Business Process Examples: 30+ Processes Every Department Runs, With Steps and Owners

By Kirill Stolbushkin

Short answer: A business process is a repeatable set of steps, owned by someone, that turns a trigger into an outcome. Common business process examples are employee onboarding, invoice approval, purchase requisitions, lead routing, content approval, support escalation, access requests, contract approval, and work orders. Below are 31 examples grouped by department, each with an owner and the main steps.

People usually search for business process examples for one of two reasons: they need to explain what a process is, or they are about to write their own down. If you're about to document your own processes, start from a list. Here are 31, with owners and steps.

Found one that looks like something your team does? Type how your team actually runs it into the free AI process mapper and you get a diagram to react to. There's no account needed.

What is a business process? Definition and a simple example

A business process has five parts: a trigger that starts it, an owner accountable for the result, steps done by one or more people, decisions that change the path, and an end state. "Approve a vendor invoice" is a process. "Be good at finance" is not. If you can say what starts it and what done looks like, you can map it.

A time off request is about as simple as a business process gets:

1. An employee asks for specific days off.

2. The system or HR checks their remaining balance.

3. Their manager approves or declines.

4. The team calendar is updated.

5. Payroll is told, if the leave affects pay.

The 3 types of business processes, with examples

The three types of business processes are operational (core) processes that deliver to customers, support processes that serve internal teams, and management processes that plan and govern the work. In practice:

• Operational (core): a bakery baking and delivering bread, a consultancy running a client project.

• Support: recruiting, paying bills, giving a new starter system access.

• Management: setting the budget, quarterly planning, reviewing how people performed.

A process can change type with the business model, so treat the labels as a rough guide. Our guide to operational processes goes deeper on the distinction.

Business process examples by department at a glance

End-to-end processes: order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, hire-to-retire

Some processes are named for their start and end points, because they span several departments:

• Order-to-cash: sales, delivery, and billing working one customer order until the money is in.

• Procure-to-pay: buying something and paying for it. The steps are in our procurement process guide.

• Record-to-report: the accounting side, ending in the monthly numbers. See our guide to finance processes.

• Hire-to-retire: an employee's whole life at the company, from offer to last day. Onboarding and offboarding sit at either end.

• Quote-to-cash: like order-to-cash, but starting earlier, at the quote and discount approval.

The department examples below are the smaller processes inside these chains.

HR processes: onboarding, offboarding, time off, reviews

• Employee onboarding. Owner: HR. Steps: offer accepted, paperwork collected, equipment and access requested, first-week plan shared, check-in after 30 days.

• Employee offboarding. Owner: HR with IT. Steps: notice received, final pay calculated, access removed, equipment returned, exit interview.

• Time off requests. Owner: HR, approved by managers. Steps: employee picks dates, balance checked, manager approves or declines, calendar and payroll updated.

• Performance review cycle. Owner: HR. Steps: cycle opens, self reviews, manager reviews, calibration, conversations, outcomes recorded.

More in our post on HR onboarding, offboarding, and approvals. For example apps, see the employee onboarding use case, which coordinates parallel HR and IT tasks from offer to day one, and the time off request use case, a request and manager approval portal.

Finance processes: invoices, the close, expenses, collections

• Invoice approval. Owner: accounts payable. Steps: bill received, recorded, matched or sent to the spend owner, approved, scheduled for payment. See the invoice approval workflow.

• Month-end close. Owner: the controller. Steps: cutoff, accruals, reconciliations, review, reporting. See the month-end close process.

• Expense claims. Owner: finance, with managers signing off. Steps: employee files the claim and receipts, line manager OKs it, finance checks the policy, money goes back to the employee.

• Collections. Owner: accounts receivable. Steps: a customer misses the due date, gets a nudge, then a phone call, and someone decides whether to pause their account.

Procurement processes: requisitions, vendors, matching

• Purchase requisition. Owner: procurement or finance. Steps: someone fills in what they need, policy and budget checked, routed by amount, approved, passed to purchasing. See the purchase requisition approval process.

• Vendor onboarding. Owner: procurement. Steps: supplier details and documents collected, risk checks, payment details confirmed by a second person, vendor set up.

• Three-way match. Owner: accounts payable. Steps: purchase order, goods receipt, and invoice compared; differences resolved; invoice released for payment.

Sales processes: leads, discounts, handoffs

• Lead routing. Owner: sales operations. Steps: lead arrives, enriched and scored, assigned by territory or round robin, follow-up deadline set, reassigned if untouched.

• Quote and discount approval. Owner: sales leadership. Steps: rep drafts a quote, discounts above the rep's limit go to a manager, larger ones to finance, approved quote sent.

• Closed deal handoff. Owner: sales with delivery. Steps: deal marked won, handoff notes completed, delivery owner assigned, kickoff scheduled.

Marketing processes: content, campaigns, brand requests

• Content approval. Owner: marketing lead. Steps: draft written, edited, reviewed by a subject expert, legal check if claims are involved, approved, scheduled.

• Campaign launch. Owner: marketing operations. Steps: brief approved, assets produced, tracking set up, final check, launch, results reviewed.

• Brand asset request. Owner: design. Steps: brief and deadline sent in, prioritized, produced, reviewed by the requester, delivered.

Customer support processes: escalations, refunds, complaints

• Ticket escalation. Owner: support lead. Steps: issue cannot be solved at tier 1, escalated with context, specialist resolves, customer updated throughout. See the customer support escalation process.

• Refund request. Owner: support with finance. Steps: request checked against policy, approved within the frontline limit or sent up, refund issued, customer told.

• Complaint handling. Owner: support manager. Steps: complaint acknowledged, investigated by someone independent, response sent, outcome recorded.

All nine support processes are in our guide to customer service processes.

IT processes: access, changes, incidents, equipment

• Access request. Owner: IT. Steps: employee asks for a system, manager approves, system owner approves for sensitive systems, access granted, reviewed periodically.

• Change request. Owner: IT. Steps: change proposed, risk assessed, approved, scheduled, done, checked.

• Incident management. Owner: IT support. Steps: incident reported, severity set, assigned, resolved, root cause reviewed for major incidents.

• Equipment provisioning. Owner: IT. Steps: request or new hire trigger, device ordered or pulled from stock, set up, delivered, recorded against the person.

More in our post on IT incidents, change requests, and access.

Legal processes: contracts, NDAs, policies

• Contract approval. Owner: legal. Steps: contract requested, drafted or received, reviewed against standard terms, deviations approved, signed, stored with renewal dates.

• NDA request. Owner: legal or operations. Steps: counterparty details sent in, standard NDA sent, changes reviewed if any, signed.

• Policy update. Owner: legal or compliance. Steps: change drafted, reviewed by affected teams, approved, published, staff acknowledge it.

More in our post on legal and compliance workflows.

Operations processes: work orders, clients, orders, quality

• Work order. Owner: facilities or field service. Steps: something breaks, someone ranks how urgent it is, a technician gets the job, the fix is made and checked. See the work order process.

• Client onboarding. Owner: account management. Steps: contract signed, kickoff call, logins and intake forms, first deliverable. See the client onboarding process.

• Order fulfillment. Owner: customer operations. Steps: order accepted, goods picked or work booked, shipped or delivered, customer confirms, problems sorted out.

• Quality incident. Owner: quality or site lead. Steps: problem raised, impact judged, affected stock held, cause traced, fix verified.

What all 31 business process examples have in common

Most business processes share one pattern, in this order:

1. A request: someone asks for something, or a date or event kicks it off.

2. A check against a rule: a spend limit, a policy, a risk rating.

3. An approval: by someone with the authority to say yes.

4. A handoff: to whoever does the work.

5. A confirmation: that it is done, sent back to whoever asked.

What changes between departments is the rule and the approver: a spend limit in finance, a discount limit in sales, a risk rating in IT, a claims check in marketing. That is useful when you document your own. Once you have mapped one approval process well, the next one goes faster, because you already know the questions to ask. Who can approve, up to what limit, who covers when they are away, and what happens when the answer is no.

Business process examples by industry

Some processes only exist in certain industries. Property managers run tenant screening, rent collection, and lease renewals, covered in our guide to property management processes. Insurers run claims and policy changes, and healthcare services teams run patient intake and prior authorizations. The department lists above still apply inside those companies.

Which business processes to document first, by team size

1 to 49 employees

Most processes live in a few people's heads. Write down the ones that touch cash and customers first: invoice approval, expenses, refunds, and client onboarding. A paragraph per process is enough. A typical first one: the founder approves every refund, and writing the refund rule down is what lets someone else approve the routine ones. Our list of small business processes still done by hand goes deeper for this size.

50 to 249 employees

Departments form and handoffs multiply. Purchase requests, employee onboarding, access requests, and escalations need written rules with named owners, because the founder can no longer approve everything. A typical first one: new hires arrive without a laptop or system access because HR and IT each thought the other had it.

250 employees and up

The question becomes whether every team follows the same version. One reference map per process, saved as versions as it changes, keeps departments and offices aligned. A typical first one: two offices approve discounts with different limits, and nobody can say which limit is the real policy.

How to pick your first process to map

Pick the one that scores well on three questions:

• Does it run often? Weekly beats yearly.

• Does it cross teams? Handoffs are where time and information get lost.

• Does it cause pain when it goes wrong? Late payments, angry customers, security gaps.

For most companies under a few hundred people, that points to invoice approval, employee onboarding, purchase requests, or support escalation. Write the process down first, using the steps in our business process mapping guide. Automate only once the team agrees it is right.

To track whether it is working once it is written down, a few measures cover most processes: cycle time, how often it runs, the exception rate, and how much work gets sent back.

How to document a business process: employee onboarding worked example

Vevos is an AI-powered Playbook platform for operations leaders, team managers, and business analysts: describe a process in plain language or upload a document, and it generates a BPMN 2.0 process map and process documentation you can review, version, and export.

Vevos makes two kinds of Playbook: BPMN 2.0 maps for processes with steps and approvals, and Mind Maps for listing what each department runs before you map it. As the library grows, the Knowledge Base answers plain questions such as "who approves discounts above the rep's limit?" with links to the source process.

Here is employee onboarding, the first item on the HR list, taken from a paragraph to a reviewed map. Treat it as a sample scenario.

1. Write your version down. For example:

"When a candidate accepts an offer, HR sends the contract and collects tax and payroll forms. HR tells IT and the hiring manager the start date. IT orders a laptop and creates accounts at least three days before day one. The hiring manager writes a first-week plan. If the role needs building or site access, facilities issues a badge. On day one HR runs the welcome session and the manager runs the first one-to-one. After 30 days HR checks in with the new hire and the manager. If IT has not confirmed accounts three days before the start date, HR is reminded."

2. Get a first draft of the diagram. Put that text into the free AI process mapper and Vevos creates a BPMN 2.0 diagram and documentation from it. If the process lives in a document, slide, or recording, upload that in a free Intro account. The draft should show lanes for HR, IT, the hiring manager, and facilities; parallel paths for IT and facilities; a gateway for site access; and a timer for the three-day IT check.

3. Review it. Walk it with someone from HR, someone from IT, and a manager who hired recently. Test it against the last three new hires. Fix anything that does not fit, then save the version you agree on. If you want to see how the diagram itself works, our BPMN example post walks through one step by step, and our practical guide with examples covers drawing more complex ones.

4. Pick what happens after review. A clear, agreed map is often the whole goal. If the team wants an onboarding app instead of a chain of emails, Conductor Agents on the Tempo plan can build and deploy one based on the reviewed diagram.

Intro is free to start (250 Beats, one time, no card). From there, Pulse costs $9/month, Rhythm $29/month with room for 4 users, and Tempo, the plan with Conductor Agents, $199/month. See pricing for what each plan includes.

FAQ

What are examples of business processes?

Common business process examples include employee onboarding, time off requests, invoice approval, the month-end close, purchase requisitions, vendor onboarding, lead routing, discount approval, content approval, support escalation, refunds, access requests, change requests, contract approval, work orders, and client onboarding. Each one has a trigger, an owner, a few decisions, and a clear end state.

What are the 3 types of business processes?

The three types of business processes are operational, support, and management. Operational (core) processes deliver what customers pay for, such as order fulfillment. Support processes serve the organization, such as payroll and IT access. Management processes plan and measure the work, such as budgeting and performance reviews. A process can change type with the business model.

What are the core business processes in an organization?

Core business processes are the ones that deliver what customers pay for, such as producing and shipping goods, running a client project, or sending a technician out. They differ by business model: a manufacturer's core is production and shipping, while an agency's is client delivery. Finance, HR, and IT processes are usually support processes, though they matter just as much.

What is a simple example of a business process?

Approving a vendor invoice is a simple business process. A bill arrives, accounts payable records it, the person who ordered the goods confirms they arrived, the spend owner approves the bill, and it is paid on the next payment run. It has a trigger, an owner, a decision, and a clear end, which is what makes it a process.

What is the difference between a business process and a workflow?

A business process is the whole repeatable job, including its purpose, owner, rules, and outcome, such as employee onboarding. A workflow is the sequence of tasks and handoffs that moves one piece of work through it, such as the IT setup tasks inside onboarding. One process often contains several workflows, and people use the two words loosely.

What are end-to-end processes like order-to-cash and procure-to-pay?

End-to-end processes are named for where they start and finish, and they span several departments. Order-to-cash runs from a customer order to cash collected. Procure-to-pay runs from a purchase request to the supplier being paid. Hire-to-retire covers an employee from offer to last day. Each one contains smaller processes owned by different teams.

How do you document a business process?

To document a business process, write down its trigger, owner, steps, decisions, and end state in plain sentences. Then turn it into a diagram so the handoffs between people are visible, review it with the people who actually do the work, and save a new version whenever the process or the policy behind it changes.