Small Business Manual

An Owner's Manual provides fast, practical and direct advice and that's what you get with this book! The Small Business Owner's Manual is useful for newly.
Table of contents

Once these sections are complete I like to concentrate on the daily operations of the business. I start here because this is hopefully the first part of the business that you can start delegating to others. It may include ordering procedures, daily tasks that your manager must ensure is completed every day or anything else that is relevant to your business that needs to be done on a daily basis. As you can probably see by now, a written operations manual is made up of a series of short sections that are strung together to create a bigger manual.

How to Create an Operations Manual for Your Business (and Avoid Nuclear War) | Process Street

It's actually very easy to start creating one, just start with the sections outlined above and you will be on your way to having your own written plan for your business. Creating your operations manual. There is no easier way that I know of to create training guides than with Screen Steps. One of the biggest headaches in creating a training manual is inserting screenshots and images, if you use Microsoft Word you know what I'm talking about. Having to take a screenshot, download the image, insert it in the document and then re-size it is a major pain and consumes a lot of time.

Screen Steps is the reason that I actually enjoy creating how-to guides for this blog. Hosting your operations manual online. I'm a fan of Google Apps and use it for all of my businesses. What I do is upload the finished documents to my Google Docs account and then create a password protected intranet site using Google Sites to host the manual.

Both products come free with a Gmail or Google Apps account. I hope to come out with a video tutorial shortly outlining exactly how to set this up so stay tuned. After I upload each document, I print a copy to place it in a three-ring binder which is left in a spot where employees can easily reference it when needed. I use page inserts to keep the pages from tearing and use tabs for easy reference. I have outlined why and how to start creating your own operations manual for your business.

As you can see it's easy to get started, you just have to start. Making it relevant to your business and employees is the key. Your operations manual will never be complete, it will always need revising so don't think of it as something you need to do all at once. Figure out a way so all employees have access to it and it becomes a regular part of their day to day operations.

While having a printed manual available is important, a digital version your employees can access is also important. When you find things that work for your business, take the time to write them down and add them to your manual a little at a time. I usually take a few hours quarterly to update and revise my manual. If you have questions about getting started, you can contact me here. This was a really helpful post!

Even before your business really starts to grow, it helps keep you on track with daily operations. Having a plan and keeping yourself organized while you are small is the key to remaining that way as you grow. Thanks for the comment! I do not own a business so I do not need this information. However, it sounds very helpful. Great ideas and really helpful post, thanks! Growing in scale can really really be a problem for some companies! Thanks for the comments Sabina, every business needs some sort of written plan if they want to scale their business beyond a single owner.

This has been a very helpful post. We opened our store one year ago, and I am beginning to write our operations manual right now. I feel like the manual is a natural second step after writing a business plan. Thank you for your help! Thanks for the comments Dorothy. Creating an operations manual takes alot of time and patience. Thanks, I want to start this using a wiki type of format on something like google sites so we can have install procedures documented, how to handle situations etc.

You of course will have to organize the links in the format of an operations manual and will use contextual links text describing the topic instead of inserting the actual url of the document. This method will make it easy to view the entire document on a single page and be able to click on each individual section instead of having to scroll through the entire document to find something. This was very helpful! Two choices that I would look at is to hire a college student to help transcribe for you.

Or to go to a freelance site like Odesk or Elance and hire someone who is familiar with process documentation. The tool listed in the article, Screensteps is a great tool to use for creating an operations manual. Message me if you have any questions. These can cover, among many areas of work:. HSE guidance is also available in relation to a great many areas from agriculture to construction, and from laundries and dry cleaning to motor vehicle repair.

It is difficult to pick up a ready-made operations manual template because every business is different. That being said, here are some suggestions for you to consider, some of which will be readily adaptable to your particular business needs and others that will no doubt prompt you to think in the right direction. We hope this has given you food for thought and some sustenance in the shape of suggestions that you can adapt to suit your business needs.

A business plan is an essential prerequisite for any commercial venture.


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Whether you're launching an entirely new As you set up your business, you need to make sure you are prepared should anything go wrong. One of the most challenging tasks when you set up your own business is writing a business plan. Doing this is a one-way ticket to invite disaster once more, as your employees will be more likely to ignore your processes in favor of relying on memory.

What is an operations manual?

So, rather than invite a Third World War, make your operations manual detailed enough to be useful, but simple enough to follow without sending the reader to sleep. Your company and the general population will thank you for it. Have any horror stories from someone not following procedure? Let me know in the comments below.

Writing an Operations Manual for Your Small Business

Find him on Twitter here. Ben — That feels like a darn good start. Creating a culture like that could be the subject of its own behemoth of a post, but in general I think Michael Gerber highlights it nicely in the E-Myth. He says that the way to get your employees to used your processes and actually commit to the work you give them is to sell them on the vision and goals behind the company, and to engage them at their level. Ben, this is an awwwwwwwwwesome article.

I well remember spending months to create the manual regardless of its name only to have it out of date before I could get the printed copies to the right people. St, Clarify-it, and ScreenSteps for precisely this reason. Done and ready to go for everything and everyone.

Finding templates for policy and procedures manuals

How to save, what to document, etc. When I was running a tech support team, the rule was you always asked if they had the latest copy of the manual my first position doing this was in the days of printed stuff. If they had the latest, we would direct them to the right page, talk them through the steps, and made sure they understood. When I moved into consulting and business analysis, it became an entirely different environment.

So, in summary, leadership has to buy in and sign off first, then it becomes and educational process.

Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. What is an operations manual? Why is having one important? Processes are documented clearly One of the biggest advantages of having an operations manual is that it forces you to have fully documented processes for every task you do more than once. Everyone is accountable A major part of reducing human error is to making everyone accountable for their actions.

Important resources and processes are centralized You could document your processes, hierarchy, job descriptions, emergency procedures, and more all without creating an operations manual. What to include in your operations manual Much like with an employee handbook, the challenge here is to include enough detail in your operations manual to serve as a comprehensive knowledge base for your team, but not so much as to bore them into complacency. Job descriptions If the company hierarchy is a scannable chart, your job descriptions list is the information to back it up.

Contact details Here you need to provide contact details for everyone in your company, and those outside who are in close contact.