Document retention (auto-delete approved files)
WorkZerk keeps every document someone uploads to you until you delete it yourself. Document retention lets you set a window instead: once you have approved a file, WorkZerk deletes it after the period you choose. The record of the submission stays, including the expiry date and your approval. Only the file goes.
If you hold insurance certificates, licenses or right-to-work documents for people outside your organization, this is how you stop holding them indefinitely.
Retention covers files people send you through requests. A file you attach to a contact yourself is not affected.
What survives and what goes
The submission stays on the person's record with everything you rely on later:
- The expiry date they entered, so the expiring-document lists on the Requests screen are unaffected
- Who uploaded it and when, on their request history
- The file name and size
- Your approval and its date, or your rejection and the reason
What goes is the ability to open the document. In place of the file link, the row reads File deleted with the date, and notes that the expiry date and review are kept.
Before that, an approved or rejected file that is due to go shows Deleting and the date under View on its request row, so the deletion never comes as a surprise.
That distinction is the point. You are not deleting the record that you checked someone's insurance. You are deleting your copy of their certificate.
Setting it
Open Profile and find the Document retention card. Under Delete approved files, pick how long they are kept, then click Save:
- Keep files until you delete them, the default
- 7, 30, 90, 180 or 365 days after you approve them
- 30 days after the document expires
The last option is usually the better one. A certificate is worth holding while it is valid and worth nothing the day after, so counting from its expiry date keeps each document for exactly as long as it is useful. A one-year policy approved today is held for thirteen months. One that lapses next month is gone six weeks from now. A single fixed number cannot do both.
Until you save this card once, the Requests screen shows a line saying how many reviewed documents you are holding, with a link here. Saving any choice, including keeping files, removes it.
Seven days is the shortest window, deliberately. Approve is one click with no confirmation, so there has to be room to undo a mistake. It holds for the expiry-based option too: approve a certificate that lapsed months ago and you still get seven days, rather than losing the file that night.
Three rules to know first
An approved file is only deleted if an expiry date was captured. A document request only collects one when you tick Require expiry, as you create it or on the request row afterwards, or Ask for an expiry date on the ask in a request pack. Without a date the file is the only record of itself, so WorkZerk keeps it whatever this setting says. Turn that box on for the requests that matter, which is worth doing anyway: it is also what drives your expiry reminders. See asking for documents and info.
Rejected files go sooner. With retention on, a file you rejected is removed after 30 days, or your own window if that is shorter, whether or not it has an expiry date. The rejection and your reason stay on the record.
Files nobody has reviewed are never deleted. The clock only starts when you approve or reject. Undo an approval, or clear a rejection, and the scheduled deletion is called off.
It applies going forward
Every file carries the window it was reviewed under, so changing this setting affects your next approval and nothing before it.
Shortening it is therefore safe. Moving from 365 days to 7 does not clear out a year of certificates that afternoon. Those files keep the window they were approved under.
Turning it on today also does nothing to documents already in your account. Those stay until you remove them by hand.
What the other person sees
Whoever uploaded the file sees the same thing on their portal: the submission still listed, with its expiry date and its approved or rejected status, and a line saying the file was deleted on that date and that their submission is still recorded.
How long the file really exists
This is the question a client's compliance officer will ask, so the exact answer matters.
Files are removed in a clean-up that runs once a day, so a file goes from your account within a day of the end of its retention period. It is then fully purged from our storage within a further 30 days. That second window is a safeguard against a fault at our end, not a feature you can use: nothing inside WorkZerk restores a deleted file.
So the accurate total is your chosen window plus 30 days. Telling a client you hold their contractors' certificates for 90 days means they are gone from our systems within 120.
If you delete something you genuinely need and you are still inside that window, email [email protected]. Treat it as a last resort rather than an undo. It is a manual recovery, it is not guaranteed, and the seven-day minimum exists so that ordinary mistakes never reach it.
When to leave it off
Off is a reasonable answer.
Leave it off if your own insurer or a client contract requires you to retain contractor documents for a set period, which for public liability evidence often runs to several years. Leave it off if your industry has a statutory retention period. The longest window here is 365 days, so anything beyond a year means keeping files rather than setting a long window.
The useful question is not how long you should keep a document. It is who would ask you for one, and when. If nobody wants it after the certificate expires, retention is doing you a favor. If an insurer might want it after an incident three years ago, it is not.
Getting help
Email [email protected] if you are unsure which window suits your obligations, or if you need a deleted file recovered.