Build Your Team's Knowledge Base: The Wiki

How much of your business lives only in someone's head?

In most businesses, far more than anyone admits. One person knows how to run the end-of-day report. Another knows the supplier's phone number, the cleaning routine for the espresso machine, or what to do when a customer asks for a refund. While those people are on shift, everything works. The day they are off, on holiday, or gone for good, the same questions start landing on the manager — again.

That constant asking has a measurable cost. Research by the McKinsey Global Institute found that employees spend almost a fifth of their working week — close to one full day — searching for internal information or tracking down a colleague who can help. For a small team, that is a serious amount of paid time spent asking instead of doing.

This article shows you how to fix that with the Handbook, Loopapa's built-in knowledge base. You will learn how to write procedures your team can actually find, organize them into categories, control exactly who can read what, and attach the right guide to any task you assign — so the answer lives in the app, not in someone's head.

Manager · today

M

How do we handle a refund again?

T

Where is the supplier contact list?

E

What goes into the closing checklist?

Handbook · Refunds & returns

Step-by-step procedure · visible to all staff

What is the Handbook in Loopapa?

The Handbook is Loopapa's built-in knowledge base — the place inside your workspace where every procedure, policy, and how-to lives as a structured article. Instead of a binder in the back office or a shared folder nobody opens, your procedures sit in the same app your team already uses for daily tasks and shifts — on the phone that is already in their pocket.

Each article is a proper document, not a sticky note. The built-in editor supports headings, numbered steps, lists, bold text, and media, so a cleaning routine or a returns policy reads the same way every time, for every employee. Articles are organized into categories, tagged for search, and marked as draft or published — you decide when a procedure is ready for the team to see.

You can write articles by hand, or skip the typing entirely: record your voice, snap a photo of an existing document, or upload a file, and Loopapa's AI turns it into a written procedure for you. Building your first Handbook takes hours, not weeks — and creating articles is available on every plan, including Free.

Handbook · new article

Espresso machine — daily cleaning

Cleaning & sanitation Equipment

Published Visible to your team

How do you create a Handbook article?

In four short steps, from any phone or computer. Admins can create articles out of the box, and the whole flow takes a few minutes per procedure.

1

Open the Handbook and start a new article

From your dashboard, open the Handbook and tap the plus button. A blank article opens with a title field and a full text editor.
2

Write the procedure — or let AI write it

Type the steps with headings, lists, and bold text, or record your voice, snap a photo, or upload a file and let the AI draft the article for you. You always review and edit before anything goes live.
3

Pick categories

File the article under one or more categories. Loopapa ships with 14 ready-made operational categories covering the routines most businesses run on, so your Handbook has a clear structure from day one.
4

Publish when it is ready

Keep the article as a draft while you polish it, then publish. The moment it goes live, it appears in the Handbook on every teammate's phone — no printing, no email attachments.

From idea to published

New article

Title + blank editor

Write or record

Type it, or voice / photo / file → AI

How do you keep a procedure up to date?

By improving it a little at a time — without retyping anything. Procedures change: a supplier switches, a machine gets replaced, a step turns out to be unclear. In Loopapa, you open the article and send an improvement the same way you would send a message: a short voice note, a line of text, a photo, or a document. The AI merges your input into the existing procedure, and you review the updated text before it goes live.

The AI talks back in an AI suggestion bar above the article — in whatever language you used. If you send a photo or document that has nothing to do with the procedure, it tells you so right there, in the same language you spoke, instead of quietly polluting your article with unrelated content.

Your conversation language and your Handbook language are two different things. You can speak to the AI in any language you like, but articles are always written in the Handbook language set in the admin settings — so the whole knowledge base stays consistent, even in a team where everyone speaks something different.

Improving an existing article

0:12

AI suggestion

Added step 5: run a water-only cycle after descaling.

Espresso machine — daily cleaning

Who can see what in the Handbook?

Exactly who you decide. From the Starter plan, access is controlled per employee, per category: the front-of-house team sees service procedures, the kitchen sees prep and cleaning, and supplier pricing or admin routines stay with the people who need them. An employee without access to a category does not see a locked file — those articles simply do not exist for them.

The Handbook also travels with the work. When you create a task, you can attach up to five Handbook articles to it — on every plan, including Free. The person doing the job opens the task and the guide is right there. And if a task has no guide yet, staff can request one from inside the task itself; the request lands with the manager as a report, so missing procedures surface themselves.

Access and tasks work together, too. If you assign a task with an attached guide to someone who cannot access that category, Loopapa warns you at that moment — before the task is saved. You can grant access to the category with one click right there, open the access menu by long-pressing the Handbook button, or edit permissions later from the employee's profile. No one ever opens a task only to find the instructions missing.

New task · assigning

Deep-clean the espresso machine

Guide attached M Assign to Maya

Maya does not have access to Cleaning & sanitation guides.

Grant access

Access granted · task assigned to Maya

A real example: onboarding seasonal staff at a hotel

The Linden Park Hotel takes on two seasonal housekeepers every summer. Training used to cost manager Sofia most of a week: walking each new hire through room preparation, linen handling, and what to do when a guest reports damage — and answering the same questions again whenever the head housekeeper had a day off.

What Sofia does now: the hotel's procedures live in the Handbook — "Room preparation standard", "Lost & found", "Reporting damage in a room". When Alina joins in June, Sofia grants her access to the Housekeeping and Cleaning categories in one minute; supplier pricing and front-desk cash routines stay out of her view. Then she assigns Alina's first tasks with the right guides already attached.

What Alina sees: her first task, "Prepare rooms 201–210", opens with the room preparation guide one tap away — every step, in order, with photos. When she is unsure how the decorative pillows go, she asks in the task chat instead of hunting for a colleague. By her third shift, Alina works to the same standard as staff who have been there for years — and Sofia has her week back.

Alina's phone · first shift

Prepare rooms 201–210

To Do

Room preparation standard View guide

Room preparation standard

1

2

3

What else works with the Handbook?

The Handbook is not a standalone module — it connects to how your team creates, assigns, and finishes work every day.

Create articles from voice, photos, or files

Talk through a procedure once, or photograph the laminated sheet on the wall — AI turns it into a clean, structured Handbook article you just review and publish.

Read the guide

Let your team ask the Handbook a question

On the Pro plan, Ask AI answers staff questions using only your own Handbook — so "how do I do this?" gets a correct answer even when the manager is off shift.

Read the guide

Know who has actually read what

Pro adds read tracking: see which staff have opened which procedures, so "nobody told me" stops being an excuse. It pairs naturally with roles and permissions for full control over who sees and does what.

Which plan do you need for the Handbook?

You can build a real Handbook on the Free plan — the higher tiers add room to grow and control over who reads what.

On the Free plan

Write articles with the full editor and organize them into the 14 ready-made operational categories. Your account starts with a one-time 14-day AI trial, so you can build your first Handbook by voice, photo, or file. After the trial you keep everything you built and can grow to 50 articles manually. Attaching up to 5 guides per task and staff guide requests are included.

On Starter

Room for a growing operation: up to 300 Handbook articles, ongoing AI creation and improvement, and per-employee access control — decide exactly which categories each person can read.

Unlocks on Pro

No article limit at all, plus the features that turn a Handbook into a self-serve system: Ask AI, so staff get answers from your own procedures, and read tracking, so you know who has actually opened what.

Frequently asked questions

Quick answers about building and running your team's Handbook in Loopapa.

Is the Handbook available on the Free plan?

Yes. On the Free plan you can create Handbook articles with the full editor, organize them into the 14 ready-made operational categories, and attach guides to tasks. Each plan comes with its own capacity — see the current pricing for the up-to-date limits of every tier.

What happens to my articles when the free AI trial ends?

Nothing is lost. Every article the AI helped you build stays in your Handbook, and you can keep creating and editing articles manually with the full editor. AI-powered creation and improvement continue on the paid plans.

Can I control which employees see which procedures?

Yes. Access is set per employee, per category: each person only sees the Handbook categories you have given them, and articles outside their access simply do not appear for them. You can grant access from the employee's profile, from the Handbook access menu, or right at the moment you assign a task that carries a guide. Availability by plan is listed on the pricing page.

What language is the Handbook written in?

Articles are always written in the Handbook language set in your admin settings, so the whole knowledge base stays in one consistent language. You can talk to the AI in any language you like — and if you change the Handbook language later, ask the AI in the article and the entire procedure is rewritten in the new language.

How do I attach a Handbook guide to a task?

When you create or edit a task, add the relevant Handbook articles to it — the person doing the job then opens the guide right inside the task. If a task has no guide yet, staff can request one from within the task, and the request reaches the manager as a report.

Move the answers out of people's heads

Build your team's Handbook in Loopapa — write it, speak it, or photograph it, and give every employee the right guide inside their tasks.

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