SOP Examples & Free Templates (Copy-Paste Ready)

A standard operating procedure (SOP) is a repeatable, step-by-step way to do a task — written so anyone on your team can follow it and get the same result. The best SOPs share the same simple anatomy:

• Title — what the procedure does, in plain words.
• Purpose & scope — why it exists and when to use it.
• Owner — who keeps it up to date.
• Steps — numbered, one action each, with a screenshot for anything visual.
• Last updated — so readers trust it's current.

That's the whole formula. The examples below follow it, and so does the free template.

Drop this into Notion, Google Docs, or Confluence and fill in the blanks:

Rather not fill in blanks by hand? Dyzo Owl builds this whole structure for you automatically — more on that at the end.

Purpose: get a new hire the accounts and access they need on day one, the same way every time.

1. Create their company email in Google Workspace.
2. Add them to Slack and the right channels.
3. Invite them to the project board (Asana, Trello, or Linear).
4. Share the team handbook and your SOP library.
5. Assign their first task and a buddy to check in.

Purpose: publish consistently so nothing — SEO, images, links — gets missed.

1. Paste the approved draft into the CMS.
2. Set the title tag, meta description, and URL slug.
3. Add the featured image and alt text.
4. Add internal links to 2–3 related posts.
5. Preview, publish, then submit the URL in Google Search Console.

Purpose: handle refunds identically every time, so customers and your books stay clean.

1. Open the order in your payment dashboard (Stripe or Shopify).
2. Confirm the refund reason against your policy.
3. Issue the refund and note the amount.
4. Email the customer with confirmation.
5. Tag the order so it shows up correctly in reporting.

Purpose: send a consistent weekly report without rebuilding it from scratch each time.

1. Pull traffic and rankings from GA4 and Search Console.
2. Update the report template with this week's numbers.
3. Write 2–3 sentences of plain-English commentary.
4. Export to PDF.
5. Send to the client and log it in the project board.

Run an agency? See Dyzo Owl for agencies for client-handover SOPs.

Writing SOPs by hand — clicking, screenshotting, pasting, captioning — is the slow way. The faster way is to record the task once and let the tool write the steps and capture the screenshots for you.

That's exactly what Dyzo Owl does: install the SOP Chrome extension, press Start, and do your task. Every click becomes a numbered step with a screenshot — across any tab or site. Then edit in the side panel, blur anything sensitive, and share a link. No template to fill in, no screenshots to paste.

Even faster: inside Dyzo Owl, click "Start from a template" on your dashboard to spin up a ready-made SOP — onboarding, client handoff, invoicing, incident response — then edit the steps or re-record them with the extension to add screenshots. Each guide also gets an owner, version, and review date so it stays current (more in keeping your SOPs updated).

Create a free account and turn your first process into an SOP in the next five minutes.