How to create standard operating procedures (SOPs) for your STR business

Category: Multi-Property & Scaling

By: Tony Russo

Posted: 2025-12-03T21:37:19.041Z

I'm scaling to property #4 and realizing I have everything in my head. When my cleaner asks a question or my VA encounters an unusual situation, they have to call me because nothing is documented. How do you create SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for an STR business? What processes should be documented? What format works best? I need to get the operations out of my head and into a system.

Reply by Nolan Peters:

SOPs transformed my business from "everything runs through me" to "everything runs without me." Here's how I approached it. I use Notion (free tier) with one page per process. Each SOP has a title, a trigger (when does this happen?), an owner (who does it?), the steps, decision trees for when things go sideways, and an escalation path for when to call me. Keeping it this structured sounds overkill but when you hand something to a VA or a cleaner, they need zero ambiguity. The processes you need to document first: guest check-in (lock code setup, welcome message timing, what to do when something goes wrong with access), guest complaint handling (what the VA resolves vs what gets escalated to you vs what's a "call 911" situation), guest checkout process (automated messages, review request timing, damage inspection), and review response protocol (templates for 5-star, 4-star, 3-star, and negative reviews, and which ones your VA handles vs which need your eyes). For turnovers: a room-by-room cleaning checklist with photos showing what "done right" looks like (I use Google Slides for this), a quality control inspection protocol for your lead cleaner, and a supply restocking process covering when to reorder, minimum quantities, where to order, and budget limits. Maintenance: emergency response decision tree (water leak, no heat, lockout, broken appliance — who to call and when), routine maintenance schedules (HVAC filters, hot tub chemicals, pest control), and repair authorization (my handyman can approve anything under $200 without calling me; above $200 needs my OK). Business: a new property onboarding SOP (keys to first guest in 14 days, step by step), financial reconciliation (weekly booking vs payout review, monthly P&L, quarterly tax prep). How to actually create these without losing your mind: don't try to write them all at once. Record yourself doing each task using Loom (free for 25 videos/month), narrate what you're doing and why, send the video to your team AND write up the numbered steps. Then every time something goes wrong, update the relevant SOP. Every problem improves a process. The time investment is maybe 20 hours to write the initial core SOPs. But it saves you 100+ hours per year in explaining things, putting out fires, and redoing work that got done wrong. For guest-facing templates to build your SOPs around, the message library at https://strspecialist.com/tools/message-library and the house manual generator at https://strspecialist.com/tools/house-manual-generator are good starting points.