Clear steps. Capable teams.

Answer privately after purchase. Preview questions for your industry here.

1. Which industry best describes your business?
2. What do you sell, to whom, and in which country/cities? Include business age and ownership structure.
3. Which departments and processes should this SOP cover? What is explicitly outside scope?
4. How many sites, staff, shifts and operating days are involved? Label the period and estimates.
5. List job roles, reporting lines and who performs, checks and approves each critical task. Use roles, not private names.
6. How does the owner oversee operations?
7. Which three recurring problems should improve first? Give a recent example and its consequence.
8. Walk through a real order from enquiry to delivery, payment and after-sales. Where does each handoff happen?
9. What happens at opening, shift handover and closing? What evidence is retained?
10. Who may approve purchases, discounts, refunds, credit and write-offs? State current limits and currency; mark missing rules.
11. How are cash, bank and mobile payments recorded and independently matched? Who reviews differences and when?
12. How do you select suppliers, approve orders, receive goods/services and match invoices before paying?
13. Do you hold stock, materials or customer property?
14. What makes an output acceptable? Give checks, reject criteria and who releases it.
15. How are complaints, returns, rework and late delivery logged, escalated and closed?
16. Which software, spreadsheets and paper forms are used? Who owns each record? Do not share passwords or keys.
17. How are permissions granted, reviewed and removed when staff change roles or leave? Who can change financial records?
18. How are people recruited, trained, scheduled and assessed? How are leave, overtime and payroll checked?
19. If a key person is absent for a week, who covers each task and what access/training is needed?
20. Describe known loss, fraud, safety or data incidents without identifying people. How were evidence and escalation handled?
21. What happens during internet/power failure, equipment breakdown or supply interruption? How are backups restored and tested?
22. Which figures do you currently track? Give source, period, units, baseline and owner; distinguish targets from actuals.
23. What licences, contracts, sector rules, labour, tax or safety requirements apply? List documents and dates; unknown is acceptable.
24. Which records must be kept, for how long, by whom and with what privacy restrictions? State the basis for any retention period.
25. Who will approve and pilot the SOP? What training time, implementation budget and deadline are available?
26. Who owns the master SOP, version log, review schedule and withdrawal of outdated copies?
27. Which anonymised forms, existing procedures, reports or process photos can you supply? Explain gaps and contradictions.
28. Optional operations walkthrough: add reviewed notes here and/or private audio below. Follow the chapter guide; mark unverified statements. (optional)
29. Explain receiving, storage, issue, counts, damage/expiry and adjustment approval. Who reconciles independently?
30. What may the deputy decide without the owner? What daily evidence, alerts and emergency fallback does the owner receive?
31. How do online/shop orders, COD collections, cancellations and returns reconcile?
32. How are SKU, price changes, packing checks and courier handovers controlled?
33. How are customer consent, promotional claims and account permissions checked?