Guides · Running the business
How to Write Standard Operating Procedures, One Task a Month
By Josh Croom · October 27, 2026 · 11 min read
To write a standard operating procedure, do the task while you talk it through, turn your notes into a numbered checklist, and test it on someone who has never done the job. Write one a month, starting with the task only one person knows, and in a year you'll have a training manual built from your real work.
The day payroll stalled
Thursday, 4:30 PM. The office manager at a small heating and air company runs payroll every other Thursday afternoon. This week she's home sick, and the owner is sitting at her desk with her login, a stack of timesheets and no idea which step comes first.
He calls her twice and texts her a photo of the screen, hoping she'll recognize what's wrong. Payroll goes out a day late, and two technicians ask him why their deposits didn't arrive. The steps weren't hard, but only she knew them, and nobody had written them down because there was never a slow week to do it.
Why the know-how needs a page
Employees leave, get sick and take time off, and the work has to keep moving while they're gone.
- 29%of our clients told us about a staff change in one yearsomeone leaving, retiring, going on leave or taking over
- 42%of job know-how belongs to one personin a 2018 survey of 1,001 U.S. office workers
- 0.8%of patients died after surgery, down from 1.5%once eight hospitals used a one-page checklist
What a standard operating procedure is
A standard operating procedure is the written way your business does one repeat task. It might cover closing out the month, opening the building on Sunday, sending invoices or setting up a new customer. Once it's written down, the task comes out the same way whoever does it.
A small team can skip the thick binder. Write a short checklist for each task, keep them all in one place, and put a name and a date on top of each one. A good SOP fits on a page or two, and a person can follow it with the task open on the screen beside it.
Find your first SOP with one question
Send every person on your team the same question. The tasks they mention are the ones that stall when they're away, which makes them the first procedures to write.
Quick question for a project: if you were out for two weeks, what would stop getting done?
Payroll, for sure. And the Monday supply order, because nobody else knows where the order sheet lives.
Perfect. Can I sit with you and record payroll next Thursday while you run it?
What goes in an SOP
Every standard operating procedure needs the same six parts. The first four sit at the top of the document, so a reader knows who to ask and whether the document is current before they begin.
| Part | What it says | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Task name | What the task is, in your own words | How we send the monthly invoices |
| Owner | The one person who keeps it current | Office manager |
| Last checked | The day someone last ran it start to finish | October 14 |
| Done looks like | How you know the task is finished | Every customer has an invoice and a sent email |
| Steps | One action per step, two to five minutes each | Open this month's billing sheet in the Finance folder |
| Where things live | Folders, forms and where each password is kept | The bank login is in the shared password manager |
How to write an SOP in 8 steps
This routine fits around real work. Most procedures take one session of doing the task, a few minutes with an AI tool and one short test with a person who's new to it.
Step 1
Pick one task
Start with the job your team repeats most often, or the one that only one person knows how to do. Ask yourself, "If (name) were out for two weeks, what wouldn't get done?" The first answer you hear becomes your first standard operating procedure.
Step 2
Talk it through while you do it
Record a voice memo while you work, or type notes as you go, and say every step out loud, including the ones that seem too small to mention. Leave out customer names, account numbers and anything else that's private.
Step 3
Turn it into a checklist with AI
Paste your notes into your AI tool along with the first prompt below. It turns a rambling voice memo into numbered steps within seconds, which takes the slowest part of writing off your plate.
Step 4
Answer its guesses
The prompt asks the AI to list every step where it had to guess. Correct each one in your own words, because a guess that looks right is the hardest mistake to catch once the procedure is in use.
Step 5
Test it cold
Hand the checklist to someone who has never done the task, and let them follow it while you watch without saying a word. Mark every spot where they stop or ask a question, rewrite those lines, and then test the procedure once more.
Step 6
Put a name and a date on top
Write down who owns the task and the date someone last checked the list. Update the procedure on the same day the task changes, so the written steps never drift away from the real work.
Step 7
Keep every SOP in one shared folder
Name each document "How we (do the task)" so anyone on your team can find it with a quick search. Over time, that folder turns into your training manual.
Step 8
Do one a month
Writing one procedure a month fits around a busy schedule, and after a year you'll have twelve of them. Add each new one to the training plan for your next hire, so their first weeks start with your real steps instead of guesswork.
The AI prompts to copy
Copy these into whatever AI tool your team already uses. Replace the part in parentheses with your own notes or your finished draft.
To build the checklist: Turn my notes below into a numbered checklist that a new employee could follow without help. Write it for someone smart who has never seen our business before. Give one action per step, and keep each step to about two to five minutes of work. Use our real words, including the actual folder names and form names. Never write "same as step 3"; write that step out again in full, because people often read steps out of order. Don't leave any blanks to fill in later. At the end, list every step where you had to guess. My notes: (paste)
To test it before a person does: Read this checklist as if you were a new hire on your first day. Which steps would leave you stuck, and what questions would you need to ask before you could finish? Here it is: (paste)
Never paste a password, a customer's name or private financial information into an AI tool. Write down where the password lives instead, and replace real names with a role, such as "the customer" or "the vendor."
A step that fails and a step that works
Here's the same invoice task written two ways. Only the version written while doing the task tells a new hire which folder to open and what to do about a late invoice.
Written from memory
- Do the invoices.
- Same as last month.
- Use your judgment on late ones.
- Log in to the bank with the usual password.
Written while doing it
- Open the Finance folder, then Billing, and open this month's sheet.
- Copy last month's tab and rename it with this month's date.
- If an invoice is more than 30 days late, call the customer before you send a reminder.
- Log in to the bank. The login lives in the shared password manager under Bank.
Mistakes that make an SOP useless
Each of these mistakes leaves a procedure sitting unused in the folder.
- Don't write a procedure from memory while sitting at your desk. Do the task while you talk it through, or you'll skip the steps you do without thinking about them.
- Avoid any step that says "use your judgment." If a step really takes judgment, write down how you decide, such as the dollar amount or the number of days that changes the answer.
- Don't try to write the whole manual in one weekend, because a rushed binder goes out of date quickly. One task a month is slow enough to turn into a habit.
- Never put a password in a checklist. Write down where the password lives instead, so the document stays safe to share with a new employee.
- Don't skip the cold test. A checklist that only its author has followed still carries the author's blind spots, and a new person often finds them on the first try.
Why checklists help even experts
In a study published in 2009, eight hospitals, each in a different city, began using a one-page surgery checklist with 19 items. Deaths after surgery fell from 1.5% of patients to 0.8%, and complications in the hospital after surgery fell from 11.0% to 7.0%. Those were trained surgeons, and the list still helped them.
Your tasks carry lower stakes, but the reason is the same. A checklist catches the step that a skilled person skips on a busy day, and it lets someone new do the work without calling the person who's home sick.
How to keep SOPs current
An outdated procedure can do more harm than having none at all, because people trust whatever is written down. Keep the owner's name and the last-checked date at the top, and update the document on the same day the task changes.
Twice a year, ask someone new to run each procedure without help. Any step where they stop is probably a step that changed, and it's quick to fix while the task is right in front of you.
Is your business one sick day from a stall?
Answer five quick questions. Your answers stay on your device.
Could someone else run payroll next week if the usual person were out?
Do your repeat tasks have written steps in one shared folder?
Does each written task show an owner and a last-checked date?
Has someone new followed each checklist without help?
Do your passwords live in one shared place, not in people's heads or notes?
Your business can handle a sick day without a stall. Keep testing each procedure with someone new twice a year, because tasks change faster than the documents that describe them.
You're partway there. Choose the task behind your first No and write it down this month, following the eight steps above from start to finish.
Start this week by asking your team one question: what would stop if you were out for two weeks? Whatever they name first is the procedure to write before anything else.
Your first SOP this month
Tick each one off as you go. Your ticks stay on this device.
0 of 8 done
Your marketing runs on repeat tasks, too
Calling back new leads, answering reviews and sending the monthly report to your board are all repeat tasks, and they stall the same way payroll does. When those steps are written down, a staff change doesn't stop the phone from getting answered. Our post on speed to lead lays out a callback routine worth writing down first, and our PPC audit checklist works as an SOP for checking a Google Ads account.
If you'd like help with the marketing side, book a call with Miguel. He'll ask how leads reach you today and which of those steps live in one person's head.
Questions people ask
What should a standard operating procedure include?
A standard operating procedure should include a task name, an owner, the date someone last checked it, and a description of what done looks like. Below that come numbered steps with one action each, plus a note on where the files, forms and passwords are stored.
How long should an SOP be?
It should be long enough that a new employee can finish the task without asking for help. For most small business tasks, that means a page or two, with each step taking about two to five minutes.
Can AI write an SOP for me?
AI can turn your spoken notes into a clean checklist in seconds, but it can't know your steps. Give it notes from doing the real task, and have it list every step it had to guess so you can fix them.
What's the difference between an SOP and a checklist?
A checklist is just the list of steps. A standard operating procedure is the checklist plus the details that keep it useful over time: who owns it, when someone last checked it, what done looks like and where everything lives.
How often should you update an SOP?
Update a procedure on the same day the task changes. Then, twice a year, have someone new test each one without help and rewrite any step where they get stuck.
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