Process vs procedure
- What one full attestation cycle costs
- $6,566.40
- Procedures in the register
- 48
- Signatures a full cycle needs
- 1152
- Hours of reading it asks for
- 172.79999999999998
Every figure printed on this site is arithmetic on the worked example we publish: a register of 48 procedures reviewed once a year at 2.5 hours each by a reviewer costing $55 an hour, 30% of it overdue today; and 12 processes with 4 procedures each, 60 staff of whom 40% are in scope for any one procedure, at 0.15 hours to read and sign, at $38 an hour. Change any of those on a worksheet and the numbers change with them. Nothing here is a market statistic and nothing is quoted from a third party.
These figures start from a worked example ($6,566.40). Put your own register in and the answer changes as you type.
Download the Process vs procedure worked example (CSV)
Process vs procedure is the distinction that decides how big your register should be, and getting it wrong in either direction is expensive. A process is something the organisation does end to end: onboard a customer, close a month. A procedure is one document telling one role how to do one part of it. Confusing the two produces either four enormous documents nobody reads or four hundred small ones nobody maintains. This worksheet sizes the register and prices the reading it asks of everybody.
Count processes first, then procedures under them
12 processes with 4 procedures each is the worked example, giving a register of 48. Starting from processes rather than from the documents you happen to have is what stops the register being a list of whatever somebody once wrote down.
Be honest about who a procedure applies to
40% of 60 staff is 24 people per procedure on the example. Sending every procedure to everybody feels safer and is worse: it multiplies the cost by two and a half and it teaches people that most of what arrives does not apply to them.
Read the per-procedure cost before publishing another one
1,152 signatures, 172.8 hours and $6,566.40 for a full cycle, which is $136.80 of the organisation's time for every procedure published. That figure is the one that stops a register growing for its own sake.
Where the constants in this tool come from
US National Archives, Records Management Policy.
OSHA 1910.1200, Hazard Communication: the written program requirement.
Process vs procedure: what people ask
What is the difference between a process and a procedure?
A process is what the organisation does end to end. A procedure is one document telling one role how to do one part of it. One process usually has several procedures under it.
How many procedures should a process have?
4 is the worked example and it is a reasonable starting shape: roughly one per role involved. If a process needs twenty, it is probably two or three processes.
Why price the reading?
Because attestation is a real cost carried by everybody rather than by the register owner, and it is the cost that makes sending everything to everybody a bad idea.
Sopvo Pro
Keeping the register, not just the answer
You have the number. Pro keeps the register it describes: every procedure, its owner, its version and who signed for it.
- Keep a copy on your own machine, not just in ours.
- No Sopvo mark on anything you hand to staff.
- Close the tab mid-review and come back to it exactly as it was.
- Your organisation's mark on every printed procedure.
- Every procedure, version and signature out in one file, in one click.
- A new version announced to the people it applies to, from the register.
- Not used here: Sopvo takes no payments on your behalf.
- Not used here: a procedure register has nothing to post to a ledger.
$49per month, whole team
Start Sopvo Pro PricingSopvo Pro is $49 a month and renews automatically each month at $49 until you cancel. There is no minimum term and the price does not change on renewal.