risks, putting your entire archiving effort in jeopardy.

The financial impact is significant. MCCi found the cost is 206 times more for paper than digital files, showing the huge potential for savings.

Without a solid preparation strategy, you risk creating an equally costly and inefficient digital mess.

But preparing your files is simple enough.

This step ensures your digital transition is smooth and effective, directly supporting your goal to properly archive old documents for long-term use.

Start by sorting documents and removing staples. This simple task ensures clean scans and prevents damage to your scanning equipment.

Then you should organize documents into logical batches, like by department or date, before you begin scanning. This method simplifies indexing and retrieval later on, making it a key part of how to archive old documents.

It makes the entire process more manageable.

This methodical approach guarantees your new digital archive will be organized, searchable, and far more cost-effective from day one.

5. Implement Your Digital Archiving System

Ready to bring your new archive live?

This step is where plans meet reality, and the fear of disrupting daily operations can feel very real.

Without a clear strategy, you risk project delays, data loss, and frustrating user adoption issues, keeping your operational costs unnecessarily high.

PricewaterhouseCoopers found organizations can reduce storage costs by up to 60% with a DMS. That’s a significant saving you’re missing out on.

The challenge is getting there without the headaches. Let’s walk through a smooth implementation process.

Let’s make this implementation manageable.

Proper implementation turns your plan into a functional, cost-saving digital archive, finally solving the chaos of your old document management methods.

This involves installing the software, migrating initial data batches, and configuring user permissions and workflows to match your company’s needs.

I suggest a pilot program for one department first. This helps you work out kinks before archiving old documents from across the entire company.

This approach minimizes disruption and builds confidence.

A phased rollout ensures your new system is adopted successfully, delivering the security and efficiency you’ve been working towards.

Looking for an easier start? Check out the best HR document management software to see which solutions can help you streamline your archiving projects.

6. Secure Your Archived Data

Your archive is only as good as its security.

Without proper safeguards, your archived documents are vulnerable to unauthorized access, breaches, and data loss, creating significant compliance risks for your business.

Imagine sensitive client data or financial records falling into the wrong hands. The consequences could be devastating, costing you heavily in fines and damaging your company’s hard-earned reputation.

IBM’s 2023 Cost of Compliance Study reveals that organizations using continuous monitoring can detect compliance issues 71% faster. This proactive approach also slashes the costs of fixing problems when they arise.

Failing to secure your data isn’t just an oversight; it’s a major business liability. So, let’s make sure things are locked down.

Let’s make your digital archive a fortress.

Securing your archived data involves implementing robust controls that protect your information from both internal and external threats while you archive old documents.

This starts with strong access controls. You decide who can view, edit, or delete specific documents based on their role and responsibilities.

Encryption is also crucial, both for data in transit and at rest. When considering how to archive old documents, think about adding multi-factor authentication for an extra layer of defense.

These measures are non-negotiable for modern security.

This structured approach ensures your archives are not just stored, but are truly protected, giving you peace of mind and demonstrating due diligence.

7. Maintain and Audit Your Archives

Your digital archive is not a time capsule.

Simply archiving your documents isn’t enough; they require ongoing attention to remain useful and compliant for your business needs.

Without regular reviews, your archive becomes a digital landfill, creating significant compliance and security vulnerabilities that could lead to hefty fines or data breaches.

This makes finding the right information during an audit nearly impossible, wasting critical time when you need to act fast.

This clutter defeats the purpose of your archive, but there’s a straightforward way to keep it clean and effective.

Regular maintenance and audits are your solution.

Maintaining and auditing your archives ensures they remain compliant, secure, and valuable long after you’ve completed the initial setup process.

This involves creating a schedule for reviewing data, checking user permissions, and purging documents that have passed their retention period. It keeps your system clean and efficient.

A solid audit process involves verifying file integrity, updating metadata, and confirming access controls align with your current security policies. This is key for archiving your old documents effectively.

This ensures your archive remains trustworthy.

This proactive approach prevents your digital archive from becoming a liability and ensures it remains a valuable strategic asset for your business.

Conclusion

Archiving shouldn’t drain your whole week.

I know the mess—overflowing cabinets and lost files make every audit or deadline way more stressful than it should be.

But think about this: the market for SaaS archiving exploded to USD 6.4 billion in 2024 for a reason. That’s proof teams everywhere need secure, compliant, scalable archives just to survive. It’s not just you—your small business feels that pain, but so does every growing company out there.

There’s a better way.

Everything I shared here simplifies how you archive documents and helps you nail compliance.

Remember that story about trying to find a contract before an audit? The right steps for how to archive old documents mean you’ll never waste hours searching—or panic when the inspector calls!

Pick the step that fits your company best and try it this week.

You’ll free up time, reduce stress, and finally get control back.

Want more help transforming your archives? Check out best document management software—I rounded up top HR tools so you can compare and upgrade today!