Why is this important?

Misalignment between the page numbers on the report's pages and the page numbering of a (PDF) viewer tool can lead to confusion or even misrepresentation of the data when extracted from the report.

Context:

Many digital tools, including many AI tools, treat the first page of a PDF as page 1 by default. If a company has a different approach and for instance considers page 1 to be the first page after the cover pages, that results in misalignment. 

Standardization, even for something seemingly minor like page numbers, is an important data hygiene practice. When data is extracted from a report, evidence of where that information was found in the report is gathered and stored with the data. When a report's page numbers do not match it can create confusion or even misrepresentation of the data.