SOP Library and Review Register
Four documents and five sheets that turn the procedures you already hold into one library, naming which document is in force and what it replaced.
Free download · No account needed
Standard Operating Procedure
[Procedure title, as the people who do it say it]
| SOP ID | Short title plus number, on every page |
| Revision | Number and date the approval was signed |
| Owner | A named person, never a department |
| Supersedes | The revision this one replaces |
Short Title / ID · Rev. · Date · Page 1 of n
1. Purpose
What the procedure is for, in one sentence. Why it exists rather than what it does.
2. Scope
Where it applies and where it stops. The boundary matters more than the coverage: a procedure that claims every site and is followed at one is worse than a procedure that claims one.
6. Procedure
One action per numbered step, verb first, in the present tense. The step says who does it when the doer changes.
The title block does the governing
The four fields above are what let a person holding a printed page know whether it is still the page to follow. A procedure with no revision number and no supersedes line cannot be shown to have replaced anything.
9. Quality checks
How anyone tells the step was done right, in numbers where numbers exist.
A procedure library does not start empty. It starts with nine Word files, a Confluence space somebody stopped maintaining, two Google Docs carrying the same title, and a checklist pinned in a channel two years ago. The question was never how to format a procedure, which is twenty minutes and a house standard. It is which of the four documents describing the same task is the one people are supposed to follow, and nothing in the file dates or the folder names answers that.
So the register's hardest column is Status, and two of its values are the ones no free tracker carries. Contested means two documents describe this procedure and nobody has decided between them. Undocumented means the procedure runs every week, one person does it, and no document describes it at all. EPA's guidance on preparing standard operating procedures asks a master list to carry both status and the history of past versions, so superseded documents sit behind the one in force instead of being deleted.
Then the clock, which is what actually keeps a library alive. Three review events stay apart on purpose: a read that confirmed the procedure is still accurate, a revision that changed it and was re-approved, and a certification a regulation requires a named person to sign. Send River the folder and it reads every document in, names one in force per procedure, and starts the clock. Or take the Word documents and CSV sheets blank, next to the vendor renewal tracker and the rest of the template library.
What's in the pack
Source Inventory
One row per document found, transcribed exactly as found, with the procedure it describes recorded separately from the filename that describes nothing.
SOP Register
One row per procedure, naming the document in force, the ones behind it, and the statuses a blank form cannot hold: contested and undocumented. An undocumented one with a single holder is a recording away from a draft, which is what turning a walkthrough into an SOP produces.
Review Status
Reads, revisions and signed certifications tracked as three separate events, each against the interval that procedure actually earned.
Owner Assignment
Proposed owners with the evidence behind the proposal, held apart from owners who have confirmed it in writing.
Change Log
What moved and why, distinguishing a typo correction from a revision that changes what somebody has to do on the floor. A revision big enough to need its own announcement and adoption checkpoints is what the rollout kit handles instead.
SOP Format
The house format: the title block, the page control notation, and eleven sections that each answer a question somebody actually asks. It is also what a procedure written from scratch gets written into.
Writing Standard
One action per step, verb first, present tense, and the list of words to cut on sight. The same discipline governs the one page an operator works from at the machine, which gets versioned separately because it changes far more often than the procedure behind it.
What Decides Which Version Governs
The hierarchy of evidence, from an approval signature down to actual practice, with file timestamps ranked where they belong at the bottom. A request to deviate from the version in force belongs in the exception handling playbook instead of a rewrite.
Owner Handbook
What owning a procedure obliges you to do, and the difference between reading one, revising it, and certifying it.
How to use it
- 1
Open in River, or take it blank
Open the pack in River and hand it the procedures, or download the Word documents and CSV sheets and fill them in yourself.
- 2
Send everything you hold
Word files, a Confluence or Notion export, a Drive folder, the checklist in a pinned message, a recording of somebody doing the job. Duplicates and half-finished drafts are what you want in there.
- 3
Decide what is in force
Documents get grouped by the procedure they describe, not by folder. One is named in force, the rest go behind it as superseded, and anything undecided is marked contested with the question that settles it.
- 4
Start the clock and fill the gaps
Intervals get set per procedure, owners get proposed with the evidence, and the sweep each week names what is overdue, what needs a signature, and which procedures still have no document at all.
Frequently asked questions
Is this template free?
Yes. The zip is Word documents and CSV sheets, with no account and no card. Edit with AI is the optional half: the agent reads the procedures you already hold, fills the inventory, and works out what is in force. The other packs sit in the template library.
What format are the downloaded files?
Word (.docx) for the four documents, CSV (.csv) for the five sheets, zipped together. Excel, Numbers and Google Sheets open the sheets straight off the download, and the format documents open in Word or Pages. Nothing to convert, no proprietary format anywhere in it.
I already have forty SOPs in Confluence. Is that a problem?
That is the case it is built for. Every other SOP template starts from an empty form and assumes you have nothing. Send the export and each page lands in the Source Inventory as found, gets attributed to the procedure it describes, and only reaches the register once one document is named in force for it.
Will it pick the newest file as the current version?
No, and that is a space rule rather than a preference. A last-modified date changes when somebody opens a file and saves it, so it is evidence of nothing. Approval signatures, revision numbers and change records decide. Where none of them settles it, the procedure is marked contested and the question that would settle it is named.
How often should procedures be reviewed?
EPA's guidance describes systematic review every one to two years, and the pack sets the interval per procedure rather than one house default. A procedure resting on a vendor interface that changes without notice earns six months; a low-frequency task that has not moved in years does not earn twelve.
Does it handle regulated procedures that need signing off?
Yes, as its own review event. A covered process under the process safety management standard needs the employer to certify annually that the operating procedures are current and accurate, which is a signature by a named person rather than an internal read. The register carries the regime and the sweep asks for the signature.
What does 'Edit with AI' actually do?
It signs you up, installs this pack as a private workspace of your own, and puts the agent in front of empty sheets. Then you send procedures in whatever shape you have them: a Word file, a wiki export, a photograph of a laminated card by the machine, a recording of somebody talking through the job.
Name the document people are supposed to follow
Take the Word documents and CSV sheets blank, or open this exact pack in River and let it read the procedures you already hold.
Edit with AI