How to get the most out of Processly

Eight practical steps for turning a blank workspace into documentation your team trusts and keeps current.

1. Start with the structure, not the documents

The most common mistake is jumping straight into writing SOPs. Processly works best when you build in this order:

Spend your first 20 minutes on Departments (profile menu → Org structure). A new organization starts with Finance, HR, Travel Reimbursements and Leave Policy; rename them, remove what you don't need, and add your own, such as Operations, Sales or Engineering. Everything you document later hangs off this structure, so searching and browsing stay simple as you grow.

2. Bring your team in early

• Invite people before you assign work. Use Invite your team in the header, or invite someone directly while assigning an owner.
• Choose the role deliberately. Most people who write documentation should be Contributors; keep Admin for the one or two people who approve. Everyone else can be a Viewer.
• Assign owners. A department owner, a process owner and a policy owner are all optional, but a document without an owner tends not to get written.

3. Map processes at the right level

• A process is a top-level area of work, for example "Procure to Pay" or "Month-end Close". Give each process a department when you create it.
• A sub-process is a piece of that process that someone could be trained on separately, for example "Vendor onboarding" or "Invoice approval".
• Don't over-split. If two sub-processes always happen together and are owned by the same person, keep them as one.
• Not sure where to start? Use a starter template on an empty map and adapt it.
• Reorganizing later? In the left-hand pane, admins can drag a process or sub-process onto another department or onto another process. It takes the new department along with everything under it.

4. Write SOPs people will actually follow

• Be specific about who and what. In the steps table, name the role responsible and the system used for each step. "Finance team" is less useful than "AP executive, in the accounting system".
• Capture the controls. The Checks and controls table is where you record the risk, the control that covers it, whether it is preventive or detective, how often it runs and who owns it. Auditors will ask for exactly this.
• Add the flow chart. A simple picture of the process, uploaded to the SOP, helps new joiners more than any paragraph.
• Already have the SOP written up? Click Import SOP at the top of the form, paste the text or upload the Word, PDF or Excel file, and the AI sorts it into the sections of the form while keeping your wording. Import one document at a time, then review it before you save.
• Add time and roles. Give each step a TAT (how long it should take), describe who does what in Roles and responsibilities (RACI works well here), and record targets under KPIs, service levels and TATs.
• Link related documents. Add policies, forms and templates under Related documents, including Google Drive links.
• Contributors can start processes. A contributor sees a + Add process button for the departments they have access to, becomes the owner of what they add, and can add sub-processes under processes they own. Everything still goes to an admin for approval before it is published.
• Want a risk control matrix? Invite someone as a Risk Manager. They get a Risk & Controls section that copies the controls from published SOPs, lets them rate, edit and approve them, and flags it when an SOP changes. Nothing updates on its own, and nothing there changes the SOP. Only Risk Managers can see it.
• Keep the change log honest. Each time you revise an SOP, add a line saying what changed and why.

5. File policies where people will look for them

Policies are written the same way as SOPs and live under the same departments. Use a policy for rules (what is allowed, who can approve, limits and exceptions) and an SOP for how to carry something out. A travel policy says what is reimbursable; the travel-claim SOP says how to submit and approve a claim. Link the two by keeping them under the same department.

6. Use the approval workflow

Documents move through Draft → Submitted → Published. Owners write and submit; the owner of the department approves or sends it back with a comment. This covers every process, sub-process and policy filed under that department. If a department has no owner, or the owner submitted the item themselves, an admin approves instead. Every approval creates a numbered version you can look back at.

• Approvers (department owners, or admins when there is no owner): check the notification bell regularly for documents awaiting review, and always leave a specific comment when sending something back.
• Owners: don't edit a published document in place. Use Edit (new draft) so the live version stays intact until the new one is approved.

7. Share and export

• Published SOPs can be exported to Word, Excel, PDF or Markdown, one at a time or all together from the Export menu on the main page. If you need to keep documents inside the organization, an admin can turn off export, download, printing and copying for other members in Organization settings. Every export is logged.
• Admins can create a public link for a published SOP, useful for sharing with an auditor or a vendor. Turn it off whenever you no longer need it.
• Use Search (the magnifier in the header) to find any SOP or policy across the organization.

8. Habits that keep it alive

1. Review the Dashboard weekly: how many processes are published, what is awaiting review, who has the most open work.
2. Revisit each SOP and policy at least once a year, and whenever the underlying process, system or regulation changes.
3. When someone leaves or changes role, reassign their owned items the same week.
4. Make Processly the single source of truth: when someone asks "how do we do X?", send them the link rather than answering from memory.