Any biological record has at least four essential parts. More...

• Who: the person who made the observation. Sometimes recorders have to be contacted for additional information before records can be verified. 
• What: the identity of what has been seen. "I saw a bird" is not a biological record, and unless there are special reasons records refer to individual species. 
• When: The date the observation was made. This is the easy one (as long as you record shortly after the event!). 
• Where: A six figure National Grid reference locates where the specimen was found. This is accurate enough for recording, as most species, even plants, are mobile to some degree. 

Each one of these is important and the record is useless without one of them. "Good" records have more "metadata" supporting them, such as photos, habitat information (e.g. "On Alder"), collection method ("SCUBA diving"), etc, which can help with verification. The last component - where - is supplemented by a place name. Surprisingly, this is what causes the most problems with records. "Main road" or "the big field" does not help to locate the record, but "Rutland Water, Lagoon 4" does. This is where people try to be helpful. "My garden" is a frequent problem with location information, and sometimes, if someone is trying to be especially helpful, it gets worse - "Behind the shed". I was reminded of this recently when out looking for insects by shaking hedge foliage over a white tray. While shaking an Alder tree I felt something crawling in my ear. I fished it out and was delighted to find that it was Arocatus roeselii. We have few records for this species and it occurred to me that I needed to record it. I could, of course, have given the location as "In my left ear", but that wouldn't help people find more specimens of this rare species, so "Melton Mowbray Country Park" was a better option for the location.