Stop 1 of 9 · Set once
The operating system
Four Projects with a named owner each, the team rules on the Team plan, and the full instruction set for Operations.
One Project was right last year
Nadia has eight people now. The single SOP Project she built a year ago still answers questions, and it is also where sales rules, warehouse rules, invoicing steps and interview questions now live together, with nobody responsible for any of it and half of it readable by the whole company.
The operating system is four Projects with a named owner each. The owner is the person who fixes the Project the week it gets something wrong. Without that, every Project you build is a snapshot that ages.
| Project | Owner | What lives in it |
|---|---|---|
| Sales | Dana, senior rep | Quote rules, CRM stage definitions, objection notes, the follow-up cadence |
| Operations | Marco, warehouse lead | Order intake, returns, the route, stock counts, supplier lead times |
| Finance | Nadia | The cash process, invoicing and collection steps, the month-end checklist |
| People | Nadia | Role scorecards, onboarding plans, the thirty-day check questions |
The four things that never go in
Staff pay, customer pricing, supplier terms and anything to do with the bank do not enter a chat. Not in the shared Projects, and not in the two Projects only you open either. Finance holds the process, not the numbers: how a collection call goes, not what Dr. Lee pays per box. When a chat needs a figure, it gets a range or a code, and the real number stays in QuickBooks where it is already access controlled.
A Project on the Team plan is one shared link away from somebody who should not see it, and pay is the thing a company never recovers from leaking.
The Operations instructions, in full
You answer operations questions for Nadia's dental-supply company, eight people, dental practices across Orange County. The people asking are Marco the warehouse lead, the driver, the operations coordinator and the customer service hire. Nadia is usually not available. Answer only from the files in this Project. Cite the file and the section you used at the end of every answer. Send anything about staff pay, customer pricing, supplier terms or the bank to Nadia and answer nothing yourself. If the files do not cover the question, say so, then draft the one-line question to send Nadia and mark it for Marco as the Project owner. If an answer would change a written rule, do not change the file. Write the proposed new wording, what it replaces, and who has to approve it. Order intake: nothing is packed without a PO or written confirmation. Equipment of any value goes to Nadia before it ships. Returns: 30 days, unopened, restocking applies once opened, nothing refrigerated comes back. Every return starts with a photo and the original order number. Route: the driver runs Tuesday and Thursday. Same-day inside 15 miles only, packed by 11am. Stock: anything under two weeks of cover is flagged in the Monday count, not reordered automatically. Tone: short and plain, six sentences at most. Give the step, then the exception.
Making the owners real
Here are the six questions the Operations Project answered wrongly or vaguely this week: [paste the six questions and the answers]. For each, tell me whether the problem is a missing file, a missing rule or a rule that says two things. Then write the exact instruction lines or file changes that would have produced the right answer, and show me the before and after wording only.
Here is my current single SOP Project instruction set: [paste your instructions]. Split it into four sets, for Sales, Operations, Finance and People. Anything about pay, customer pricing, supplier terms or the bank comes out of all four and goes into a list called Nadia only. Show me each set in full plus what you moved.