Sample documents — worked examples, not client files

Sample documents — worked examples, not client work product. Patriot Landscape is a hypothetical operation; every figure is what the model projects.

Business documents · samples

The documents a business needs in writing.

Worked examples — every page below is a sample. The Patriot documents come from a worked example built on a hypothetical five-person landscaping operation, not a client engagement.

A client proposal, a crew SOP, an owner memo, and a service-agreement outline — shown as the one-page excerpts they are, so you can see the actual work instead of a description of it.

See the four samples Email about a document

Four page excerpts

The samples

Each sample is the first page of a real document type I write, with a note on what it is, when a business needs one, and what a finished version includes. Names are invented; the Patriot pages are the worked example.

The client proposal

A hypothetical deck builder wants a pricing tool. Before any work starts, the whole project fits on a few pages — this is page one.

Sample

Project proposal

Deck-Pricing Calculator

Prepared for
Ridgeline Decks Co. — a hypothetical client, invented for this sample
Prepared by
Jordan Florio · jordan@jordanflorio.com
Valid
30 days from the date of this proposal

The problem

Quoting a deck currently means an evening with a notepad and last year's material receipts. Two estimators price the same job differently, and nobody is certain the markup still covers what lumber and labor cost now.

Scope of work

  • A working session to map the real cost structure — framing and decking materials by tier, railing and stair options, crew labor, overhead, and target margin.
  • A web-based calculator built on that structure: enter footage, material tier, railing, stairs, and site factors — get an internal cost breakdown and a recommended price.
  • A customer-ready quote view that prints clean, with your logo and terms.

Deliverables

  • The hosted calculator — a link your team can open on any phone or laptop. You own it; no monthly software fee.
  • A one-page guide to updating the cost inputs when prices move.

Timeline & investment

A few weeks from scoping call to handoff, most of it the working draft and your two revision rounds. Fixed fee of (amount redacted in this sample), quoted before work begins — no hourly billing, no surprises.

Accepted — Ridgeline Decks Co. Date

Excerpt — page 1 of a short proposal. The full version adds assumptions, exclusions, and payment terms.

The one-page SOP

From the Patriot Landscape worked example — the checklist a crew lead runs before the truck leaves a finished job.

Sample · Worked example

Standard operating procedure

Crew Job Close-Out

Company
Patriot Landscape — hypothetical five-person operation (worked example)
Applies to
All field crews, every job, before leaving the site
Owner
Crew lead on site

Purpose

Every hour that never reaches the timesheet and every extra that never reaches the invoice disappears from job costing. This page closes the gap — five minutes, same steps, every job.

Before the truck leaves

  • Hours entered for every crew member — today, not Friday. Includes the owner's own hours when he worked the job.
  • Materials used recorded against this job, not "shop stock."
  • Extras flagged for billing — haul-away, extra cuts, anything the customer asked for on site. If it isn't written here, it gets done free.
  • Site walk done: gates closed, debris cleared, equipment counted onto the trailer.
  • Photos taken — finished work plus anything pre-existing you'd want on record.
  • Customer notified job is complete (door knock or text).
  • Anything unfinished or unusual noted for the office.
Crew lead Job # Date

Shown in full — a real SOP is one page on purpose. Longer processes get one page per role, not one longer page.

The executive memo

The owner summary that closes the Patriot worked example — the whole diagnostic on one page, written for a non-financial reader.

Sample · Worked example

Memorandum — owner summary

What the Job-Costing Model Found in the Numbers

To
Owner, Patriot Landscape — hypothetical operation (worked example)
From
Jordan Florio
Re
Job-costing diagnostic — one season of invoices, timesheets, and materials receipts

Situation

You draw $80,000 a year and call it profit. Once every cost is booked — including your own field hours — the model puts true owner return at −$30,391. Nothing in your software is looking for that difference. Three findings explain almost all of it.

Findings

  1. Every maintenance visit loses money. A standard mow bills $70–$75 against a modelled delivery cost of $91.74. Across roughly $420,000 of maintenance revenue, the model projects $51,660 a year in gross losses.
  2. One HOA contract is the single worst account. Each $150 visit costs $244.64 to deliver — the model projects a $3,407 annual loss on that contract alone.
  3. Your own hours are invisible. 624 hours of your field work were never charged to any job — $21,840 at the $35/hr foreman rate, and most of the gap between the draw and the true return.

Recommendation

Reprice the three lines above. The model projects a swing from −$30,391 to +$110,645 — a $141,036 improvement — with the same five-person crew, no new hires, and no operational restructuring. Projected, not recovered: these are modelled outcomes, not client results.

Every dollar figure above is projected from the worked-example model — a hypothetical operation, not a client engagement.

The service-agreement outline

The skeleton of a small-service agreement — what a working draft covers before your attorney makes it enforceable.

Outline · Not legal advice

Service agreement — working outline

What the Agreement Covers

Status
Business draft for attorney review — not legal advice, and not a contract until your attorney says it is
  1. Parties & engagement. Who is hiring whom, for what, starting when.
  2. Scope & deliverables. Exactly what is included — and, just as loudly, what is not.
  3. Fee & payment schedule. The fixed price, when each portion is due, and what happens when payment is late.
  4. Revisions & changes. How many rounds are included; how out-of-scope requests get priced instead of absorbed.
  5. Timeline. Key dates, and what pauses the clock — like waiting on client materials.
  6. Ownership of work product. Who owns the deliverables when the invoice is paid.
  7. Confidentiality. What each side keeps private, and for how long.
  8. Termination. How either side exits cleanly, and what gets paid for work already done.
  9. General terms. Governing law, notices, and the boilerplate your attorney will actually write.

Outline only — the clause names and one-line notes. A working draft expands each into the terms of your specific engagement, then goes to your attorney.

How it works

Draft, review, final

Draft

A short call or email thread to get the facts — who it's for, what it needs to accomplish, what you already have. Then I write a complete working draft, not an outline for you to finish.

Review

You mark up anything that reads wrong or misses how your business actually works. Revision rounds are built into the fixed price — the draft moves until it's right.

Final

You get the finished document in the formats you'll use — ready to send, print, or hand to your attorney where legal review applies. You own it outright.

Timeline: most single documents run from a few days to a couple of weeks, depending on the document and how many review rounds it takes to get right.

The service

Need one of these in writing?

Proposals, service agreements, SOPs, executive memos — the documents your business keeps meaning to write down. I draft them from how your operation actually works, in language your clients and crew can read.

$500–$2,500

Fixed price per document or set, quoted before work begins.

Email about a document See all services The $1,500 diagnostic

Every document on this page is a sample. Patriot Landscape is a worked example built on a hypothetical five-person landscaping operation — not a client — and every dollar figure in the memo is what the model projects, not a client result. Ridgeline Decks Co. is likewise invented; every name on this page is.

The service-agreement outline is a business document, not legal advice. Where a document has legal effect, my draft is the working version — the reviewed document goes to your attorney to finalize.