I have written and talked about this topic several times during the last 10 years because I am totally convinced that the formulator's journal is her most important asset and because I almost daily observe that novice formulators neglect to record necessary details when they are experimenting.
Apart from the legal requirements for data recording if you are a professional formulator, you need to record meticulously some details when you are formulating even if it is only for yourself and your family and you have no intention to become an entrepreneur. If you want to make sure that you are creating safe and effective product and that you create the same product again and again with the same results, or if you want to go back to an old formulation and you want to improve it, you need to have an exact record of what you have done at the first place.
No matter if you belong to the generation who does all the recording in a fashionable way and then shoots everything into the clouds or if you are an old-fashioned formulator who prefers pens and paper like me, you need to create your own format of recording the data. This is something you will improve and tweak and adapt over time and with experience but to give you a hint for the start I am sharing the way we keep the data in the following presentation.
