Mastering SOP Creation: How AI Will Revolutionize Your Process Documentation by 2026

In the intricate landscape of modern business, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are not mere bureaucratic formalities; they are the bedrock of operational excellence, consistency, and scalability. From ensuring regulatory compliance to accelerating employee onboarding, well-documented processes separate thriving organizations from those struggling with inefficiencies and preventable errors. Yet, the task of writing and maintaining SOPs has traditionally been a formidable one, often demanding significant time, resources, and painstaking attention to detail.

But what if you could compress weeks of documentation work into hours, or even minutes, without sacrificing accuracy or clarity? What if your operational knowledge, currently residing in the heads of your most experienced team members, could be seamlessly captured and transformed into professional, actionable guides? The year 2026 marks a significant turning point in this challenge, largely thanks to the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence.

This article explores how AI is fundamentally reshaping the way businesses approach process documentation. We’ll examine the traditional pitfalls of SOP creation, illustrate the transformative power of AI, and provide a detailed, step-by-step guide on how to implement these cutting-edge tools – specifically those that convert your everyday screen recordings and narrations into robust SOPs. By the end, you'll understand not just the "how," but the profound "why" behind making AI your strategic ally in writing standard operating procedures.

The Enduring Value of Standard Operating Procedures in 2026

Despite the constant evolution of technology and business methodologies, the core principles that make SOPs indispensable remain steadfast. In 2026, organizations continue to rely on clearly defined procedures for a multitude of critical functions.

Consistency and Quality Control: Whether it’s processing a customer order, executing a complex software deployment, or manufacturing a product component, SOPs guarantee that every step is performed uniformly, leading to consistent output quality and predictable results. This reduces variations, minimizes rework, and upholds brand reputation.

Training and Onboarding Efficiency: New employees can reach full productivity faster when they have access to clear, comprehensive, and easy-to-follow SOPs. Instead of relying solely on peer shadowing or ad-hoc explanations, structured documentation provides a self-service knowledge base, freeing up experienced team members for higher-value tasks. For a software engineering team, this could mean reducing the time a junior developer takes to deploy their first production fix from two weeks to three days.

Compliance and Risk Mitigation: In highly regulated industries like finance, healthcare, or aerospace, robust SOPs are non-negotiable. They demonstrate adherence to industry standards, legal requirements, and internal policies, providing a verifiable record for audits. The ability to quickly produce accurate, up-to-date procedural documentation can be the difference between a smooth audit and significant penalties. For a deeper look into this aspect, consider reading Bulletproof Compliance: How to Document Procedures That Sail Through Audits in 2026.

Scalability and Business Continuity: As businesses grow, processes must scale. Well-documented SOPs make it possible to replicate successful operations across new teams, departments, or geographical locations without losing efficiency or quality. They also act as a crucial repository of institutional knowledge, protecting the organization against the departure of key personnel.

Problem Solving and Continuous Improvement: When issues arise, SOPs provide a baseline for investigation. By comparing current practice against the documented procedure, teams can quickly identify deviations, pinpoint root causes, and implement corrective actions. They also serve as living documents, continuously refined through feedback cycles to optimize performance.

Traditional SOP Creation: A Time-Consuming Endeavor

For decades, the process of creating Standard Operating Procedures has been an arduous, resource-intensive undertaking. Many organizations still grapple with these manual methods, often finding themselves in a perpetual backlog of undocumented processes.

Consider the typical lifecycle of a manually written SOP:

1. Process Identification and Scope Definition: An operations manager or team lead identifies a process that requires documentation. This often involves discussions to clarify the process boundaries, inputs, and desired outputs.
2. Information Gathering (Observation & Interviews): A subject matter expert (SME) or a dedicated process analyst spends hours, sometimes days, observing an experienced employee perform the task. This often involves sitting side-by-side, taking handwritten notes, asking clarifying questions, and sometimes recording video that then needs to be transcribed and analyzed frame by frame.
3. Drafting the Procedure: The gathered information is then translated into written steps. This phase demands careful attention to detail, clear and concise language, logical flow, and often the inclusion of screenshots or diagrams. A single, moderately complex procedure (e.g., "Onboarding a New Vendor in the ERP System") might take a skilled writer 8-16 hours to draft, including capturing all necessary visual aids.
4. Formatting and Structure: The draft is then formatted according to company standards, incorporating headings, bullet points, warnings, and disclaimers to enhance readability and usability. This often requires proficiency with word processors and graphic design tools.
5. Review and Revision Cycles: The draft SOP is sent to multiple stakeholders – the original SME, other team members, managers, and sometimes legal or compliance departments. This can initiate several rounds of feedback, revisions, and approvals, each adding days or even weeks to the timeline. It’s not uncommon for an SOP to go through 3-5 revision cycles.
6. Approval and Publication: Once all feedback is integrated and approvals are secured, the SOP is published to a document management system or internal wiki.
7. Maintenance: SOPs are not static. They require regular review and updates whenever a process changes, software is updated, or best practices evolve. This maintenance itself can be a significant overhead, as tracking changes, making edits, and re-routing for approval can be as time-consuming as the initial drafting.

Quantifying the Bottleneck:

Let's put some realistic numbers to this traditional approach. For a mid-sized company with 50-100 core processes needing documentation or regular updates, the cumulative time and cost are substantial:

• Time per SOP: 20-40 hours for a moderately complex procedure (from inception to final approval).
• Total Time for 50 SOPs: 1,000 to 2,000 hours.
• Cost: At an average hourly rate of $60 (for a mix of SMEs, writers, and managers), this translates to $60,000 to $120,000 in labor costs annually, just for documentation.
• Opportunity Cost: This doesn't account for the lost productivity of SMEs taken away from their primary job functions, or the delays caused by slow document turnaround.

Common Pitfalls of Manual SOP Creation:

• Inconsistency: Different writers may use varying styles, terminology, and levels of detail, leading to a fragmented knowledge base.
• Outdated Information: The manual update process often falls behind the pace of operational change, rendering SOPs obsolete before they are even published.
• Author Bias: The perspective of the person documenting the process can inadvertently influence the procedure, potentially missing nuances or critical steps.
• Lack of Engagement: Lengthy, text-heavy SOPs are often ignored by employees who find them tedious to read and difficult to follow, especially when visual cues are missing or inadequate.
• High Barrier to Entry: The perceived difficulty and time commitment deter many teams from even starting the documentation process, leading to a reliance on tribal knowledge.

These challenges highlight a clear need for a more efficient, accurate, and scalable solution. This is where artificial intelligence steps in.

How AI Transforms Standard Operating Procedure Creation

The advent of sophisticated AI technologies, particularly large language models (LLMs) and computer vision, has created a paradigm shift in how organizations can approach SOP creation. AI doesn't just assist; it automates, intelligently drafts, and significantly accelerates the entire documentation lifecycle.

Here's how AI fundamentally transforms the process:

1. Automated Information Extraction: Instead of manual observation and note-taking, AI tools can process raw input like screen recordings, video demonstrations, and even voice narrations. Computer vision analyzes each frame of a screen recording, identifying clicks, keystrokes, menu selections, and text inputs. This eliminates the need for a human to meticulously log every action.
2. Intelligent Step Generation: Once actions are identified, AI, powered by LLMs, can interpret the sequence of these actions and translate them into clear, concise, and logically ordered procedural steps. It can infer the intent behind a series of clicks and generate natural language descriptions that a human would write. For example, a sequence of clicks on "File > Save As > MyDocument.docx" becomes "1. Navigate to 'File' in the menu bar. 2. Select 'Save As'. 3. Enter 'MyDocument.docx' as the file name."
3. Contextual Understanding and Enrichment: Advanced AI models can go beyond simple action logging. They can understand the context of the software being used, common UI elements, and typical workflows. This allows them to add valuable details like "Ensure the 'Overwrite existing file' checkbox is selected" or "Note: This step requires administrator privileges," enriching the SOP with practical guidance.
4. Automatic Screenshot Capture and Annotation: As the AI processes a screen recording, it can automatically capture relevant screenshots for each significant step. Furthermore, it can intelligently crop, highlight, and annotate these images to draw attention to critical UI elements, making the visual instructions far more effective than manually curated screenshots.
5. Drafting and Formatting: AI can generate a complete draft of the SOP, formatted with headings, numbered steps, bold text for emphasis, and even a table of contents, adhering to best practices for readability. This provides a robust starting point that is 70-80% complete, requiring only human review and minor refinement.
6. Consistency Enforcement: By using a single AI engine and predefined templates, organizations can ensure a consistent tone, style, and structure across all generated SOPs. This eliminates the variability inherent in multiple human authors.
7. Version Control and Updates: While not fully automated, AI tools can significantly expedite the update process. If a procedure changes, a new recording can be made, and the AI can quickly generate a new draft, or even highlight differences from the previous version, making updates much faster.

The core benefit is a dramatic reduction in the time and effort required for the initial drafting and formatting of SOPs. What once took days or weeks can now be accomplished in hours, allowing human experts to focus on validating, refining, and applying their strategic insights, rather than tedious manual documentation.

Choosing the Right AI Tool for Your SOP Needs

The market for AI-powered documentation tools is expanding rapidly. When evaluating options to assist with writing standard operating procedures, consider these critical features:

• Input Flexibility: Can it handle various inputs (screen recordings, video, voice)? Screen recording is particularly powerful for software-based processes.
• Accuracy of Extraction: How well does the AI identify clicks, keystrokes, and critical steps? Does it make intelligent inferences or just log raw data?
• Natural Language Generation Quality: Are the generated descriptions clear, concise, and easy to understand? Do they read like they were written by a human expert?
• Visual Documentation: Does it automatically capture and annotate screenshots? Is the annotation intelligent (e.g., highlighting the specific button clicked)?
• Customization and Editing: Can you easily edit, reorder, add, or remove steps and screenshots within the generated draft?
• Integration and Export Options: Can the SOPs be exported in common formats (PDF, Word, HTML, Markdown) or integrated with your existing knowledge base or LMS?
• Security and Privacy: How does the tool handle sensitive information in recordings? What data governance practices are in place?
• User Experience: Is the tool intuitive and easy for your team members to learn and use without extensive training?

For organizations looking to convert live demonstrations into structured procedures, especially for software-centric workflows, a specialized tool excels. This is where ProcessReel stands out as a leading solution.

ProcessReel is specifically designed to transform screen recordings with narration into professional, polished SOPs. Its AI engine watches your recorded actions, listens to your explanations, and stitches it all together into a comprehensive guide. It automatically captures every click and keystroke, generates step-by-step instructions, and creates annotated screenshots, significantly reducing the manual effort of drafting and formatting. By focusing on direct observation through recording, ProcessReel bypasses many of the traditional information gathering and transcription hurdles.

Step-by-Step: Using ProcessReel to Write Standard Operating Procedures with AI

Adopting an AI-powered tool like ProcessReel simplifies the SOP creation process dramatically. Here’s a detailed walkthrough of how you can use ProcessReel to write standard operating procedures efficiently.

1. Preparation is Key

Even with AI, a little preparation goes a long way to ensure the best output.

1. Define the Process Scope: Clearly identify the beginning and end points of the process you want to document. For example, "Creating a New User Account in Salesforce" rather than "Managing Salesforce."
2. Outline Key Steps (Optional but Recommended): Briefly list the main phases or critical decisions within the process. This helps you stay on track during the recording.
3. Ensure a Clean Environment: Close unnecessary tabs or applications on your screen to minimize distractions in the recording. Have all necessary login credentials or test data ready.
4. Practice the Process: If it's a complex or infrequently performed task, do a dry run or two to ensure you can perform it smoothly and without errors during the actual recording. This saves editing time later.

2. The Recording Phase

This is where ProcessReel's core magic begins. Think of this as your opportunity to "show and tell" your process.

1. Launch ProcessReel: Open the ProcessReel application or browser extension and initiate a new recording.
2. Select Recording Area: Choose whether to record your entire screen, a specific window, or a custom area. For most SOPs, recording a specific application window is ideal.
3. Enable Microphone: Ensure your microphone is active and tested. Your narration is crucial for providing context that the AI uses to enrich the textual instructions. Speak clearly and explain what you are doing and why at each significant step. For example, as you click a button, say "Now I'm clicking the 'Add New Customer' button to open the entry form."
4. Perform the Process Deliberately: Execute the process exactly as it should be performed. Take your time, making clear clicks and deliberate keystrokes. Pause briefly after each significant action to allow the AI to register it and to articulate your narration.
   • Example actions and narration:
     • (Clicking 'Login'): "First, I'm logging into the system using my credentials."
     • (Typing in a field): "Here, I'm entering the new customer's email address: john.doe@example.com."
     • (Navigating menu): "Next, I'll go to the 'Customers' menu, then select 'Create New Customer'."
5. Complete the Process and Stop Recording: Once you've reached the defined end point of your procedure, stop the recording within ProcessReel.

3. AI-Powered Generation and Refinement

After you stop recording, ProcessReel takes over.

1. AI Analysis: ProcessReel's AI engine immediately begins analyzing your recording. It identifies every click, keystroke, mouse movement, and listens to your narration.
2. Automatic SOP Draft Generation: Within minutes, the AI generates a comprehensive draft of your SOP. This draft will include:
   • Numbered, Step-by-Step Instructions: Derived from your actions and narration.
   • Automatically Captured Screenshots: Highlighting the exact moment and area of each significant action.
   • Annotations: Smartly adding arrows, boxes, or circles to focus attention on relevant UI elements in the screenshots.
   • Initial Formatting: Presented in a clean, readable format.
3. Review and Edit in ProcessReel: This is your opportunity to apply human oversight and refine the AI-generated output.
   • Clarity and Conciseness: Read through each step. Is it clear? Is it too verbose? Use the built-in editor to rephrase for maximum impact.
   • Accuracy: Verify that every step is correct and aligns with your intent.
   • Add Context/Warnings: Insert additional information like "Note:", "Warning:", or "Best Practice:" where necessary. For instance, "Warning: Do not proceed without manager approval."
   • Modify Screenshots: If an automatically generated screenshot isn't perfect, you can often adjust its focus, add more specific annotations, or even replace it if needed.
   • Reorder or Combine Steps: Sometimes, for better logical flow, you might want to reorder or combine minor steps.
   • Add Tables/Flowcharts: For more complex decision trees, you might manually insert a simple table or flowchart element.

4. Review, Publish, and Distribute

The final steps ensure your SOP is ready for use.

1. Final Review with Stakeholders: Share the draft (e.g., as a PDF or editable link) with relevant team members or SMEs for their final approval. This ensures buy-in and catches any overlooked details.
2. Export and Integrate: Once approved, export your SOP in the desired format (e.g., PDF for distribution, Markdown for your knowledge base, or a direct integration if ProcessReel offers it).
3. Publish: Upload the SOP to your company's knowledge management system, intranet, or learning management system (LMS).
4. Announce and Distribute: Inform relevant teams of the new or updated SOP and provide clear instructions on where to access it.
5. Schedule Regular Reviews: Establish a schedule for periodic review and updates to ensure the SOP remains current. When updates are needed, simply record the revised process with ProcessReel again, edit, and publish.

By following these steps, you can drastically reduce the time and resources traditionally spent on creating high-quality, actionable SOPs, focusing your human expertise on strategic refinement rather than laborious drafting.

Real-World Impact and ROI of AI-Powered SOPs

The shift to AI-powered SOP creation isn't just about technological novelty; it delivers tangible, measurable benefits across an organization. Let's look at some realistic scenarios and the return on investment (ROI) companies are seeing in 2026.

Scenario 1: Onboarding for a Software as a Service (SaaS) Company

• Company: "CloudCore Solutions," a mid-sized SaaS provider with 150 employees.
• Challenge: New sales representatives take 6-8 weeks to become fully proficient in using the CRM, sales enablement tools, and internal communication platforms. Manual SOPs were text-heavy, outdated, and rarely used. Training involved extensive 1:1 shadowing.
• AI Solution: Implemented ProcessReel to document 30 core sales and customer success processes (e.g., "Adding a New Lead in Salesforce," "Generating a Quote in HubSpot," "Logging a Support Ticket in Zendesk").
• Results After 6 Months:
  • Time Savings (SOP Creation): Reduced documentation time by approximately 75%. An SOP that previously took 25 hours to draft, review, and format now takes about 6 hours (1 hour recording, 5 hours AI refinement/review). This freed up 19 hours per SOP for experienced sales leads.
  • Onboarding Time Reduction: New sales reps reached full productivity in 3-4 weeks, cutting onboarding time by 50%.
  • Training Cost Reduction: Estimated savings of $1,500 per new hire by reducing trainer time and accelerating revenue generation. With 10 new hires per quarter, this translates to $60,000 annually.
  • Error Rate Reduction: Reduced common data entry errors in the CRM by 20% within the first month of new hires, thanks to clearer, visual SOPs.

Scenario 2: Process Documentation for a Manufacturing Operations Team

• Company: "Precision Robotics Inc.," a manufacturer of specialized industrial robots.
• Challenge: Documenting complex assembly and quality assurance procedures for new product lines was slow, often delaying production. Existing documentation was prone to misinterpretation due to poor visuals and inconsistent language.
• AI Solution: Utilized AI to create visual, step-by-step assembly guides and QA checklists directly from technician screen recordings of CAD software and simulated test environments.
• Results After 1 Year:
  • Faster Product Launch: Reduced the documentation phase for new product line procedures by 60%, shaving off 2 weeks from the overall product launch schedule.
  • Reduced Rework: Experienced a 15% decrease in assembly errors and reworks on complex components due to crystal-clear visual instructions, saving an estimated $25,000 annually in material and labor.
  • Improved Compliance Audits: During a recent ISO 9001 audit, the readily available, up-to-date, and consistently formatted SOPs led to a smoother audit process with zero non-conformances related to documentation. For operations managers seeking to build a robust documentation strategy, these tools are invaluable. You can explore this further in The Operations Manager's Strategic Blueprint: A 2026 Guide to Masterful Process Documentation.

Scenario 3: Startup Scaling and Knowledge Transfer for a Tech Founder

• Company: "InnovateFlow," a fast-growing tech startup with 30 employees, rapidly expanding to 100.
• Challenge: The founder held critical operational knowledge for dozens of processes (e.g., "Setting up a New Project in Jira," "Onboarding a New Client in Stripe," "Managing AWS Resource Permissions"). This was a significant bottleneck for delegation and scalability.
• AI Solution: The founder used ProcessReel to record themselves performing these critical tasks, narrating their thought process and actions.
• Results After 9 Months:
  • Founder Time Reclaimed: The founder documented 40 core processes in about 40 hours of recording and light editing, rather than an estimated 160-200 hours of manual writing or training sessions. This freed up 120-160 hours for strategic initiatives.
  • Accelerated Delegation: Critical operational processes were delegated to new hires within weeks, rather than months, allowing the startup to scale without the founder becoming a constant bottleneck.
  • Reduced Rework by Teams: Teams experienced a 10% reduction in "how-to" questions and errors related to these processes, as clear visual guides were available 24/7. This is particularly relevant for founders looking to solidify their processes for rapid expansion. A valuable resource on this is The Founder's Playbook: Extracting and Documenting Business Processes from Your Mind for Scalable Growth in 2026.

These examples demonstrate that AI for SOP creation isn't a futuristic concept; it's a proven solution delivering substantial ROI in time savings, cost reductions, error mitigation, and accelerated growth in 2026. The investment in an AI documentation tool quickly pays for itself through improved operational efficiency and reduced friction across the organization.

Addressing Common Concerns About AI in SOP Creation

While the benefits of using AI to write standard operating procedures are compelling, it's natural to have questions and concerns about implementing such a powerful technology.

1. Will AI Replace Human Writers and SMEs?

Answer: No. AI tools like ProcessReel are designed to augment human capabilities, not replace them. They automate the tedious, repetitive aspects of documentation: the initial drafting, screenshot capture, and basic formatting. This frees up human Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), operations managers, and technical writers to focus on higher-value tasks such as:

• Validation and Accuracy: Ensuring the AI-generated steps are truly correct and reflect best practices.
• Contextual Nuances: Adding critical warnings, "why" explanations, and strategic insights that AI alone cannot fully grasp.
• Strategic Planning: Identifying which processes need documentation, defining scope, and structuring the overall knowledge base.
• Continuous Improvement: Analyzing process performance and refining SOPs based on feedback and new insights.
• Interpersonal Communication: Conducting interviews for complex, non-screen-based processes that AI can't observe.

AI handles the "how-to" mechanics; humans provide the "why" and ensure the output is fit for purpose.

2. How Accurate Are AI-Generated SOPs?

Answer: The accuracy of AI-generated SOPs depends heavily on the quality of the input and the sophistication of the AI tool. For tools like ProcessReel that convert screen recordings with narration, the accuracy is remarkably high because the AI directly observes the actions.

• Screen Recordings: AI excels at identifying exact clicks, keystrokes, and UI interactions with high precision.
• Narration: Your voiceover provides crucial context, helping the AI generate more precise and human-readable descriptions for each step.

However, AI is not infallible. It might occasionally misinterpret a sequence, miss a subtle nuance, or generate text that isn't perfectly concise. This is precisely why the human review and editing phase (Step 3 in our ProcessReel guide) is non-negotiable. With a solid recording and a thorough human review, you can achieve 99% accuracy or higher in your final SOPs.

3. What About Data Security and Privacy, Especially with Screen Recordings?

Answer: Data security and privacy are paramount concerns, especially when dealing with screen recordings that might contain sensitive information. Reputable AI SOP tools prioritize these aspects:

• Local Processing Options: Some tools offer local processing, meaning your recording data never leaves your machine.
• Secure Cloud Infrastructure: If cloud-based, ensure the provider uses industry-standard encryption (in transit and at rest), robust access controls, and complies with relevant data protection regulations (e.g., GDPR, CCPA).
• Selective Recording: Tools typically allow you to record only specific windows or regions of your screen, helping you avoid capturing irrelevant or sensitive data from other applications.
• Data Redaction/Blurring: Advanced tools may offer features to automatically or manually redact or blur sensitive information (like passwords or PII) from screenshots or video before the SOP is finalized.
• Clear Policies: Always review the vendor's data security policies and privacy statements before committing to a tool.

It's also a best practice to use test data or dummy accounts when recording processes that handle highly sensitive information, whenever feasible.

4. What Types of Processes Are Best Suited for AI SOP Tools?

Answer: AI-powered SOP tools, especially those driven by screen recordings, are exceptionally well-suited for any process that involves digital interaction. This includes:

• Software Workflows: Any process performed within an application (CRM, ERP, project management tools, design software, accounting software, custom internal systems).
• Web-Based Processes: Navigating websites, filling out online forms, managing SaaS platforms, e-commerce operations.
• IT Support Procedures: Troubleshooting steps, software installations, system configurations.
• Data Entry and Management: Processes involving entering, updating, or extracting data from databases or spreadsheets.
• Onboarding Procedures: For new employees, clients, or vendors across various digital platforms.
• Compliance Procedures: Documenting steps to meet regulatory requirements within digital systems.

Processes that are purely physical (e.g., disassembling a physical machine, conducting a lab experiment without software interaction) or involve complex human judgment and interaction without a digital trace might still require traditional, human-led documentation methods, though AI could still assist with drafting accompanying text.

5. How Long Does It Take to Get Started with an AI SOP Tool?

Answer: The time to get started is remarkably fast, particularly with user-friendly tools like ProcessReel.

• Initial Setup: You can typically download and install an application or browser extension in minutes. Account creation is straightforward.
• Learning Curve: The interface for recording and basic editing is often intuitive. Most users can create their first usable SOP within 30-60 minutes of trying the tool, following a short tutorial or guide.
• First SOP: As outlined in our step-by-step guide, you can record a 5-10 minute process and have a comprehensive AI-generated draft ready for review within minutes of stopping the recording. The refinement process might take an hour or two depending on complexity.

Compared to the days or weeks required for traditional methods, the "time to value" with AI SOP tools is extremely short, allowing teams to become productive almost immediately.

Conclusion

The era of labor-intensive, often-neglected Standard Operating Procedures is rapidly drawing to a close. In 2026, artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept but a practical, powerful solution that is fundamentally redefining how businesses capture, document, and disseminate their operational knowledge. By automating the arduous tasks of information extraction, step generation, and visual documentation, AI tools like ProcessReel empower organizations to create accurate, consistent, and engaging SOPs at unprecedented speed.

From accelerating new hire onboarding and reducing costly errors to bolstering compliance and enabling scalable growth, the real-world impact and significant ROI of AI-powered SOPs are undeniable. The shift allows your most valuable human resources to move from tedious transcription to strategic refinement and continuous improvement, ensuring your documented processes are not just present, but truly effective.

Embrace the future of process documentation. Make AI your strategic partner in building a resilient, efficient, and well-documented organization.

Try ProcessReel free — 3 recordings/month, no credit card required.