We talk a lot about software documentation on this blog. But running a business requires much more than just software documentation. Documenting business processes is a simple investment that can pay big dividends. By establishing a simple system for capturing and retrieving your business process documentation you can really improve your organization.

Good process documentation has saved us literally 10’s of thousands of dollars by allowing us to do more with fewer employees. But sometimes people don’t know what to document. They think they only need to document “big” things or things that they do frequently. We have found the opposite to be true. The most important things to document are the little things we do infrequently.

Here are 10 examples of things we document that have saved us a lot of time:

1. How to file our quarterly or annual tax forms. A lot of this is done online. I don’t know about you, but our forms are a little cryptic. Documenting this process turned what was usually at least an hour of work into about 5 minutes. Also, I no longer procrastinate the job and thus avoid flirting with late fees.

2. Importing CSV files. About once a week we have to import CSV files from our marketing analytics software to our CRM software. Before the data can come across it needs a little “massaging”. Documenting this has cut a 15 min. process down to about 3 min. and also prevents me from having to deal with bad imports because of mistakes I made in the import process.

3. Issuing refunds. We have a 100% percent money back guarantee on all our products. Fortunately, our customers very rarely ever ask for a refund. But documenting this process for the few times that it does happen has allowed us to process refunds almost instantly. The customer may not have been happy with the product but at least they go away with a positive impression of our organization.

4. Accepting wire transfers. Some or our international customers pay via wire transfer. It happens infrequently but documenting the process means we can get them the information they need right away when that is the only payment option available.

5. Preparing invoices for special situations. Every so often we have invoices that we have to prepare that don’t fall into the standard categories we bill for. It might be some custom work or a special way a reseller needs to be invoiced.

6. Downloading banking transactions. Unfortunately, each of our banks and credit card companies has a slightly unique twist on downloading transactions into our accounting software. Documenting this process saves us time, but more importantly, it gives us less excuse to procrastinate this necessary but dull task.

7. Setting up webinars. Every couple of months we will do a webinar. Documenting how to set up a new webinar helps us focus more on creating great content than dealing with the mechanics of running a webinar.

8. Installing WordPress on our servers. Installing WordPress is pretty easy. But remembering the unique details of how to do it with our hosting company can be a little tricky. After documenting it once it is a breeze to do.

9. Configuring a new computer. Everybody likes getting a new computer right? But getting everything set up can be a pain. Documenting some of the custom settings that need to be made for your work environment or network will make sure that you can add a new system with a minimal amount of pain.

10. Renewing our SSL certificates. This only needs to be done once every couple of years but the instructions our certificate provider has on their site are not very helpful. Documenting this process makes sure we don’t mess up our SSL certs.

All of the items listed above are tasks that we only occasionally perform. Those are the most important processes to document because they are the processes that are hard to remember. Add a little more process documentation to your business and I promise you will see big improvements in productivity.