Updated October 2026
Before you shred old business records
You have boxes of binders, job files and old correspondence booked for the shredder. If they are written work and not just receipts, find out whether a buyer wants a copy first, because AI companies now pay to license records like these and shredding is permanent. Brokers have noticed too: Supersoniq's ads say "Don't shred those files yet" and name SOPs, manuals, training guides and job files.1,2,3
Shred pile or asset
What in the shred pile might be wanted
The records buyers want show how the work gets done: procedures and manuals, job files with their notes and quotes, and correspondence about jobs, suppliers and customers. Ten years of orders, invoices and supplier emails from a distributor is the kind of archive buyers describe wanting.3,4,5
What usually does not: bank statements, cancelled checks, payroll and tax returns. They carry personal and financial details that buyers screen out, and they say little about how your people work. Sensitive employee and health records are usually left out too.6
Paper
If your old records are on paper
Buyers name software, not filing cabinets: email, shared drives, chat and accounting tools such as QuickBooks and Xero. Paper only counts once it is scanned and readable, so before paying anyone to scan boxes, ask a buyer whether it wants them and at what volume. Binders of procedures are the likeliest to be wanted, because brokers name them by name.7,8,9,2
The order of things
Copy, clean, license, then shred
Pull the boxes or folders you planned to destroy, and set aside anything personal or financial for shredding as normal. For the rest, ask buyers if they want it and agree the amount, scope and schedule in writing before anything leaves. Let the buyer clean a copy, review the samples it shows you, then destroy the originals on your normal schedule.10,11,12
Retention rules decide when you may destroy records, and they do not stop you asking whether a copy has value first. If the business has already closed, the same applies: some buyers take companies that are winding down or closed, as long as the records still exist.13
Who this fits
Who should bother
Most buyers want 20 to 30 or more employees, and a few state no minimum. A 10-person office with eight boxes of invoices is unlikely to interest anyone, while a 60-person firm with fifteen years of job files might. The quiz tells you which buyers we work with take a business your size before you book the shredding truck.13,14,15,11
FAQ
Questions, answered with sources
Every business is different, so this one is best talked through with the buyer you're working with. Their team goes over it with you before anything is signed.
Before you sign
Questions to talk through with your buyer
Every business is different, so these are best talked through with the buyer you're working with. Their team goes over them with you before anything is signed.
Questions for this kind of business
- Do any of the records we planned to destroy fall under a retention rule, a hold or a client agreement?
- Who owns this data: the company, an estate, or someone else?
- Do customer, vendor or platform contracts, NDAs or API terms restrict this?
Questions for any buyer
- Is the license exclusive, and for how long?
- Can you sublicense the data, and to whom?
- Which AI labs will receive it, and will you tell us?
- How long do you keep it, and how is it deleted?
- What is your liability cap, and who indemnifies whom?
- Will the contract ban re-identification of people in the data?
- Who removes personal data, by what method, and do we approve it first?