Grace Williams·
Turned a rambling 25-minute screen-recording transcript into a numbered SOP a new hire followed the next day without asking a single question
Converts a rambling screen-recording transcript into a clean, numbered SOP with prerequisites, decision points, and failure handling.
SOP Writer From Messy Walkthrough Transcript
You are an operations documentation specialist. Convert the messy walkthrough transcript below into a Standard Operating Procedure that a brand-new hire can follow alone on their first day.
Transcript of the screen recording:
{{transcript}}
Tools involved: {{tools}}
Who will follow this SOP: {{audience}}
Conversion rules:
1. **Strip the noise.** Remove filler, backtracking ("oh wait, go back"), and tangents — but if the speaker corrects themselves, keep only the corrected version.
2. **Number every action.** One action per step. "Open the dashboard and export the report" is two steps.
3. **Make implicit knowledge explicit.** When the speaker says "you know where that is" or clicks something without naming it, infer the location from context and write it out. Mark inferred steps with (verify) so a reviewer can confirm.
4. **Capture decision points.** Any "if X then Y" buried in the rambling becomes a formatted decision block.
5. **Add the sections the speaker skipped:** Prerequisites (access, permissions, files needed), Expected duration, "How you know it worked" (verification), and "When to stop and ask" (escalation triggers with a named role, not a person).
Format: title, purpose (one sentence), prerequisites, numbered steps with decision blocks, verification, escalation. Keep total length under 600 words — a SOP nobody reads is not a SOP.
End with a list of every (verify) item so the process owner can confirm them in one pass.
Ergebnisse
# SOP: Weekly Supplier Invoice Processing
**Purpose:** Process all pending supplier invoices every Thursday so payments run Friday 10:00.
**Prerequisites:**
- Xero access with Bills permission (request via IT ticket, allow 1 day)
- Access to `#ap-invoices` Slack channel
- The current month's PO tracking sheet (pinned in the channel)
**Expected duration:** 30–45 minutes for a typical week (15–25 invoices).
## Steps
1. Open Xero → **Business → Bills to pay → Awaiting approval**.
2. Sort by due date, oldest first.
3. For each invoice, open the PO tracking sheet in a second tab. (verify: speaker had it bookmarked, path inferred from screen)
4. Match the invoice number to a PO row.
> **Decision:** PO exists and amounts match (within $5)?
> - **Yes** → continue to step 5.
> - **Amounts differ by more than $5** → do NOT approve. Post the invoice link in `#ap-invoices` tagging the PO owner. Move to the next invoice.
> - **No PO at all** → forward to the Ops Manager. Do not approve, even if the supplier is familiar.
5. Click **Approve** on the matched invoice.
6. In the tracking sheet, set the PO row status to `approved` and add today's date.
7. Repeat steps 3–6 until the Awaiting approval queue is empty.
8. Post a summary in `#ap-invoices`: number approved, number held, total value. (verify: speaker's example used a fixed format — "Approved 18 / Held 2 / $24,310")
## How you know it worked
- Awaiting approval queue shows zero, or every remaining invoice has a Slack thread explaining the hold.
- Tracking sheet has no PO in `pending` older than 7 days.
## When to stop and ask
- Any single invoice over $10,000 → Ops Manager approves personally, always.
- A supplier not in Xero at all → possible fraud pattern; escalate to Finance Lead before creating a contact.
- More than 5 mismatches in one run → something upstream broke; stop and escalate rather than working through them.
---
**(verify) items for process owner:**
1. Step 3 — confirm the tracking sheet location (inferred from bookmark).
2. Step 8 — confirm the summary format is required or just habit.
3. The $5 matching tolerance — speaker said "a few dollars"; $5 is my interpretation.
Modell: Claude Sonnet 4.6
41 Likes30 SavesScore: 29
2 Kommentare
Sofia Almeida·
The (verify) convention is brilliant — turns a guess into a reviewable item instead of a hidden landmine.
Julia Moser·
When to stop and ask with roles instead of names — that section is what makes SOPs survive people leaving.