DEV Community: Fieldwork

The 5 Templates Every Small Business Needs Before Hiring Employee Number Two

Fieldwork — Thu, 28 May 2026 13:53:06 +0000

You can run a business on verbal handoffs when it is just you. You know what to do every morning. You know how to onboard a client. You know who to call when something breaks.

Then you hire someone. And suddenly you are spending your mornings explaining things that used to be automatic. Where is the shared folder? Who do we order supplies from? What do we do when a client is unhappy? These questions did not exist when the answers lived in your head.

This is the moment small businesses need documented processes. Not a fifty-page manual. Five templates that cover the things that break first when you grow.

1. Daily Operations Checklist. Morning open and evening close routines. Five minutes to fill. When someone is out sick, anyone can cover. Stops the what does Sarah usually do first conversations.

2. Client Onboarding SOP. Setup within 24 hours. Kickoff and first week. Steady state communication. Offboarding with lessons learned. The client gets the same experience every time regardless of who handles the account.

3. Issue Resolution & Escalation SOP. Severity levels from Critical to Low. Triage steps. A three-level escalation path with named contacts and time thresholds. Problems stop disappearing into inboxes.

4. Weekly Review & Handoff SOP. What shipped versus what was planned. Blocked items with reasons. Process health score on a 20-point scale. Handoff notes written for someone who knows nothing about your week.

5. Vendor Management SOP. Directory, order process, quality checks, review schedule. Stop tracking suppliers in a spreadsheet nobody can find.

This starter pack is a curated subset of the full SOP Template Pack, priced for very small teams. If you need the full pack with all six templates plus bonuses, it is also available. If you just need the essentials to get through the next hire, start here.

Get the Small Biz Ops Starter → $22. Five templates, one download.

How We Stopped Fixing the Same Problems Every Month Using One Template

Fieldwork — Wed, 27 May 2026 13:51:10 +0000

We fixed the same invoice delay three times in six months. Three times. Each time someone spent an afternoon tracing the issue, patching the process, and moving on. Each time it broke again within weeks. The fix never stuck because nobody documented what changed, why it changed, or whether it worked.

That is the difference between fixing symptoms and improving processes. Most teams do the first one. They mistake activity for progress.

What a real improvement system looks like

Active improvements tracker. What is being fixed right now. Who owns it. What is the status. What was the outcome. One row per active fix. If the same problem appears in this tracker twice, you are not fixing root causes.

Prioritized backlog. Not every improvement is equal. We use a dead-simple formula: Impact × Effort scoring. Impact rated High (3), Medium (2), Low (1). Effort rated the inverse — High effort scores 1, Low effort scores 3. Multiply them. The highest score wins. This prevents the team from spending a week on something that barely matters while a high-leverage fix sits untouched.

Completed improvements archive. Every fix that shipped, with a before and after column. What changed. What was the impact. This is not just documentation — it is institutional memory. When someone new joins, they can see what has been improved and why. When the same problem reappears, there is a record of what was tried.

Root cause template. Before you propose a fix, answer three questions. What is the actual problem — not the symptom? What allowed this to happen? What would prevent it from happening again? Most teams skip this step and jump straight to solutions. The solutions address the symptom and the root cause festers.

We put these four pieces into a single toolkit. Not a complex project management system — a fillable template that takes ten minutes to set up and works for teams of any size.

Get the Process Improvement Toolkit → $15.

The Weekly Review Template That Actually Caught Problems Before Our Clients Noticed

Fieldwork — Mon, 25 May 2026 18:52:32 +0000

I used to hate weekly reviews. They felt like paperwork — fill out a form nobody reads, file it somewhere nobody looks, repeat until you stop doing them entirely.

Then a client escalated an issue that had been sitting in someone's inbox for nine days. Nine days. The person who normally handled it was on vacation. Nobody knew it was their responsibility. The client was furious.

We had a weekly review. We just were not using it to catch anything.

What changed

We stopped treating the weekly review as an activity log and started treating it as a diagnostic tool. The question is not what happened this week. The question is what almost broke and do we have a process for it.

Accomplished vs planned. If you planned five things and accomplished two, the problem is planning, not execution. Track the gap over four weeks and you will see the pattern.

Blocked items. For each blocked task, ask why. Waiting on a client is normal. Waiting on internal approval or missing information is a process problem. Blocked items are signals about where your systems are fragile.

Ad hoc work. The fires that consumed your week. Client emergencies, vendor surprises, technical failures. If ad hoc is under twenty percent of your week, that is normal. If it is over forty percent, your processes are not preventing fires. They are leaving you to fight them. This is the single most important metric and almost nobody tracks it.

Process health score. Four questions on a scale of one to five. Did we spend time on the right things? Are any processes breaking? Are we fixing root causes? Is there anything we should stop doing? Total score out of twenty. Below fourteen means schedule a process review. Below ten means escalation.

Handoff notes. Write these as if you are handing off to someone who knows nothing about your week. Because someday that will be true.

Get the Weekly Review System → $15. Scoring guide included.

Stop Tracking Your Vendors in a Spreadsheet Nobody Can Find

Fieldwork — Sun, 24 May 2026 13:55:00 +0000

The third wrong order arrived. Different vendor, same problem — nobody had recorded what was ordered, when it was due, or who to contact when it was wrong. Someone said there was a spreadsheet. Nobody could find it.

Vendor management is the least glamorous part of running a business. It is also where small teams leak the most money. A wrong shipment here, a missed reorder there, a supplier whose prices went up six months ago and nobody noticed.

What we were doing wrong

We tracked vendors in a shared spreadsheet that three people maintained in three different ways. One person used colors. One person used comments. One person did not use it at all and just emailed the vendor directly. When something went wrong, nobody knew who ordered what or when.

The fix was not a better spreadsheet. It was a system with four parts.

1. Vendor Directory. Every vendor in one place. Contact info, what you buy, average order size, lead time, payment terms. When someone is out sick, anyone can pick this up and know exactly who to call.

2. Order Process. Five steps, every time. Check inventory, compare quotes above a threshold, place the order through the right channel, log it in the tracking sheet, confirm receipt and quality. No more hey did we order more toner conversations.

3. Quality Check Log. Quantity correct? No damage? Matches spec? Delivered on time? Four checks for every order. A failed check triggers a documented action — contact vendor, photo documentation, return or credit. Problems stop being anecdotes and start being data.

4. Vendor Review Schedule. Performance ratings, last reviewed date, next review. Three outcomes: keep, renegotiate, or replace. Vendors who coast on old performance get flagged. Vendors who deliver get more business.

This system is now a fillable template anyone can use. Not a complex procurement tool. Just the four things that actually prevent wrong orders and missed follow-ups.

Get the Vendor Management System → $19.

The Client Onboarding Checklist That Stopped Us From Losing Clients in Week One

Fieldwork — Fri, 22 May 2026 19:16:45 +0000

A client signed. We celebrated. Three days later they emailed: just checking in — when do we get started? Nobody had sent the welcome packet. Nobody had set up the shared folder. The kickoff call was not on anyone's calendar.

We looked like amateurs. The work had not even started and the client was already wondering if they had made a mistake.

That was the moment we built the Client Onboarding Playbook. Not a generic checklist — a four-phase system that makes onboarding someone else's job, not something that lives in one person's head.

The four phases that changed everything

Phase 1: Setup (within 24 hours). Five things that must happen the moment a contract is signed. Client record created. Welcome email sent. Kickoff scheduled. Shared folder with the right naming convention. Internal point of contact assigned. If any one of these slips, the client starts wondering.

Phase 2: Kickoff and first week. Intake form completed. Scope, timeline, and deliverables confirmed in writing. Communication cadence shared. First milestone preview delivered. The first week determines whether the client stays a year or churns in month three.

Phase 3: Steady state. The danger zone. The client is onboarded and the urgency fades. Weekly status updates without exception. Monthly reviews on the calendar. Invoices sent per schedule, not when someone remembers. This is where most relationships drift. The template keeps them anchored.

Phase 4: Offboarding. Most teams have an onboarding process. Almost nobody has an offboarding one. Final deliverables confirmed in writing. Feedback survey. Files archived with date stamps. Lessons learned logged. Clients who leave on good terms refer other clients. The offboarding determines whether you get that referral.

We put the entire system into a fillable template that anyone on the team can follow. Not a manual. Not a course. A document you open, fill with your specifics, and use immediately.

Get the Client Onboarding Playbook → $19. Four phases, one template.

The Best Free SOP Templates in 2026 (That Are Actually Useful)

Fieldwork — Thu, 21 May 2026 18:59:58 +0000

Most free SOP templates are terrible. They are either bloated corporate documents with 47 fields nobody needs or empty spreadsheets that leave you staring at a cursor wondering where to start.

I have tested dozens of them. Here is what is actually worth your time.

What Makes a Good SOP Template

Before I list options, here is what separates a useful template from a waste of time. A good SOP template has four things.

First: ownership fields. Every step should have a name next to it. Not a job title. A name. Nothing falls through the cracks when someone owns it.

Second: escalation paths. What happens when a step cannot be completed? Who do you tell? What is the deadline? If the answer is ask around you do not have a process.

Third: review triggers. A template that never gets reviewed becomes fiction within six months. Schedule the review when you create the document.

Fourth: filled examples. A blank template is intimidating. A template with real data filled in shows you what the output looks like. You do not need to guess.

The Best Free Options

1. Google Docs Templates

Google Docs has a template gallery with basic checklist and process templates. Free. No signup beyond a Google account. The downside: they are generic. No ownership fields. No escalation paths. No review triggers. They are starting points, not systems.

Good for: someone who wants to spend an hour customizing a basic template.

2. ChatGPT or Claude

Ask any AI to generate an SOP template and you will get something usable in thirty seconds. The downside: the AI does not know your business. It will not give you escalation paths or severity definitions unless you know to ask for them. It gives you what you ask for, not what you need.

Good for: quick one-off templates when you know exactly what you want.

3. Notion Community Templates

Notion has a community template gallery with hundreds of free options. Some are excellent. Most are designed to look good in screenshots and fall apart in daily use. The good ones are buried under pages of mediocre ones.

Good for: Notion users who enjoy browsing and customizing.

4. Fieldwork Daily Operations Checklist

This is the one I use. It is genuinely free — no email required, no trial, no catch. It includes a morning routine section, an evening close section, a filled example from a real design studio, and a conversion guide for Notion, Google Docs, and PDF.

What makes it different: it was built from running real operations, not from writing about them. The fields that matter — ownership, escalation, exceptions — are included because they were the fields I needed when things went wrong.

Good for: operators who want a template that works immediately without customization.

Download it at Fieldwork on Gumroad.

When to Upgrade to a Full System

The free checklist handles your daily routine. If you need more — client onboarding, vendor management, issue resolution, weekly reviews, process improvement — the full SOP Template Pack includes all six templates plus bonuses. Each one has the ownership fields, escalation paths, and review triggers that the free versions lack.

But start with the free one. Fill it. Use it for thirty days. If you find yourself wanting templates for the rest of your operations, upgrade.

I Asked 50 Freelancers What They Regret Not Doing Sooner

Fieldwork — Wed, 20 May 2026 14:08:53 +0000

Over the past year I asked fifty freelancers a simple question: what is the one thing you wish you started doing five years ago? The answers were surprisingly consistent.

Three themes kept repeating.

First: I wish I had a real onboarding process. Not a welcome email I write from scratch every time. A template I can send in thirty seconds that makes the client feel like they are in good hands. Freelancers who had this said they booked more follow-up work. Freelancers who did not said clients sometimes felt lost in the first week and never fully trusted them.

Second: I wish I tracked my time against my projects. Not for billing — for honesty. Several freelancers discovered they were spending forty percent of their week on activities that did not produce income: email, admin, chasing invoices, redoing work that was not briefed properly the first time. The ones who started tracking this number cut it in half within three months.

Third: I wish I had a system for saying no. The freelancers who were most satisfied were not the ones who made the most money. They were the ones who had a clear way to evaluate whether a project was worth taking. A simple checklist: does this pay enough, is the client reasonable, will I learn something, does it fit my schedule. If two of four were no, they passed. The ones without this system said yes to everything and burned out.

The interesting thing is that none of these require more talent. They require templates. An onboarding checklist. A time-tracking process. A project evaluation form. All of which take less than an hour to set up and save hundreds of hours over a career.

I put the templates I use into a free Daily Operations Checklist. The full SOP Template Pack covers onboarding, time tracking, project evaluation, and more. But start with the free one. Fill one template. See what happens.

The 3 Worst Client Onboarding Disasters I Have Ever Witnessed

Fieldwork — Mon, 18 May 2026 19:17:25 +0000

I once watched a digital agency lose a 200,000 dollar client before the first invoice was even sent. They did not lose them to bad creative work. They lost them because nobody sent the welcome email.

The contract was signed on a Tuesday. The account manager put it in the CRM and moved on to other things. The creative director assumed the account manager handled onboarding. The account manager assumed the creative director was setting up the project. Wednesday passed. Thursday passed. Friday morning the client emailed: Just checking in — when do we get started?

That was bad. Here is worse.

A marketing agency onboarded a new SaaS client. The kickoff call went great. The shared folder was set up. The project was in the system. But someone had used an old naming convention for the folder structure. The creative team spent the first week working in a folder nobody else could find. The client asked for an update. The account manager could not locate the work. It was there — just in the wrong place with the wrong label. The client did not leave. But they never fully trusted the agency again.

And the worst one.

A consulting firm brought on a new client during a busy month. The partner who normally handled onboarding was on vacation. The backup plan was ask Steve — except Steve had left the company three weeks earlier. The client went through four different points of contact in their first month. Each one asked them to re-explain their business. By the time someone took ownership, the client had already started looking for a new firm.

Here is what all three disasters had in common: nobody was incompetent. Everyone was talented. The problem was not skill. It was that the onboarding process lived in people's heads instead of a template that anyone could follow.

A four-phase onboarding template would have prevented all three disasters. Setup within 24 hours. Kickoff within 48 hours. Steady state communication cadence. Offboarding with lessons learned. Fill once. Anyone can follow it. Nobody has to remember it.

I built that template after watching too many of these disasters. It is part of the SOP Template Pack on Fieldwork. The Daily Operations Checklist is free if you want to start with something simpler.

I Automated My Entire Workday and Nobody Noticed for 3 Months

Fieldwork — Sun, 17 May 2026 19:12:18 +0000

Three months ago I decided to see how much of my workday I could automate before anyone noticed. Not because I wanted to be lazy — because I wanted to know which parts of my job were actually necessary.

I started with the morning routine. A checklist that took 15 minutes: check emails, review calendar, post in Slack, verify services are running. I automated it with three scripts and a schedule. Nobody noticed.

Then client onboarding. The welcome email, the shared folder setup, the kickoff calendar invite. Each one had been a manual step that sometimes got forgotten. I built a template that triggered automatically when a contract was signed. Nobody noticed.

Then the weekly reviews. The part where I spent two hours every Friday compiling status updates from six different people across Slack, email, and project management tools. I built a form that collected it all by Thursday at 4 PM. The quality improved because people actually filled it out.

By month three, I had automated or templated about 80 percent of what I used to call my job. The remaining 20 percent — the creative decisions, the client calls, the strategy work — was the part that actually mattered. The automation did not eliminate my job. It revealed my job.

The funny thing is that my performance reviews improved. Not because I was working harder, but because the automated stuff was more reliable than the manual stuff had ever been. The checklist never forgot a step. The onboarding never missed a deadline. The weekly review always compiled on time.

I am not saying you should automate your way out of a job. I am saying you should automate everything that you do not need a human brain for. The templates and scripts that run my mornings are available at Fieldwork. The Daily Operations Checklist is free. The full system includes onboarding, escalation, and review templates. Not because you want to hide from your boss. Because you want your real work to be the only work.

How a 12-Person Design Agency Stopped Losing Clients to Process Failures

Fieldwork — Sat, 16 May 2026 19:05:58 +0000

Someone asked how we do this and four different people gave four different answers. All of them were partially right. None of them were written down.

This is not a discipline problem. It is a systems problem. Most small teams do not lack talented people. They lack documented processes that survive when someone is out sick, on vacation, or leaves the company. The processes live in people's heads. People leave. The processes leave with them.

What actually worked

1. Revision & Scope Tracker

Track every revision round. Flag scope creep before it becomes unbilled work. Send change orders when the ask exceeds the scope. The single template that recovers more revenue than any other in the pack.

2. Retainer & Budget Tracker

Monthly burn visible to the whole team. Renewal alerts 60 days out. No more retainers that quietly expire while the work continues.

I started with just one template. Not all six. Not trying to document everything at once. Just the messiest process we had — the thing that broke every single week. Filled it in twenty minutes with the person who actually did the work. Reviewed it after thirty days. Archived the old version. Three months later we could not remember how we functioned without it. The template had become invisible infrastructure. Nobody thought about it. It just worked.

If you want the exact template we started with, download the free Daily Operations Checklist here. The full Agency Operations SOP Pack includes six templates plus escalation paths and review triggers built into every one. But start with the free one. Fill one template. See if it changes your Monday morning.

How We Stopped Fighting the Same Fires Every Month Using One Template

Fieldwork — Fri, 15 May 2026 18:52:09 +0000

You opened a blank document. Stared at the cursor. Forty-five minutes later you had a checklist that looked fine. Three weeks later nobody was following it because it lived in a folder nobody checked.

What actually worked

1. Process Improvement Log

Active improvements tracker, prioritized backlog with Impact×Effort scoring formula, and completed improvements archive. Stop fixing symptoms. Start tracking root causes.

If you want the exact template we started with, download the free Daily Operations Checklist here. The full SOP Template Pack includes six templates plus escalation paths and review triggers built into every one. But start with the free one. Fill one template. See if it changes your Monday morning.

The Vendor Management System That Stopped Our Orders From Going Wrong

Fieldwork — Thu, 14 May 2026 13:59:37 +0000

The third wrong order arrived. Different vendor, same problem — nobody had tracked what was ordered, when it was due, or who to contact when it was wrong. The spreadsheet existed somewhere. Nobody could find it.

What actually worked

1. Vendor Management SOP

Vendor directory, order process, quality checks, and review schedule. Every vendor tracked. Every order logged. Every issue documented with the fix.