7 Tools to Document Internal Processes in Your Startup

What’s your favorite platform for creating a custom wiki to document FAQs or internal processes, and why?

The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

1. Twiki

Twiki works on any Web browser, and it comes with a variety of plugins and apps. Best of all, it’s free. However, since it’s open source software, it doesn’t offer any tech support, but there are a variety of tutorials available to help with setup.

– Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance

2. Asana

Far from being just wiki, Asana has a built-in task management system, and it allows you to copy past projects. If you keep your processes set up as tasks and projects, you can save all of the how-tos and data right in Asana. Then, when it’s time to take on a similar task, just clone the project, and all the information is there.

– Nathalie Lussier, The Website Checkup Tool

3. Evernote

While it’s not properly wiki, my team uses Evernote for internal documentation. It’s got decent security built in, it’s easy to share and organize and there’s nothing tricky to learn in order for a new team member to get up to speed.

– Thursday Bram, Hyper Modern Consulting

4. Confluence

Atlassian’s Confluence is the best in the market for wikis. It’s accessibly priced, highly configurable and relatively easy to use. Most startups have 3-20 collaborative pages that drive things; getting a wiki is usually overkill at that point. Google Drive can be a great starting point, especially when combined with another hub, like Basecamp, which drives action. Start simple and stay action-focused.

– Charlie Gilkey, Productive Flourishing

5. GitHub

GitHub’s wiki works wonders for us. It co-exists with our codebase for easy access, and it is simple to export. Even better, everyone in our organization already has accounts and access, and they can easily grasp the markdown language.

– Robert J. Moore, RJMetrics

6. Basecamp

At ‘ZinePak, we use Basecamp to create, monitor and update internal processes. The templates make it easy to create new projects and keep track of updates across multiple collaborators. The amazing calendar is an added bonus. Basecamp has increased productivity and information sharing at least fivefold at our company. We’ve been using it for close to a year and would be lost without it.

– Brittany Hodak, ‘ZinePak

7. Google Drive

Google Drive is our favorite platform to keep track of documents outlining processes or FAQs. Google Drive syncs easily with desktops, keeping all the files up to date, and it backs up in the cloud for access anywhere, anytime. We also find it helpful to have a Google page as an internal wiki, which links to the most relevant documents to make it easier to find!

– Shradha Agarwal, ContextMedia