What a written procedure looks like

The heading line carries three things and nothing else: a sheet number, the name of the routine, and the day it applies to. PROCEDURE 04 · CASHING UP, FRI is a complete heading.

The number exists so the sheet can be named on the phone. People say sheet four; they do not say the cashing-up procedure document.

The trigger names the moment the sheet starts applying. Till closed, door locked. Van back on the forecourt. Second delivery signed for.

Without a trigger a procedure is a description, and descriptions get read once. With a trigger it is an instruction that begins somewhere, and somebody can tell whether they are in it yet.

Triggers are observable events, never times of day, unless the clock genuinely is the trigger. Half past five is not a trigger if the shop sometimes shuts at six.

One action to a line, in the order it happens, written as an instruction. Print the Z read. Count the float out back. Lock the back door and keep the key on you.

No step explains itself. If a step needs a reason to be followed, the reason goes in the exception line or it goes nowhere.

Two words are kept off the step lines. Ensure, because it names a state and not an action. Regularly, because nobody can do it on a Friday.

A step that cannot be finished in one go is two steps. Splitting it costs a line and saves an argument.

The exception line names what goes wrong and what to do about it, in that order, on one line. Short by any amount: write the amount on the sheet.

It sits above the holder line so the last thing read before the name is the thing most likely to happen. People read the top and the bottom of a sheet; the exception should not be buried in the middle.

Where a routine has three known exceptions it gets three lines, and the sheet is still one side of A4 or the routine is split.

The holder is written as a role, not a person. Closing shift, counter. Whoever opens on Saturday. Roles survive a leaver; names do not.

Underneath the role, one deputy is named by role as well. A sheet with a role and no deputy is the single-point row described on the staff change sheet.

Where only the owner can hold a routine, the sheet says so plainly. That is a fact about the business, and writing it down is the first step to changing it.

At the foot: signed by, and the date signed. Until both are filled in, DRAFT sits across the heading line. An unsigned sheet is a proposal.

Lines deliberately left off

• Policy. A procedure says what to do; policy belongs in a different document with a different signature.
• Reasons. The reason a float is counted out back is not needed to count it out back.
• Figures that move. Amounts, rates and supplier terms go on the supplier comparison, which is replaced when it changes.
• Praise and blame. A sheet that says anything about how well a person does the routine stops being read by that person.

What is left off is as much a decision as what goes on, and it is the part owners argue with most. The argument is worth having once, on the read-back morning, in front of the sheet.