SOPs, quality records and supplier agreements across every site, each one explicitly current, superseded or still in draft.
A superseded SOP is not clutter. It is the record of how you were working when something went wrong.
Controlled documents fail in a specific way: the current revision is on the server, an older one is printed and taped to a machine, and nothing connects them. These five stages make the difference between the two explicit rather than assumed.
Procedures, quality records and supplier paperwork can be added directly, brought across in bulk from a spreadsheet with progress shown as it runs, or pulled from Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive, which connect directly. The point of the single place is not tidiness — it is that a revision can only be controlled where every copy of it is visible.
Every document carries an explicit draft, active or superseded status, so the current revision is identified on the record rather than inferred from a filename or a date. Superseded revisions are retained and never removed automatically, and two documents can be compared on request when someone needs to see exactly what changed between them.
A revision moves through defined stages with named owners and deadlines, and reminders go out automatically when a stage runs late. Where one signature is not enough, a stage can require several named approvers before it moves on, and templates can be retired and restored without disturbing cases already running against them.
Category, document type, owner and site are fields on the record, and each of them is a filter in search rather than a label nobody can act on. Permissions are set per record, so a procedure can be shared across sites while a supplier agreement stays with the people who negotiated it.
Every action on a document and every step of an approval sits in a tamper-evident history, so what changed, who approved it and when comes out of the system rather than out of somebody’s memory. A case closed in error can be reopened instead of being started again as a new one.
Each of these is a case where the right document existed and the wrong one was used. Storage was never the problem — knowing which copy governed was.
The executed copy is in a folder at one site, and everyone else works from the draft that was circulated by email. Scanned pages are read on arrival and the dates, reference numbers and parties are pulled out of them, so the signed version becomes the one that is searchable rather than the one nobody can find.
One sits on the shared drive, one was emailed to the line supervisor and one is printed beside the machine, and nothing on any of them says which governs. Repeat copies are detected as they arrive and draft, active and superseded are explicit on every record, so the three stop being equally plausible.
The certificate was filed correctly the day it arrived, and then nobody looked at it again until someone asked for it. Dates are extracted from documents on arrival and become filters in search, so what is expiring is a question the repository can answer rather than one that depends on a spreadsheet somebody maintains.
Answering means proving what the procedure said on a particular date, not what it says now. Superseded revisions are retained rather than deleted and every approval step sits in a tamper-evident history, so the revision that applied at the time is retrievable along with the record of how it became current.
Different desks, different jobs — from the shop floor to whoever answers an auditor.
Quality
Route the revision through named approvers and mark the previous one superseded when it is released.
Shop floor
Check the status on the document itself rather than trusting the copy taped to the machine.
Quality
Produce the superseded revision that applied on a given date, because it was retained rather than cleaned up.
Procurement
Surface the renewal date extracted from the certificate before it lapses, not after.
Multi-site
Hold one governed document with per-site permissions instead of a copy per site that drift apart.
Audit
Read who approved each revision and when, from the record itself rather than from a spreadsheet beside it.
From the record itself. Every document carries an explicit draft, active or superseded status, so the current revision is marked rather than worked out from a filename or the date on a folder. Status is also a filter in search, which means the current revision of a procedure can be retrieved directly instead of found by opening candidates until one looks right.
No, and they should not be. A superseded revision is the record of how you were working at the time, which is exactly what is needed when a batch is questioned months later or someone asks what the procedure said on a particular date. Superseded revisions are retained rather than removed, nothing is deleted automatically, and status keeps them out of the cleanup pile without hiding them.
Yes. A comparison between two documents can be asked for, so what changed between one revision and the next is shown rather than reconstructed by reading both side by side. The same request handles summaries, translations and specific details, and every answer cites the document and the line it came from.
Yes. A stage can require several named people, and the case does not move on until each of them has acted. Stages carry deadlines with automatic reminders when they run late, templates can be retired and restored without disturbing cases already running, and a case closed or rejected in error can be reopened.
Yes. Site is a field on every record alongside category, document type and owner, and permissions are set per record. A procedure can be shared across every site while a supplier agreement stays with the people who negotiated it, and search respects those rights, so the restricted record does not surface for anyone else.
Yes. Scanned and photographed pages are read automatically on arrival in Nepali and English, and the dates, reference numbers and parties are extracted from them, so a signed agreement that came in as a scan is searchable on its contents. Handwriting is not supported, so hand-filled fields still need a person to key them.
Not yet. Retention rules applied by document type rather than by folder are being built and are not available today. What exists now is that superseded revisions are retained rather than deleted, and access to them can be narrowed — so nothing is lost, but the disposal schedule remains a decision people make rather than one the system enforces.