Standard operating procedures template for small business

Standard operating procedures sound like something a bank has.

A binder. A compliance officer. A flowchart nobody reads.

For a small business it's smaller than that. It's one page per job, written in the words you'd use to explain it to a new starter on their first morning.

Here's the page. Copy it.

The one-page template

JOB NAME
  What this job is called, in plain words.

TRIGGER
  What has to happen for this job to start?

OWNER
  Who does it. One name, not "the team".

WHERE THINGS LIVE
  The file, the folder, the login, the price list. Exact locations.

STEPS
  1.
  2.
  3.
  (Stop at ten. More than ten means it's two jobs.)

WHAT GOOD LOOKS LIKE
  How you'd know, at a glance, it was done properly.

SIGN-OFF
  Who checks it before it reaches a customer.

WHEN IT GOES WRONG
  The two or three things that usually trip it up, and who to ask.

LAST REVIEWED
  Date, and who reviewed it.

That's the whole thing. Nine boxes.

A worked example

This one's illustrative, not a client's. It's the shape of a quoting job at a small trade business.

JOB NAME
  Send a quote

TRIGGER
  A customer asks for a price, by phone, email or the website form.

OWNER
  Sam

WHERE THINGS LIVE
  Price list: shared drive > Pricing > current price list
  Quote template: shared drive > Templates > Quote
  Past quotes: shared drive > Quotes > by year

STEPS
  1. Write down the job in the customer's own words.
  2. Check the price list for each item. Don't quote from memory.
  3. Fill in the quote template.
  4. Add the date the quote expires.
  5. Send it from the business email, not a personal one.
  6. Log it: customer, amount, date sent.

WHAT GOOD LOOKS LIKE
  Every line matches the price list. The expiry date is on it.
  It's in the log the same day it went out.

SIGN-OFF
  Sam sends anything under the usual job size.
  Anything larger goes past the owner first.

WHEN IT GOES WRONG
  Price list out of date: ask the owner before sending.
  Customer wants something not on the list: don't guess, ask.

LAST REVIEWED
  20 September 2026, by the owner

Which job to write down first

Not the most important one. The most interrupted one.

Pick the job where someone taps you on the shoulder to ask how it's done. Enquiries, quotes and invoices are the usual suspects.

Write that page. Then hand it to the person who asked, and watch where they get stuck. Fix the page, not the person.

Three ways these pages go wrong

Too long. If it runs to a second page, nobody opens it. Split the job.

Written by someone who doesn't do the job. The owner's version and the real version are rarely the same. Write it with whoever does it on a Tuesday.

Never reviewed. A page with last year's price list location is worse than no page. That's what the last box is for.

Where AI comes into it

It doesn't, yet.

AI can only do the repeat part of a job once the job is written down. Without the page, it's guessing. With the page, it has your steps, your price list and your sign-off rule to work from, and a person still checks the result.

So the page comes first. If you want help deciding which jobs are worth handing over after that, that's what our business process automation work covers.

Once the page is written, an AI consultant can tell you which steps software can take over.

Common questions about standard operating procedures

What's the difference between a standard operating procedure and a checklist?

A checklist is the steps. A standard operating procedure adds what starts the job, where the files are, what good looks like and who signs off. The checklist is one box on the page.