Risk Registers can be documented via different methods depending on the level of detail of the Risk Management scheme.

Some organisations tend to maintain Risk Registers by documenting under general purpose templates such as Excel spreadsheets. These will simply list each heading title and allow the user to print out documents and fill the template in as they progress through their risk management scheme. This method is beneficial because it is very cheap and simple.

But there are limitations to general purpose templates

• Time consuming to implement (lots of filing, printing etc)
• Hard to prioritise uncertainties
• Less effective for large risk databases
• High levels of paperwork

As a result, organisations may purchase specialist Risk Management Software. This may cost more than the general purpose Excel templates, but it eliminates the limitations shown above and provides a much more effective method for Risk Documentation.