A batch is a body of records of one class, in one place, covering a date range — last year's payroll registers, one quarter's dispute evidence, the age-check export somebody saved to a shared drive. Retention holds the register about the records, never the records. A batch cannot be cleared for destruction while any obligation over it is still running on the date you ask about.
A hold is placed the day somebody reasonably expects a claim, a subpoena or an audit — not the day the letter arrives. While it is active, nothing it covers can be cleared or destroyed, whatever the calendar says. It ends only with a written reason, a date and the name of the person releasing it. A hold that quietly stops being a hold is how evidence goes missing.
Every row here is what the operator entered — a starting point from the public record where one was read, and your own policy where it is yours. A rule is a history, not a field: a changed period is a new row with the date it applies from, and the one that governs a batch is the one in force on the date you ask about. Check each against its source before relying on it. Not legal advice.
Every place records live: a safe, a payroll provider, an accountant's files, a shared drive, a vendor's export. Retention records that a system exists and who answers for it — never a login, a password, or a link with a key in it. There is no field for one.
Custodian and Doorlist keep their own clocks for their own records. This is the register across every system the business uses, including the ones Callboard does not make.
Every obligation over every batch that has not been destroyed, soonest first. The end of one obligation is not the end of the batch — it is free only when the last one has run and no hold covers it.
Some rules run the other way. Texas and Louisiana forbid an adult site, or the vendor it uses, from keeping identifying information from an age check. Your own privacy policy may promise EU members the same. A batch past one of these dates cannot be marked kept unless an active legal hold covers it. It stays red, and it stays counted on the front page, until it is gone.