Where to keep travellers' passport copies
Where a travel agency should keep travellers' passport and visa copies, and how to share them with visa services, embassies or suppliers by expiring link.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Travel businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
A travel agency collects some of the most sensitive documents anyone hands over: passport copies, visa pages, birth certificates for children travelling, bank statements for visa applications, sometimes medical letters. They arrive by e-mail, by WhatsApp, as phone photos, and they are needed by several people: the consultant, the visa service, a ground handler, an airline's group desk.
Most agencies store them wherever they landed. A consultant's mailbox holds years of passport copies. A shared drive has a folder called "Passports" that everyone can open. A former employee's phone still has a group's documents on it. None of this is deliberate, and all of it is a risk. This article sets out a better place to keep them in Achekam, and a safer way to share them.
Why passport copies in mailboxes are a risk
A passport copy is everything an identity thief needs to open accounts in someone's name. Kept in a mailbox, it is forwarded, copied into replies, synced to phones, and never deleted. If a mailbox is compromised, every traveller whose documents are in it is exposed. And when a traveller asks what you hold about them, nobody can answer.
Data protection law in all three countries sets conditions for how personal information is collected, kept and shared. In South Africa, the Protection of Personal Information Act sets the conditions for lawfully processing personal information and establishes the Information Regulator. Nigerian agencies work under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023, and Kenyan agencies under the Data Protection Act 2019. Ask your adviser what each requires of you, including how long you may keep travellers' documents.
A folder per booking, archived after travel
Document Centre in Achekam is a folder-based store. A business uploads files or whole folders, previews, downloads, renames, moves, tags, archives and searches them, and a new version keeps the earlier ones. Uploads go in batches of up to 25 files, at up to 100 MB per file by default, which comfortably handles a group's documents.
A structure that works for an agency:
- One folder per booking or group, named with the booking reference and travel dates.
- Inside it, one sub-folder per traveller, holding their passport copy, visa and supporting documents.
- Tags for document type and status, such as "passport", "visa issued", "awaiting visa".
- Archive the booking folder after travel, once nothing more is needed, so current work is not cluttered with past trips.
Name every file the same way, such as surname, first name and document type, so a consultant can find a traveller's passport without opening every file in the folder. Ask travellers to send documents in one go when they confirm, and upload them the same day. Then delete them from the mailbox or chat they arrived in. The point of a single store is lost if copies remain everywhere else.
One thing to tell your team: the menu entries Client Folders, Engagement Files, Shared Documents, Evidence Vault and Document Templates all open the same document store, with no filter. Whichever entry someone uses, they are in the same place, so the folder structure is what keeps passports in order, not the menu.
Sharing with a code and an expiry instead of an attachment
When a visa service, an embassy's appointed agent, a lodge or an airline's group desk needs a traveller's documents, do not attach them to an e-mail. Share them instead.
A document can be shared by e-mailing a personal link with an expiry, an optional one-time code, and download allowed or not. For passports, a sensible default is:
| Setting | Choice | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Expiry | Short, matched to the visa appointment or supplier deadline | The link stops working once it has served its purpose |
| One-time code | On | A second step before the document opens |
| Download | Only if the recipient must submit the file elsewhere | Fewer stray copies |
Keep a note in the booking of who received which document and when. Sharing claim documents by secure link shows the same controls applied in insurance.
Revoking a share once the visa is issued
A share can be revoked. Make revoking part of closing each visa application: when the visa is issued or the supplier confirms the rooming list, revoke the open shares for those documents. If a traveller withdraws from a group, revoke the shares for their documents the same day.
Revoking does not recall a copy that was downloaded, which is why download should be off unless it is needed.
Fingerprints and malware checks on uploads
Every stored file gets a SHA-256 fingerprint, a code computed from its exact contents, so you can show later that a stored document has not been altered since it was uploaded. Executable files are refused by default, and every upload passes a malware check. That check uses ClamAV when the server is configured for it, and otherwise a built-in heuristic check runs.
That matters for an agency because documents arrive from outside, from travellers' phones and other people's computers, and an attachment called "passport scan" can carry something harmful as easily as a passport.
For the terms travellers sign when they hand over their documents, see standard booking terms filled in for each traveller, and for a professional firm's version of the same filing discipline, see matter files in Document Centre.
Moving the documents this month
Pick one current group, create its folder, move its documents in from the mailbox and delete the e-mailed copies. Then write a one-page rule for consultants: documents go into the booking folder on the day they arrive, and leave the office only by expiring link.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
