Get it out of your head and onto one page.

A procedure that lives in your head is a procedure only you can follow. This builds one written SOP at a time: what starts it, the steps in order, who owns it, what “done right” actually means, what gets kept, and when you look at it again. Pick a starting template, choose your state, edit anything, and print it. Where your state has a requirement that touches the procedure and we hold a verified source for it, that goes in as a step with the source and the date we checked it beside it. Where we do not, it says so and sends you to the state's own authority rather than guessing.

1. Pick a starting point

Every template is fully editable once it loads. Start blank if none of them fits.

Procedure

Your state

Used only to add verified state requirements where they touch this procedure. Leave it unset and you still get the full SOP without that layer.

Company name

Printed at the top of the document. Optional.

Who owns this procedure

A role or a person. The one who is accountable for it happening, not everyone who touches it.

2. Fill in the skeleton

The template pre-fills all of it. Change whatever does not match how you actually work — a procedure describing somebody else's business is worse than none.

Procedure name

When it runs

The event that starts it. If you cannot name the trigger, nobody knows when to do this.

Steps, in order

One step per line. Write them as instructions somebody else could follow without asking you a question.

How you know it was done right

The completion standard. Something checkable, not "properly".

What gets kept, and where

One per line: the record, and the place it lives. We deliberately do not tell you how long to keep anything — see the note under the result.

Review date

When you read this again to see whether it still describes the business.

Version or date written

How to use this

What makes an SOP something people actually follow

Four things, and most written procedures are missing at least two of them. A trigger, so it is obvious when this applies. Ordered steps written as instructions rather than as description. A named owner, because a procedure everybody owns is one nobody owns. And a completion standard that can be checked by somebody other than the person who did it.

The fifth thing is honesty. Write what you actually do, not what you wish you did. A procedure describing an aspirational version of your business gets ignored inside a week, and then everything else written down gets ignored too.

What the state layer does and does not do

A handful of things inside a normal contracting procedure genuinely change at the state line: what you may collect upfront, lien and preliminary-notice deadlines, where your licence number has to appear, and cancellation-right language in a contract. Where your state has one of those recorded in our verified data, it goes into the SOP as a step, quoted from the source, with a link to that source and the date we last read it.

Where we do not hold a verified record, the SOP gets a step telling you to confirm it with your state's own authority, and it names that authority. It never carries a figure over from another state, and there is no default state anywhere in this tool. That is deliberate: a wrong number inside a procedure somebody operates from is far worse than a gap they can see.

Everything else in the SOP — how a job gets closed out, how a lead gets answered, what a follow-up sequence looks like — is the same in every state, which is why the skeleton is jurisdiction-neutral.

Why there is no retention period anywhere in this tool

How long you have to keep a given record can turn on tax, employment, licensing, contract, warranty, insurance, safety, and litigation requirements at the same time, and those do not agree with each other. Any single number we printed would be wrong for somebody in a way that mattered.

So the records section asks what is kept and where it lives, and stops there. The period is a question for your CPA, an attorney where you operate, your insurer, and anything your licensing board or your own contracts require. There is a free worksheet for recording the answers once you have them, and it does not fill any period in for you either.

Where to start if you have never written one

Job closeout, every time. It is the procedure whose absence costs the most and whose value is most obvious: it is the difference between being able to produce the whole file on a job from two years ago and hunting through a phone, a truck, and an inbox.

After that, write the one that most recently went wrong. A procedure written the week after a job went sideways gets followed, because everyone remembers why it exists.

Educational self-help information and document templates, not legal, tax, licensing, insurance, or accounting advice, and not a substitute for a professional. This page builds a document from what you type plus verified records we hold; it stores nothing and sends nothing. Requirements vary by state and by locality and they change. Nothing this tool produces determines what any law, regulator, insurer, or contract requires of your business, and holding a written procedure is not evidence of compliance with anything. Verify every requirement with the responsible authority or a qualified professional before you rely on it.