One line per stage
The file for an appointment is a short thing. It holds the arrangement and the dates on which the arrangement was made or changed. Each of the four stages puts in one line, dated on the day it was written, and no line is edited once it is written: a correction is a further line saying what was corrected and when.
That rule is the whole reason the file is useful. A record that can be edited answers only the question what do we think now. A record that can only be added to answers the question what did we think in March, which is the question that actually gets asked.
The fields a line can hold
Four kinds of line exist. Nothing is entered that is not one of them.
Where it is kept
At the registered office, and nowhere else. The diary and the files are administered from that address: paper in a cabinet that locks, the written diary on one machine at the office which is encrypted at rest and not shared. Nothing is held on a telephone and nothing is copied to a third party for storage.
No part of the file is held on this website. The website is a set of fixed pages with two arithmetic sheets in them; it has no connection to the diary, no form that submits anywhere and nowhere to sign in. That is set out in full under records and notices.
How long it is kept
A file is kept for six years from the end of the calendar year in which its last booking falls, and is then deleted. Six years is the term the company keeps its own books to, and keeping one term for everything is simpler to administer, and easier to state, than keeping two.
Deletion is deletion: the paper is destroyed and the written entry is removed. What remains afterwards is the company’s own accounting record, which shows that a booking was invoiced on a date and carries no name.
What the file does not hold
It holds the arrangement. It does not hold a note of anything said, a description of anybody, an opinion, a document from elsewhere, or any category of information beyond the dates, times, lengths and written addresses set out above.
Where a message arrives containing more than the arrangement, the office enters the date the message arrived and the arrangement it asked for. The message itself is then deleted. This is not a courtesy: a file that holds only what the diary needs is a file that cannot disclose anything else, and that is the point of keeping it short.