Larry makes some very good points. In addition, I would add the
following:

In general, onsite storage is more expensive than offsite storage,
unless you are using fully depreciated space that has minimal operating
costs. That is extremely rare for most organizations today. So you want
to look at your fully loaded cost per square foot, then take your
volume of records and you should end up with a space cost per cubic
foot of records. You can then compare that against the core storage
cost offsite. When you look at space, make sure that you are accounting
for aisle space and staging areas -- not just the cost of space for
cabinets.

Just to work the problem for you, let's take the example of a standard
letter-width file cabinet. They tend to be 26 inches deep, with a
drawer pull of around 24 inches or so. To make the math easier, let's
assume that a cabinet with allowance for a drawer pull is 48 inches by
12 inches, or four square feet. Depending upon aisle space, let's
assume that you need another foot. So that's five square feet. Assuming
a fully loaded cost for space of $50 per square foot, that's $250 worth
of annual space cost for that cabinet. Figure that a five drawer
standard cabinet holds 10 cubic feet. That is then a storage cost of
$25 per cubic foot per year.

Now that is for standard file cabinets, which are typically very
inefficient. That also assumes class A office space to some extent. And
I have not factored in the depreciation of the file cabinet.

Records stored in warehouses on proper records storage shelving can be
stored much more efficiently -- perhaps 10 or 20 cubic feet per square
foot. But you then have to factor in the cost of shelving, material
handling equipment and transportation, if the facility is not attached
to where your consumers are.

Next, you have to look at the costs associated with records activity --
that's people cost. That number usually tips the scale to offsite as
well.

If you want a ballpark number for commercial offsite storage, I have
typically used around $5.00 per standard box per year for budgeting
purposes. There are a lot of assumptions that go in there and YMMV
significantly. A typical retrieval activity for a standard box amounts
to about $6.00 to $8.00 per round trip -- but that assumes that you are
pulling 10-20 boxes per day. If you are only pulling one or two a day,
each box will pay a proportionally larger share of the transportation
charge.

If you have more large boxes than standard boxes, your activities costs
will increment with the average box size.

Bottom line is that "rules of thumb" are hard to come by. A whole host
of variables will affect what you ultimately pay.

The trend for most organizations seems to be to reduce the real estate
footprint as much as possible. Records storage is often a very low
value-add use of real estate, unless you can show significant savings.


Patrick Cunningham, CRM
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"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

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