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Retention schedules

A retention schedule is a legal document that provides information about how to manage records over time. All King County retention schedules are displayed in the table below. The table gives you the option of choosing the General Schedule or an Agency-Specific Schedule.

General Records Retention Schedule

  • The General Schedule can be used by all county employees. It provides guidance on managing administrative records that are commonly found in most agencies.

Agency-Specific Records Retention Schedules

  • Agency-Specific Schedules are developed for individual county agencies (often at the section level). Each schedule contains a comprehensive list of all records managed by that agency (which could include records that are also on the General Schedule). The lines on each agency-specific schedule also represent the different categories that you have access to in Content Manager, which is necessary to file new records, send boxes to the Records Center or fill out a disposition request form.

All schedules are based on, and compliant with, Washington State records retention schedules. Information on this page is current and is automatically updated by our records management system (Content Manager) once per day.

Which schedule should you use?

Best practice is to start by using the Agency-Specific Schedule corresponding to the department-division-section where you work. If you're not able to find a record category that works for you, you can also use the General Schedule. Please contact Records Management at records.management@kingcounty.gov if you are having trouble locating the appropriate category on a retention schedule.

Important Notice!

On 10/2/2024, the Washington State Local Government Records Committee approved the Local Government Common Records Retention Schedule (CORE) version 5.0. This update significantly affects many record series applicable to King County records. For reference, see the complete list of affected series with substantive changes. You may notice changes to your retention schedules, including title, description, and retention updates, and some categories in Content Manager may not be usable temporarily as we make changes. Until we have finished making all the updates, the retention schedules on our website and in Content Manager might not be accurate. Please contact us directly if you have any questions about the current retention schedule for your records at records.management@kingcounty.gov or 206-477-6889.

As of November 26, 2024, all of the retention changes have been implemented except for 4 record series which are still being reviewed and analyzed, those 4 record series are listed on Page 5 of the Summary of Changes.

King County Records Retention Schedules

Instructions and help

The Records Management Program periodically audits all King County schedules to ensure they comply with state requirements as described in Washington State records retention schedules. As a result of this, the retention schedules shown on this page might change over time. These schedules are automatically updated once per day and are the most current versions of all county schedules.

In May 2023, all schedules were updated to reflect the archival designations as described in Washington State retention schedules. This change only affected a small number of categories. If you have any questions about that change, please contact King County Archivist Hannah Soukup at HSoukup@kingcounty.gov.

How do I search for retention schedules?

In the Search box, type any word or phrase that you know of and that might be in the title or notes/description of the record category. For example, enter budget to find all categories that contain the word budget in the title or descriptions. If, instead, you want to search the DAN (Disposition Authority Number) or state series title, select those options before performing the search.

Do not use quotation marks when performing searches for phrases. Instead enter phrases without quotation marks.

How can I export the information in these schedules?

Steps

  1. Put your cursor anywhere in the first line of the schedule you want to export
  2. Hold down the Shift key then click the down arrow key until you reach the bottom
  3. Right click anywhere on the schedule and select Copy and then Copy Selection
  4. Open a blank Excel spreadsheet, place your cursor in an empty cell (usually A1) then press Ctrl + V

Export from Teams

If you want to export the data in these retention schedules to an Excel spreadsheet, the easiest way to do that is by viewing them on the Agency Records Management Dashboard on the county's internal Records Management Network Teams site. From there, you will need to re-filter by agency (to locate your agency-specific schedule) or choose General Schedule (to locate that schedule). Then follow the instructions on that dashboard to Export to Excel. You might be directed to request permission to view that dashboard.

 

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