If you think a fire can't happen to your business, think again. All it takes is some faulty wiring and a few moments of inattention for your business to go up in flames. Losing the site of your business can be devastating…but even more so, you'll lose the documents and software that made your business possible. If you lose your important business documents in a fire, the best that can happen is that your credit rating will be damaged. The worst that can happen is that you'll lose your business entirely—and many do.
If you aren't using a fire-resistant safe to store important documents, you're taking a gamble with your business. Fire-resistant safes are graded based on the amount of time they can protect your documents from fire—most provide 60 to 120 minutes of protection. Following are some crucial documents that you should take care to protect from fire.
Tax documents. How will you fare during tax time if all your financial records go up in smoke? Saving your tax documents in a fire-resistant safe is essential to the survival of your business after the fire.
Invoices. If you lost your paperwork in a fire, how would you know who owed you money? A fire can not only lose you money on future transactions—it can also make it impossible to collect fees for transactions in the recent past. A fire-resistant safe can protect your income in the event of a fire.
Financial records. Records of your payment of various debts. Documents that prove your business's income and credit. Accounting records for the past few years. You'll need a record of your business's financial footprints if you want to secure a loan to buy new buildings and equipment, or generally take your business to the next level. If you lose all the traces of your business's financial existence in a fire, you'll have trouble moving forward.
Contracts. Every business relies on contracts to keep operating legally, and to protect their rights in court. If you lose your contracts in a fire, it's only a matter of time before you'll suffer the loss. Don't put yourself in a position where you have to go back to your clients, your landlord, or anyone else you have a contract with to ask for a copy—it could put you at a disadvantage.
Employee salary and debt records. Who do you owe money to? After a fire, these people, understandably, get a bit nervous that you won't be able to furnish the money you owe—and they could come to collect. If there's a dispute, you'll need to furnish the documents that prove your side. If you lose all your documents in a fire, you'll have a harder time winning in court if there are any payment disputes.
Many people believe that if they back up paper documents on computer files, their business will be protected in case of a fire. That can be true—but you've got to protect those computer files, as well. Most ordinary fire-resistant safes keep documents from burning by keeping the temperature inside the safe lower than 177° C (350° F), the temperature at which paper burns. But media files are much more sensitive to heat than paper is, so you need a stronger safe to protect important electronics. Media safes are specially designed to protect computer files by keeping the interior cooler than 50° C (125° F) during a fire—the temperature at which electronic files are at risk. Following are the essential electronics you'd need a media safe to protect.
Backup files of all your business's important financial documents. You can never be too safe. Many companies store important records in computer files. If that's the case with your business, keep copies of these files in a fire-resistant safe. Even if you already back everything up religiously, you can never have too many copies. If your electronic records survive a fire, it will provide an enormous help to your business's recovery.
Proprietary software. Many companies rely on software that's specially designed for them. If your company relies on a certain software program for any aspect of business, you should keep a copy of that software in a media safe. It will cost you a great deal of money to re-order that software if all copies are destroyed in a fire.
Servers. Imagine if, after a fire, your company could be back online in just a short amount of time? Especially if you do a lot of online business, you need your servers protected from fire. For busy e-commerce businesses in particular, a lot of revenue could be lost with every day your site's offline—which could be a long time if you lose your servers in a fire.
Don't take a chance with your business. Protect your important paper and electronic documents by storing them in a fire-resistant safe. In the case of a fire, your business could very well depend on it.
About the Author
Anthony Neary represents the http://www.thesafeshop.co.uk an online business providing a wide range of fire safe and security products for the home and business. For a selection of the latest fire media and data safes visit http://www.thesafeshop.co.uk/Categories/fire_data_safes/
