The hard part of building an SOP library is not writing. It is choosing what to write first, because the list of things that could be documented is effectively infinite and the hours available are not. What follows is twelve documents in priority order, chosen by a method you can re-run on your own operation, with a free template for each one.
Every template linked below is readable in full on the page — the complete text, not a preview — with a PDF download, and none of them ask for an email address first. The links go to the UK documents; each of those pages carries a link to its US counterpart, and the jurisdiction question is settled near the end.
How do you decide which SOP to write first?
Score each candidate task on three things, then multiply rather than add:
- Frequency. How many times a week does this task actually run? Daily tasks compound small errors; annual tasks do not.
- Consequence.What does one bad execution cost — in money, in injury, in a regulator's inbox? Price the bad day, not the average one.
- Concentration. How many people could run this correctly tomorrow if the usual person did not turn up? One is a red flag. Zero, when that person has already left, is why you are reading this.
Multiplying matters because a high score on one factor does not earn documentation on its own. Making tea is high frequency and zero consequence. A five-yearly insurance renewal is high consequence and low frequency, and there is time to work it out from scratch. The tasks that win are the ones scoring on at least two axes, and the twelve below are grouped by which factor dominates.
The fastest version of this test.Walk the operation and write down every task where the honest answer to “who else could do this correctly tomorrow?” is one named person. That list is usually shorter than people expect and almost always contains your first five SOPs.
Why start from a template rather than a blank page?
Blank pages are where SOP projects die. Editing a document that already has the right structure — scope, responsibilities, the steps, what to record, what to do when it goes wrong — takes an afternoon. Writing that structure from memory takes weeks, and the first draft always misses the exception handling. Start from a template, delete what does not apply, and rewrite the steps in the words your team actually uses.
If nothing in the library matches your task, the free AI SOP generator drafts one from a plain description — three instructions free, no signup. And before you write any of them, the mechanics of a procedure people follow rather than file are in how to write an SOP your team will actually follow.
The four that run most often
Frequency dominates here. These run daily or on every shift, so a small ambiguity gets executed hundreds of times before anyone notices.
1. Staff training procedure
Write the meta-SOP first: the document that says how every other procedure gets assigned, taught, checked and re-briefed when it changes. Skip it and the other eleven become files nobody was accountable for reading. Start with the free training SOP template and assign it before you write anything else.
2. Opening and closing
Runs twice a day, every day, and it is the procedure most often held entirely in the head of whoever happens to be on shift. It is also where the alarm, the till, the refrigeration and the front door converge, so failures are immediate and expensive. Take the Opening & Closing Procedure and rewrite the steps in the order your building actually wakes up.
3. Cash handling
Frequency plus a fraud surface. A written float, count, banking and discrepancy routine does two jobs at once: it makes the money reconcile, and it protects honest staff from suspicion when it does not. The Cash Handling Procedure includes the discrepancy escalation most homemade versions leave out.
4. Food safety and hygiene
If your business handles food at any stage after primary production, this one is not optional. Food business operators must put in place, implement and maintain a permanent procedure or procedures based on the HACCP principles, and government guidance is explicit that you must keep records of your food safety systems, checks and how you have put things right. The Food Safety & Hygiene Procedure covers the UK regime; its US counterpart is built on the FDA Food Code instead.
The four where getting it wrong is most expensive
These run rarely. That is exactly the problem: the first time anyone needs the procedure is under pressure, and there is a statutory clock running.
5. Accident and incident reporting
Under RIDDOR regulation 4, where a person at work is incapacitated for routine work for more than seven consecutive days, the report must be sent as soon as practicable and in any event within 15 days of the accident. Nobody recalls that number while an ambulance is in the car park, which is why it belongs in a written procedure. Use the Accident & Incident Reporting procedure; the US counterpart is written around OSHA injury and illness reporting instead.
6. Fire evacuation
Lowest frequency on the list, highest consequence by a distance. In England and Wales, fire safety responsibilities require the responsible person to plan for an emergency and to provide staff with fire safety instruction and training — both of which need something written down to be provable. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own rules. The Fire Evacuation Procedure is the UK document; the US library carries the same job as an Emergency Action Plan.
7. Risk assessment
Regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires a suitable and sufficient assessment, and employers with five or more employees must record the significant findings. A procedure for how assessments get done, reviewed and re-run after an incident is what stops that record becoming a three-year-old PDF. The Risk Assessment Procedure covers the UK method; the closest thing in the US library is the Job Hazard Analysis.
8. Right to work checks
The check has to happen before employment starts, and as of September 2026 the civil penalty is up to £60,000 for each illegal worker. It runs on every single hire and is usually performed by whichever manager is in the building, which is the worst possible combination. The Right to Work Check Procedure handles the UK version; the US equivalent is built around Form I-9, where Section 2 must be completed within three business days of the date employment begins.
The four that live in one person's head
Concentration dominates here. These are moderate frequency and moderate consequence, but the knowledge sits with one person, and it walks out with them.
9. Customer complaint handling
Most teams have one manager who is genuinely good at this, and no written account of what they do. The value of documenting it is not the apology script — it is the thresholds: what a front-line member of staff can resolve alone, what gets escalated, and what has to be logged. The UK complaint handling procedure sets those limits explicitly.
10. Stock take and inventory
Monthly or quarterly is the cruellest frequency: often enough to matter, rarely enough that nobody remembers exactly how it was counted last time. Without a fixed method the variance is unexplainable, and an unexplainable variance is indistinguishable from theft. Start from the Stock Take & Inventory procedure and fix the method before the next count, not after it.
11. Data breach response
Article 33 of the UK GDPR requires notification to the ICO without undue delay and, where feasible, not later than 72 hours after becoming aware of a personal data breach — unless the breach is unlikely to result in a risk to people's rights and freedoms. Seventy-two hours is not enough time to invent a process, agree who decides whether that threshold is met, and find the regulator's form. The Data Breach Response Procedure names the roles before the clock starts.
12. Exit and leaver
Access revocation, asset return, final pay, and the handover of whatever only the leaver knows. It is last on this list and almost always missing, because writing it is unpleasant and it only runs when someone is already halfway out the door. The Exit & Leaver Procedure includes the knowledge-capture step, which is the part that pays for itself.
Do you need the UK or the US version?
The structure of a good procedure is the same in both. The law underneath it is not. The UK documents reference HSE, Acas, FSA and UK GDPR obligations; the US documents reference OSHA, the FDA Food Code, and federal employment verification. Picking the wrong one gives you a procedure that reads well and cites the wrong regulator.
If you operate in one country, take everything from the UK template library or the US library and stay consistent. Every UK template linked above also carries a link to its US twin at the top of its own page, so you can cross over from either side. If you operate in both, keep one set per entity rather than trying to write a single document that satisfies two regimes — that compromise usually satisfies neither.
Where should you start on Monday?
Do not start with document one on this list. Start by running the scoring exercise on your own operation for twenty minutes: list the tasks, mark the frequency, price the bad day, and count how many people could genuinely run each one tomorrow. Two or three will stand out immediately, and they will be the ones your team has been arguing about for months.
Then write those two, from the matching template, in the words the person doing the job would use. Assign them, check that they were understood rather than merely opened, and book the next two for the following week. Twelve procedures at two a week is six weeks, and the first two do most of the work. Every template above is free to read and download, and TrainedTeam is free for up to 5 users if you want somewhere to assign and track them once they exist.