Write down how your business actually works

The problem

In most small businesses the operating knowledge is not written down. How the month-end runs, which supplier to call when the usual one is out, the exceptions for the two large customers, why the process has a strange step that turns out to matter. It sits with whoever has been there longest.

That works until it does not. Someone goes on holiday and a routine job becomes an emergency. Someone leaves and takes a decade of context with them. You want to delegate and cannot, because handing over a task means explaining it live, and it is quicker to do it yourself. That reasoning is correct every single time and compounds into a business that cannot grow past its founder.

The reason it stays unwritten is simple: documenting is work with no visible payoff today, and it competes with work that has one.

What AI can actually do here

The genuine change is that documenting no longer requires writing.

Record yourself doing the task once while narrating. The transcript is produced automatically, and AI summaries turn it into titles, chapters and a written outline. What was a two-hour writing job becomes a five-minute recording plus a tidy-up. That is the difference between documentation that exists and documentation that is always next month.

Search across the result is the other half. Written knowledge nobody can find is only marginally better than knowledge in someone’s head, and video is worse than text for this unless it is transcribed. Transcription makes recordings searchable, which is what turns a pile of videos into a reference.

Where a model helps further: drafting a first version of a process description from a recording or from notes, which you then correct. Correcting a wrong draft is far easier than facing an empty page, and that psychological difference is most of why this does not get done.

How the tools differ

Notion is where the written layer lives: pages, wikis and databases in one place. Free for individuals with limited blocks for workspaces of two or more members, Plus EUR 9.50 per seat per month, Business EUR 19.50, with up to 20% off annually. Notion AI is included in paid plans, and custom agents are free to try then $10 per 1,000 monthly credits.

Loom is the recording layer. Starter is free with 25 videos per person and 5 minute recordings; Business $18 per user per month billed annually removes both limits and raises quality to 4K; Business plus AI at $24 adds auto titles, summaries, chapters, tasks and edit by transcript. For process documentation the 5 minute cap on the free tier is the constraint you will hit first, and it is also a useful discipline.

Google Workspace is the storage and document floor most businesses already pay for. No free plan, with a 14-day trial. Business Starter is EUR 6.80 per user per month with 30 GB pooled per person, Standard EUR 13.60 with 2 TB, Business Plus EUR 21.10 with 5 TB, on annual billing which saves 16%.

If you already pay for one of these, start there rather than adding a tool. The barrier is the habit, not the software.

When you don't need a tool

If you are one person with no intention of hiring, document only what you would forget after six months away. Documenting for an audience of one is a hobby.

If nobody will maintain it, do not start a wiki. A stale process document that says the wrong thing causes more damage than no document, because people follow it.

For the specific case of a new starter, onboard a new employee without forgetting anything is the narrower version of this.