Inactive Records
Records no longer needed for day-to-day business but still retained to meet retention requirements, usually moved to lower-cost storage until their disposition date.
Inactive records are records that are no longer referenced regularly in current business but must still be kept to satisfy legal, fiscal, or operational retention requirements. They’ve passed out of the active phase but haven’t yet reached disposition.
Because they’re rarely accessed, inactive records are typically moved out of prime office space into lower-cost storage — a records center, off-site facility, or archival/online tier — where they wait out the remainder of their retention period before being destroyed or transferred. (Some programs also recognize a semi-active middle stage.) Managing inactive records well is largely about cost: keeping required records cheaply and findably, without cluttering active systems.