Documentation is understood as recording information in accordance with the regulated rules, that is, the procedure for processing documents in a special order. Since the process of recording data can be carried out by various means, the documents in the practice of managerial activity are very different - handwritten, graphic, typographic, photo and video materials.
Documentation of management activities is a regulated procedure, which gives it a guarantee of legal force - a quality that is in the sheet of the current legislation.
Today, various means of documentation are used: from simple (such as pencils and ordinary ballpoint pens) to more complex electromechanical ones (this includes a tape recorder, video camera, phono camera, etc.) and automated, computer ones. The methods of documentation depend on the tools used. It can be text, electronic, film and photographic.
Management activities use, as a rule, text documents written by hand or created on a computer. Therefore, they received the name of management documentation.
Documentation is always fixing on a specific medium of any information, with special details, by which it is then identified. The documentation of management activities creates the means and grounds for regulating the activities of both an individual
official and the financial or organizational actions of an entire enterprise.
Documentation may vary in their functions, purpose, content, degree of secrecy and accessibility of information. Addressing factors make it possible to classify it as interorganizational and external. The first, which does not go beyond the framework of one institution or organization, and is conducted between its participants, is called the service. The second - external documentation - is carried out between organizations of various types, by individual officials who are not directly subordinate to each other.
Technical documentation is carried out in compliance with established standards, which are different for any type of documents. For any management activity, this is especially important, because in this way documentation takes legal force, which serves as the most reliable proof of the authenticity of the information contained in it.
The documentation of management activities imposes specific responsibilities on the officers or management bodies that carry it out. So, at the time of creation of any official documents, applicable legislative norms, rules of execution, which are national, must be observed. In addition, each document must be accompanied by the details of the organization, legally significant: its name and
decoding, signatures and seals of the management or a specific department of the enterprise, the date of compilation and the number in the registration book, stamps of approval, etc. Finally, the documentation of management activities should produce documents strictly within their own competence.
Documents vary in degree of authenticity. Drafts or copies from the main documentation contain only a certain text, and do not contain such legal force as the originals. The same document is considered to be the one that contains information and the above details confirming its strength and reliability.