Filling out spreadsheets and double-checking records are not most people’s idea of fun.  It’s much more fun to bring in new business, put earned money in the bank and maybe even congratulate the team for a good quarter.  Yet, a failure to keep good records may mean that you have to give back some of the money you put in the bank when discrepancies arise over whether your company complied with all of its reporting, sub-contracting, and other contract responsibilities.  Many companies learn this lesson the hard way.  They assume that the government has good records and that those records are accurate.  To put it mildly:  don’t assume that.  Government people move.  They work from home and then from an office.  Records definitely do get lost in the shuffle.  If you can’t prove that you did what you were supposed to do, the government is likely to assume that you didn’t and pursue corrective action against your company.  Is keeping records a burden or expense that you’d rather not undertake?  Government contract lawyers, and the consultants they use (😊) are more expensive by several factors.  More than one company has been saved thousands of dollars and significant amounts of time by having records as good, or better than, the governments.  As always, preventative maintenance does pay off in the long run.  Make sure that your company doesn’t throw out any contract document, no matter how seemingly insignificant.  The usual retention requirement is to keep records for three years from the date of last payment on a contract.  That can, indeed, be some time after the contract itself expired.  Know the rules and set up the processes and you can not only celebrate your team’s business accomplishments, but your administrative success as well.