Hello Khaterinaf
A quick search at the top using the term "document numbering" shows 46 different threads, with very good advice, for the most part. I would first recommend you perform the same search and see what advice may be gleaned from those far older and wiser than myself. In order to directly answer your question, I would refer you to the following discussion thread. Many talk about the physical numbering system to use, which is important, and many discuss the frustration that a new person to the position feels when they inherit a mess from someone else and wish to clean it up.
Now I'd like to talk about what I am going to guess is questions you may have as follow-up questions to your original question and offer a bit of advice from my personal experience.
While I haven't read all of the food safety schemes, I've seen enough of them to state that in general, none of them require a specific numbering system - they just require you to have your documentation organized. How you do it is up to you. Remember the ISO mantra: "do what you say, say what you do". This is the standard that all auditors should hold to in the absence of regulatory or other requirements. If it is written in your SOP that files are to be stored in a certain way or that there will be a notice posted on the bulletin board or a flourish of trumpets over the public address system and a parade when a new policy is written, then follow the rules you have set forth for yourself.
So how to organize them? Rather than repeat what others have said, let me talk about two other areas other than the previous posts that will help you decide - because I strongly recommend you try to avoid the same mistakes others have made - the real fun is making NEW mistakes! If your company is of any size, you should be looking at managing change within the company in an orderly fashion through regular meetings. Yes - Management of Change! Many of the companies following ISO-based systems call it an "EMM-OH-SEE" meeting, others call it Change Control Meeting. Bottom line: these are many of the folks that are dealing with the files that you're organizing, so give them a say in how to organize it and what the hierarchy will look like. In addition, these are also the same people that will likely be involved when a process is changed, so it is logical to be sure they understand where to find the files and how to name them. I would also recommend that if an IT manager (or decision-maker) doesn't want to be part of the MOC/Change Control Team, that they are available for phone calls during the time the meeting is held, since their input on topics or follow-ups is likely going to be needed a time or two.
This leads to another often-ignored topic, that of file naming conventions. What I mean by this is how and where you save the computer file in your computer system. I know more than one company that has a policy that all documents must be approved by a specific person and the document isn't considered implemented until that person saves it up on the file server. This is both good and bad, because MANY times I've seen that person receive random phone calls from upper managers within the company that didn't even try to look for a document - they just called that person and interrupted whatever they were doing in order to have them directed to the document. If a person wants to be the single point of contact (SPOC) on document management, they might receive a few phone calls they didn't anticipate. It may still be worth it.
My advice on this topic is to decide on a file naming convention that is understandable and intuitive and that your IT resources agree will work for your system (some computer systems have limitations on file names, file structures, and how deep in to sub-directories files may be saved. Many times I haven't realized I had a problem until I tried to archive the directory structure (ISO9660 file naming rules, I think) to optical disk or learned that the backups have been failing because the directory name was something like Q:\antarctica\sub-zero_ice_station_outpost\human_resources\policies\prohibition_on_feeding_marshmallows_to_puffins-v1-01-02-2013.txt which exceeded the file system because the whole file path was 126 characters long. Another good reason to ask the computer folks for their opinion.
hope this helps and welcome to the forum
