As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly create version control for your SOPs.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, power-user skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the current SOP folder or document system and gather every active, archived and duplicated SOP, including its title, file location, owner, approval status and last known revision.
   2. Ask the people who run each process to confirm which document is currently used, who may edit it, who approves changes and what event should trigger a review.
   3. Paste the gathered information into the prompt, replacing each bracketed slot and removing personal or commercially restricted information that the chatbot does not need.
   4. Ask the chatbot to produce the document-control procedure, version convention, SOP register, change-request template, migration plan and staff message in separate sections.
   5. Compare the proposed owners, approval steps, version numbers, review triggers and file locations against decisions made by your process owners, and replace every [NEEDS BUSINESS DECISION] item with an agreed answer.
   6. Create the register in your chosen shared location, assign each existing SOP an ID and status, move obsolete copies to an archive, and have the responsible colleague approve the first published version before staff use it.

   Prompt

   Create a practical version-control system for our standard operating procedures using only the information I provide. Do not invent legal, regulatory or quality requirements, and mark any missing decision as [NEEDS BUSINESS DECISION].
   
   Our organisation: [brief description]
   SOPs currently in use: [paste the SOPs, or provide their titles and summaries]
   Where the files are stored: [folder, shared drive or document system]
   Current document owners: [names or roles]
   Who approves changes: [names or roles]
   Who is allowed to edit: [roles]
   How staff access the current SOP: [describe the current process]
   Required review cycle or trigger: [provide this, or write unknown]
   Relevant customer, quality, contractual or regulatory constraints: [provide these, or write none known]
   
   Produce the following:
   1. A simple document-control procedure covering drafting, review, approval, publication, withdrawal and emergency changes.
   2. A version-numbering convention that distinguishes minor edits from changes that affect how work is performed.
   3. An SOP register with these columns: document ID, title, current version, status, owner, approver, effective date, next review date, last change summary, location and superseded version.
   4. A change-request and approval record template.
   5. A migration plan for moving the existing SOPs into the system.
   6. A staff communication message explaining how to find the current approved version.
   
   Keep the system suitable for a small UK organisation. Separate facts I supplied from recommendations. Do not assign owners, dates, approval rights or review periods unless I supplied them. End with a short list of decisions that a manager must make before this system goes live.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.