Can Documents Review & Approved Date be later than Effective Date?
Hi all,
Our production operate 365 days and one of our production documents effective date is 01.01.2020. However, 1st of Jan is public holiday and all office staffs will be off on that day this include my superior who suppose to sign and approve the said documents. So my question is can document review & approved dated 02.01.2020 in this situation?
Hi Carine,
Documents should be signed and approved before the effective date.
I would think you would want them approved before the effective date. If your paperwork if effective January 1st, could you have it signed December 30th or 31st?
Are you back dating your documents?
The effective date is the date it goes into effect - approval and signatures are most times done beforehand by anything from a day to weeks.
For instance we met as a group in my company and set new pricing for consulting services and products in early December, the effective date is March 1st - the approvals and sign offs though were done about a week after our meeting and creation of supporting documents.
We created new employee GMPs for a seafood company in November, but the effective roll out date was Feb 1 - approvals were done in December.
That's done.
I would think you would want them approved before the effective date. If your paperwork if effective January 1st, could you have it signed December 30th or 31st?
Are you back dating your documents?
Documents should not be signed back dated, but we can always take signatures from approving authority well before its effective date, if not possible then we can change effective date and take approval.
I would agree with most everyone here. Do not back date your documents to make yourself compliant. It opens a can of worms and you can be in a lot of trouble for it. That being said, we expect policy to be approved days and even weeks before it is given an effective date. Often to keep things clean we will approve policy and make it effective the first of the month, unless it is something concerning health and safety.
Cheers!