Document types determine the information captured by the system, as well as the behaviour exhibited when a new document comes into the system. Since several different types of document may arrive during the same registration, the individual cataloguing activities must be completed separately; this way, separate workflows can be invoked for each document. Some cataloguing workflows will appear very similar to eachother, while others may be drastically different; the potential even exists for certain types of documents to dispense entirely with the interactive cataloguing screen.

If registration and cataloguing were combined, this would no longer be possible, to the detriment of the value and integrity of the documents in the system.