New report card template management best practice

I'm curious about what are some of the approaches out there with regard to managing the new report card templates. This is our 2nd year using the templates. We are a K-8 school using competency based grading. We have 3 grading periods for K-5 and four grading periods 6-8. We need 4 templates to cover our current report design needs (K-2, 3-4, 5, 6-8)

Going forward I'd like to establish a policy where each template is used for that entire school year and then retired. In contrast, using a template across school years would seem to run the risk that some future template change, purposeful or accidental, might clobber an old report card design. Is this a common approach that others are doing out there?

Now we're discussing adding some custom language at the top of the report cards that would be different for each grading period. This is going to expand the templates from 4 to 13 every school year. I have some concern about managing all these templates (65 in 5 years)! That seems like a lot but perhaps there are other schools taking this approach? Makes me wonder if there's a max on the number of templates you can have?

Derek Morton