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Process flowchart examples you can copy

Each example below is a full process flowchart written as a plain list of steps — copy it, paste it into a text-to-flowchart tool and you have a diagram in seconds. Tweak the wording to match your team; the structure works out of the box.

The six examples cover the processes most teams end up charting first: fulfillment, onboarding, finance, support, editorial and sales. They deliberately include the unhappy paths — payment failures, backorders, disqualified leads — because a chart that shows only the happy path is a chart that will mislead its readers.

Order fulfillment

From a customer submitting an order to a package leaving the warehouse. Common in ecommerce and B2B fulfillment.

  1. Start — Customer submits order
  2. Validate order details
  3. Decision — Payment successful?
  4. No → Notify customer, end (payment failed)
  5. Yes → Check stock
  6. Decision — In stock?
  7. No → Create backorder, notify customer, end (backordered)
  8. Yes → Pick items in warehouse
  9. Pack and label package
  10. Hand off to carrier
  11. End — Send tracking email

Watch for the two end states — 'payment failed' and 'backordered' are outcomes, not errors. Charting them keeps the diagram honest and gives support a clear reference when customers ask why an order stalled.

Employee onboarding

From an offer accepted to a new hire fully set up on day one. Owned by People Ops with hand-offs to IT and the hiring manager.

  1. Start — Offer accepted
  2. HR sends welcome packet
  3. IT provisions laptop and accounts
  4. Manager schedules first-week meetings
  5. Decision — All accounts ready by start date?
  6. No → Escalate to IT lead, resolve blockers
  7. Yes → Day 1: office/remote setup
  8. Day 1: intro sessions with team
  9. Week 1: manager 1:1 and role expectations
  10. End — 30-day check-in complete

The IT-readiness decision is where onboarding most often breaks. Making it an explicit branch — instead of an implicit assumption — turns a recurring Day-1 fire drill into a scheduled escalation.

Invoice approval

From a supplier invoice arriving to being paid or rejected. Typical finance workflow with a routing decision by amount.

  1. Start — Invoice received
  2. AP clerk logs invoice
  3. Match against purchase order
  4. Decision — Match found?
  5. No → Query supplier, end (paused)
  6. Yes → Decision: amount over $5,000?
  7. No → Manager approval
  8. Yes → Manager + Finance director approval
  9. Schedule payment
  10. End — Invoice paid and archived

The amount threshold is a control, not just a routing rule. If auditors review this process, mark the two-approver step so it is clear which control the chart is enforcing.

Customer support ticket

From a customer submitting a ticket to it being resolved. Highlights triage and routing between support and engineering.

  1. Start — Customer submits ticket
  2. Support agent triages
  3. Decision — Is it a bug?
  4. No → Answer in-line, resolve ticket
  5. Yes → Reproduce internally
  6. Decision — Reproducible?
  7. No → Ask customer for details, wait
  8. Yes → Hand off to engineering
  9. Engineer fixes and deploys
  10. Support notifies customer
  11. End — Customer confirms resolution

The 'wait' state after asking the customer for details is a real step, not a gap. Charting it makes it obvious why tickets sit open — and prompts a conversation about auto-close policies.

Content publishing

From an idea in a backlog to a live blog post. Editorial workflow with review and SEO gates.

  1. Start — Idea approved in backlog
  2. Writer drafts article
  3. Editor reviews for structure and voice
  4. Decision — Ready to publish?
  5. No → Send revision notes to writer, return to draft
  6. Yes → SEO review (title, description, links)
  7. Designer adds cover image
  8. Schedule in CMS
  9. Publish
  10. End — Share on social channels

The revision loop back to 'draft' is deliberately a full loop, not a shortcut. Skipping the second editor pass is the most common way published posts end up with the wrong voice.

Inbound sales lead

From a prospect filling in a contact form to a signed contract. Highlights qualification, routing and the hand-off from marketing to sales.

  1. Start — Prospect submits contact form
  2. Marketing automation enriches lead
  3. Decision — Meets ICP criteria?
  4. No → Add to nurture sequence, end (nurture)
  5. Yes → Route to SDR queue
  6. SDR books discovery call
  7. Decision — Qualified after discovery?
  8. No → Disqualify with reason, end (disqualified)
  9. Yes → Hand off to Account Executive
  10. AE runs demo and scoping
  11. Send proposal
  12. Decision — Proposal accepted?
  13. No → Log lost reason, end (closed-lost)
  14. Yes → Send contract for signature
  15. End — Contract signed, notify onboarding

Three clean end states — nurture, disqualified and closed-lost — beat one vague 'no' branch. Sales ops needs each one tagged separately for reporting, and the chart is where that discipline starts.

How to adapt these to your team

  • Rename the roles so they match your org chart — "AE" might be "Sales rep" and "AP clerk" might be "Bookkeeper".
  • Prune steps you do not do. If you skip the second approval or do not have an SEO review, delete the line. A shorter honest chart beats a longer aspirational one.
  • Add the one or two exceptions specific to you. Every team has a weird branch — the VIP customer, the rush order, the compliance carve-out. If it happens monthly, it belongs on the chart.

People also ask

Can I combine two of these into one chart? Usually not — each of these processes is already at the one-page limit that keeps charts readable. Link them instead: end one with a reference to the next.

Are these BPMN-compliant? No, deliberately. They use the four standard shapes so anyone can read them without notation training. Convert to BPMN only if a downstream tool requires it.

Where do I put timing information? Add it inline in the step ("Day 1", "Within 24 hours") rather than as separate annotations. It keeps the chart self-contained.

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