QualifyDataQualifyDataWhen a company closes, its records do not disappear. The duty to keep them runs for years after the doors shut — tax records, payroll records, contracts, customer files — sitting in cloud accounts, old servers, and storage that somebody is still paying for. When the required keeping period finally ends, the records can be destroyed. And before any of that happens, there is an option most owners never hear about: licensing a cleaned copy of those records to AI companies, while they still exist.
Closing a business settles almost everything. The equipment is sold, the lease ends, the final tax return gets filed. The records are the one thing that does not settle. The law and your old contracts expect them kept — often for years — and keeping them costs money every month for a company that no longer exists.
This page walks through what actually happens to those records: how long they have to be kept, who is responsible for them, what the keeping costs, what happens if the accounts they live in lapse — and the newer option, licensing them, that turns a carrying cost into a final check. It is general information, not legal advice. Your own attorney or accountant is the one who can tell you what applies to your company.
Five minutes. See if your archive qualifies.No cost. No commitment. The check starts with a few questions about the company as it was when it was running.
Longer than most owners expect. There is no single deadline — the keeping period depends on the kind of record, the state the company operated in, and the industry it was in. Tax and employment records commonly have to be kept for years after the final return. Contracts usually have to be kept through their term and for a period after. Regulated fields — healthcare, law, finance — often carry longer requirements, and some company records, like formation and dissolution papers, are commonly kept permanently.
The table below shows the ranges owners are commonly given. Treat it as a starting point for a conversation with your attorney or accountant, not as your answer — your actual periods depend on your state, your industry, and your situation, and destroying records too early can create real problems.
| Record type | Commonly kept | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Tax returns and supporting records | Often 3 to 7 years | Returns can be examined after filing, and the supporting papers are what prove them. |
| Payroll and employment tax records | Often at least 4 years | Wage and tax questions can surface long after the last paycheck. |
| Personnel files | Commonly 1 to 7 years, by record | Different parts of a file — hiring, pay, discipline, medical — can carry different periods. |
| Contracts and leases | Through the term, plus several years | A closed deal can still be disputed while the window to bring a claim is open. |
| Customer and client files | Varies widely by industry | Regulated fields often require longer keeping than general business files. |
| Formation and dissolution records | Often permanently | These are the proof the company existed, and of who owned it and closed it. |
General information only. These are typical ranges, not rules for your company. Retention periods vary by state, by industry, and by the record itself. Confirm your periods with your attorney or accountant before destroying anything.
One practical point hides inside those ranges: the clock runs from the event — the final return, the last paycheck, the end of the contract — not from the day you feel finished with the business. Owners who guess at the date and shred early are the ones who get hurt. Owners who keep everything forever pay for storage they no longer need. The right move is boring: get your periods confirmed in writing, keep to them, and know the date on which each set of records is free and clear.
Usually, the same people who were responsible before the doors closed. Closing the business does not transfer the duty to somebody else — it follows the company's records to whoever holds them.
In practice, that is one of a short list. If you owned the company and closed it yourself, the records and the duty are generally yours. If the company was sold before it closed, the buyer may hold them under the sale agreement. If the owner died, the estate or a successor may be the keeper. If the company went through a formal wind-down or a court process, a trustee or another appointed party may hold them. And in fields like medicine and dentistry, records are often handed to a professional custodian — a service paid to store the charts and answer requests for them during the required period.
Whoever it is, two things are true. First, the keeper's job is safekeeping: store the records, produce them if a former customer, patient, employee, or authority legitimately asks, and do not destroy them before their period runs out. Second, if you are not sure the records are yours to make decisions about, that is a question for your attorney — and it gets answered before anything is signed, moved, or destroyed. On our closed companies page we cover who can sign for a closed company, and the same rule applies throughout: authority gets confirmed first, in writing.
More than zero, every month, for years — and the bills are easy to stop noticing because each one is small. The records of a modern company live in paid places: the email host still billing per mailbox, the CRM subscription kept alive because the customer history is inside it, the cloud storage plan, the bookkeeping software, the chat tool nobody logs into anymore. Paper records have their own version of the same bill — a storage unit, an office corner that cannot be given up, or a custodian's monthly charge in a regulated field.
Add your own version of that list up over the keeping periods in the table above. For many closed companies, the honest total is years of payments to store records for a business that will never use them again. That is the cost of doing the duty correctly, and most owners just pay it.
It is worth seeing that line for what it is: you are paying to store an asset. The records are not scrap. They are the working history of a real business — how customers were won, how jobs were priced, how problems got solved — and that history now has buyers. Later on this page we explain the licensing option. The plain version is that the archive you are paying to keep can pay you instead, and once it has, the accounts can be cancelled with a clear head.
Five minutes. See if your archive qualifies.The records go with them. This is the one deadline in the whole wind-down that nobody sends you a letter about. Cloud accounts do not stay open out of respect for your retention duties. When a subscription lapses, a card on file dies, or a former employee's login is the only key and it gets closed, the provider eventually deletes what was inside — email history, files, the CRM, all of it. The same thing happens at the other end of the period: custodians and storage services destroy records when the required keeping period runs out, because that is what they were hired to do.
Either way, once the records are gone, every option that depended on them is gone too. You cannot produce them if they are legitimately requested, and you cannot license them. So the order of operations matters more than the timing: decide what happens to the records before you cancel the accounts they live in. If licensing is even a maybe, run the check while the accounts are still open. It takes five minutes, and it is the only step that cannot be done later.
Yes — licensing is the newer option, and it is the one most owners close a company without ever hearing about. AI developers pay to see how real work moved through real businesses, because that is what they train their systems on. They license a cleaned copy of a company's records — with names and identifiers taken out — for a set term. You keep your originals. It is a license, not a sale, and it does not shorten or replace your retention duties: you keep the originals for as long as you are required to, exactly as before.
A closed company is not sized by what it is today. It is measured as it was at its peak, in its final stretch of real operation: how many people worked at desks, how many years of records built up, and how many different systems the work ran through. The general shape of a fit is a business that ran 3 or more years with 20 or more desk staff. In healthcare and dental, law, accounting and tax, and finance, as few as 10 desk staff can be enough. The AI companies make the final call on fit.
Published deals, and buyer ranges shown at the sizes we qualify — examples of what archives have sold for, not a promise of what yours is worth. Your number only exists as a written offer after the intake call.
How the licensing itself works is plain. There is a 30-minute intro call. If you want to go further, you sign a services agreement that lets us represent the archive — it does not commit you to a deal. Then a 60-to-90-minute intake call covers counts and sizes only, system by system: how far back, how much. Nobody looks at your records, and nobody gets a login. That list goes out through our broker network to 15 AI companies, they bid, and we submit the best offer to you in writing. If you accept, you sign the license directly with the AI company, your team exports a copy — typically 5 to 10 business days, with help through every step — the buyer reviews it over about 30 days, and you are paid. From signing to payment is typically 90 to 120 days. We never touch or access your data at any point — your records go straight from your systems to the AI company you sign with.
Five minutes. See if your archive qualifies.The estimator asks about the company as it was — desk staff at peak, years of records, the systems it ran on.
The person or entity that holds authority over the company's records. For most closed companies that is the former owner. Where the company was sold before it closed, it may be the buyer under the sale agreement. Where an owner has died, it may be the estate or a successor. Where the company went through a formal wind-down or a court process, it may be a trustee or another appointed party. The signer is whoever can lawfully say yes on the company's behalf — and for the records of a practice, sometimes a custodian holds the files while the authority to license them stays with the owner or the estate.
We do not guess at this, and you should not either. Before anything is signed, your attorney confirms who holds the authority in your case. That confirmation is a normal early step in the process, and it protects everyone — you, us, and the buyer. If it turns out the authority is not yours, that is the answer, and the process stops there with nothing owed on either side.
Four things, in this order. None of them commits you to anything, and the first three are worth doing even if you never license a single record.
Every account and storage place the records live in: email host, CRM, cloud storage, bookkeeping, chat, servers, boxes, custodians. Note what years each one covers.
Have your attorney or accountant confirm, in writing, how long each set of records must be kept. That letter runs the rest of the wind-down.
Keep the accounts alive until you have decided what happens to the records inside them. A lapsed account deletes its own contents, and that decision cannot be undone.
See whether the archive qualifies for licensing while it still exists. If it does, the intro call comes next — and the process ends with a written offer you can accept or walk away from.
If your company is closed and you want the short version of the licensing side, our closed companies page covers it. If it is still operating, start from the home page instead.
It depends on the kind of record, your state, and your industry. Tax and payroll records commonly run several years — often 3 to 7 years for tax records, and often at least 4 years for payroll records. Contracts generally run through their term plus several years, and some company records are kept permanently. These are typical ranges, not your answer: have your attorney or accountant confirm the periods that apply to your company before destroying anything.
Not safely. The duty to keep records survives the closing, and former customers, patients, employees, and tax authorities can legitimately need them afterward. Deleting early can create problems that outlast the business. The orderly path is to confirm your keeping periods, keep the records until they run out, and destroy them on schedule — and if you license them, you still keep your originals for the full period.
The records belong to the company, and control of them follows whoever holds authority over what is left of the company — usually the former owner, and in other cases a buyer, an estate or successor, or a trustee from a formal wind-down. If the records sit with a custodian, the custodian is storing them; the authority over them usually stays with the owner or the estate. Your attorney confirms who holds it in your case.
The custodian stores them for the required period and answers legitimate requests for them — from former patients or clients, and from the owner or whoever holds authority. When the keeping period runs out, custodians destroy records on schedule, because that is part of what they are hired to do. If you are considering licensing records that sit with a custodian, decide before that destruction date arrives.
Yes. A closed company's archive is measured as it was at its peak — the desk staff it had, the years of records it built, the systems it ran on. AI companies license a cleaned copy of those records for training, you keep your originals, and your retention duties stay exactly as they were. The general fit is 3 or more years of operation and 20 or more desk staff at peak, or as few as 10 in healthcare and dental, law, accounting and tax, and finance.
While the records are in them, yes — the accounts have to stay open for the records to exist. That is exactly why the order matters: license first, cancel after. Running the five-minute check now, while everything is still in place, is what keeps the option open. Once an account lapses and its contents are deleted, there is nothing left to license.
Nothing. Your business never pays anything, at any step. The check is a few questions, the intro call is a conversation, and the first number you ever see is a written offer you can accept or decline.
We never touch or access your data. Not during the intake, not during the export, not ever. Your records go straight from your systems to the AI company you sign with — we are never in that chain. Your business never pays anything.
Last updated November 5, 2026.