Documenting Back-Office Routines Before You Delegate
By CodexierPublished 5 min read
The reason many owners never manage to hand over admin is not that nobody could do it. It is that the routine exists only as habit, and explaining it takes longer than doing it. Writing routines down once turns them into something a colleague, an assistant or a back-office service can run without asking. This guide gives you a template that takes twenty minutes per routine and a method for choosing which ones to write first.
Pick the routines that repeat
For one week, note every admin task you do and how long it takes. Then sort by two questions: how often does it recur, and how much judgement does it need. Tasks that recur often and need little judgement, such as entering supplier invoices, sending reminders, updating the CRM after a job, preparing the accountant's monthly material or answering the same five customer questions, are the ones to document first. Tasks that need your judgement stay with you for now, though many of them turn out to have a routine core once you look.
Steps, screenshots and examples
A routine document is not a manual. It is the shortest text that lets someone competent produce the same result you do. The template we use has six parts, and most fit on one page.
| Part | What it contains | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Trigger | What starts the routine and when | Every Monday, or when an invoice arrives in the inbox |
| Inputs | What is needed before starting: access, files, information | Fortnox login, the supplier folder, the project list |
| Steps | Numbered actions, one per line, with a screenshot where the screen is unclear | Open the invoice, check the order number against the list, book it on the project |
| Result | What done looks like, concretely | Invoice booked with attachment, marked ready for approval |
| Exceptions | The situations that are not routine, and what to do | Missing order number: ask the project lead, do not book |
| Owner and contact | Who knows this routine best and how to reach them | Name, channel, expected response time |
Write the steps while doing the task, not from memory. Memory skips the parts you do without thinking, and those are exactly where a new person gets stuck.
Add one real worked example at the end: a completed invoice, a sent reminder, a finished report. People copy examples far more reliably than they follow instructions.
Exceptions and escalation
The steps handle the normal case; the exceptions section is what makes delegation safe. Most damage from delegated admin comes from someone applying the routine to a case it was not written for: a credit note booked as an invoice, a reminder sent to a customer in a dispute, a duplicate customer created. Write the exceptions as if-then lines and end each with a clear instruction: stop and ask, or handle it this way.
- List the cases you have actually seen go wrong in the past year; those are the exceptions that matter.
- For each, state whether the person should stop and ask or has authority to decide, and who to ask.
- Set a default: when unsure, stop and ask. Slower is cheaper than wrong in bookkeeping and customer contact.
- Note what data is sensitive in this routine and how to handle it, since GDPR applies to whoever performs the task.
Where the routine lives
A routine nobody can find is a routine nobody follows. Keep all of them in one place the whole team can reach: a shared folder, a wiki page, a Notion or SharePoint space, whichever you already use. One document per routine, named by what it does, with the date it was last checked at the top. Do not email routines as attachments; the moment there are two versions, the wrong one is in use. Link the routine from where the work happens when possible, such as a note in the accounting system or a pinned message in the team channel, and give the person doing the work permission to edit it, because they will find the gaps first.
Reviewing after handover
Hand over by having the new person run the routine from the document while you watch and say nothing. Every question they ask is a line missing from the document; add it then and there. After a month, review together: what took longer than expected, which exceptions came up that were not listed, what they would change. Update the document, then let it be. A quarterly check that the routine still matches the system and the process is enough afterwards. Drift is normal; undetected drift is the problem.
When you do not need this: a solo business with an hour of admin a week gains little from documentation and should keep the routines simple instead. When admin has grown into days a month, these documents are what our back-office and data entry support runs from, and a free call is a quick way to check which of your routines are ready to hand over. Hourly rates are on the pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
How detailed should a routine document be?
Detailed enough that a competent person unfamiliar with your company produces the same result, and no more. Assume they know the software basics but nothing about your customers, codes or preferences. If it exceeds two pages, the routine probably needs splitting or simplifying.
Should I record a video instead of writing?
A short screen recording is a good supplement for tasks with many clicks, but keep the written page as the master: it is searchable, easy to update one step at a time, and faster to check against. Videos go stale silently.
What if the routine changes every month?
Then it is not yet a routine, and delegating it will produce errors whatever you write. Stabilise it first, or delegate only the stable core and keep the changing part yourself until it settles.
Ready to hand over admin but not sure where to start?
Bring your list of recurring tasks. In fifteen minutes we can sort them by how ready they are to delegate, pick the first three to document and say what a back-office arrangement would look like.
Book a free 15-minute call