To Be Considered an Official Record, the Document Must Be What?

The answer

A document qualifies as an official record when it meets three core conditions:

1. It is made or received in the course of official business. The document must arise from the organization's actual functions and transactions — not from personal activity that merely happens to use company equipment.
2. It is in final or approved form. Drafts, working notes, and preliminary versions are generally nonrecords until they are finalized. An official record represents a completed, authoritative version.
3. It is retained as evidence. The organization keeps it as authentic proof of what was done, decided, or communicated. Records are often signed, sealed, dated, filed, or otherwise authenticated so their integrity can be trusted later.

In short, an official record is evidence of business activity kept in its final, authentic form. Ownership also matters: an official record belongs to the organization, not to the individual who created it.

Record vs. nonrecord

The cleanest way to master this topic is to contrast the two categories, which competitor pages rarely do side by side:

• Records — contracts, approved policies, meeting minutes, financial statements, signed correspondence, and completed forms. They document decisions and obligations and are governed by a retention schedule.
• Nonrecords — rough drafts, duplicate convenience copies, personal notes, blank forms, published reference materials, and routine "FYI" messages that carry no evidentiary value. These can usually be discarded when no longer useful.

The distinction is functional, not physical. A sticky note can be a record if it captures a binding decision, and a formal-looking memo can be a nonrecord if it is only an extra copy.

The bigger picture: authenticity, custody, and retention

What separates a true record from a mere document is reliability and authenticity — the assurance that the content is complete, unaltered, and traceable to its source. This is why signatures, seals, official letterhead, timestamps, and controlled filing systems matter: they let the organization prove the record is genuine.

Responsibility for records is usually shared. A designated records manager or records custodian maintains the filing systems and retention schedules, while every employee is responsible for correctly capturing and filing the records they create. Retention is governed by a schedule set by law, regulation, or organizational policy — some records are kept only a few years, others permanently, and only after the retention period expires (and no legal hold applies) may they be lawfully destroyed.

Why the tempting wrong answers fail

• "Must be printed on paper" is wrong — electronic records are fully valid official records.
• "Must be signed by a manager" is too narrow — a signature helps authenticity but is not required for every record type.
• "Must be a draft" is backward — drafts are the classic example of a nonrecord. The defining trait is being final, authentic, and retained as evidence of business.