What is required within a Document ?

The version of each QMS document must appear on the document. This may be in the form of a revision number or a date.

Both revision number and date sometimes appear, but this is not essential, and using both sometimes makes errors possible.

It is essential for pages to be numbered. It is also essential to show where the document ends, so that misinterpretation cannot occur due to the physical loss of pages from the end of the document. Commonly this is done by numbering pages in the style "page 4 of 7". However, a statement such as "End of Document" will serve just as well.

Care should be exercised in using the page numbering features of word processing software. It is possible to accidentally generate a document with the wrong total page number. This may lead to a final page numbered as e.g. "page 8 of 6". This is a breach of document control.