Business Templates

In short: Business templates are ready-made documents that help you stop paying for the same mistake twice, get know-how out of one person's head, and plan for the day something goes wrong. Each one is an editable Microsoft Word document, written by a C-suite executive of over 30 years for people who run businesses. Start with our SOP Template, $29, and get your most important job written down this week.

They are working documents, not slide decks or flyers: the procedures, plans, checklists and reports that keep a business running the same way every day, whoever is working that day.

Find the template for the job

• Do the work the same way every time: SOP Template, Skills Matrix Template and New Employee Onboarding Checklist. If the answer to "how do we do this?" is "ask Dave", start here.
• Stop problems coming back: Root Cause Analysis Template and Incident Report Template.
• Be ready for what could go wrong: Risk Register Template and Business Continuity Plan Template.
• Use AI safely: AI Policy Template. If your team already uses AI tools at work, set the rules before something goes wrong.
• Set the rules for your team: Employee Handbook Template. One handbook, one current version, signed for by every member of staff.

Why start from a template, not a blank page

Every growing business reaches the same point. The way things are done lives in people's heads, and it works, until someone is out sick, a new hire starts, or a customer asks to see how you handle something. Then it needs writing down, and writing well enough that people actually use it.

That's where most owners stall. A blank page eats a weekend you don't have, and the result often reads like a legal contract nobody opens twice. A good template does the thinking for you: the right sections, in the right order, and in most of ours a worked example to copy. You spend your time filling in your business, not inventing a format.

Written by someone who has run the business

These templates were written by a C-suite executive of over 30 years who built his own management systems to run his companies, including a care company with a nursing team of more than ninety and an aviation company under constant safety regulation.

That shows in the documents. Someone who has signed the paychecks writes differently from a committee. Every section has to earn its place, and the layout is built for the people doing the work, so they actually use it.

Two ways to start

Start free

Every template has a free Learn page that explains the job step by step, and many have a free printable version you can use today. No sign-up, no email. Browse them all in our management system skills Learn pages.

Get the full template

When you want the complete document to edit, keep and reuse, get the Word template, from $29. It downloads straight after purchase, and it's yours to keep.

Why free templates can end up costing more

You can find business templates online for nothing, and some are fine. But many free ones are written for big corporations and need heavy cutting before they fit a small business. Many are locked inside a tool you have to pay for before you can edit them. And many are so generic they describe nobody in particular.

The real cost isn't the download. It's the hours spent fixing it, and the mistakes that keep happening while the document sits half-finished.

Ready if you go for ISO 9001 later

You don't need ISO 9001 to use these templates. But if a big customer ever asks for it, the work you've already done counts: these documents fit right into an ISO 9001 quality system. See our ISO 9001 templates.

Frequently asked questions