How to write a quick reference guide, (free template included)

Say your company moves expenses to a new tool. The training runs on a Thursday, and the following Tuesday someone in sales has a hotel receipt in euros and can't remember where the currency field is. They message the colleague who sat next to them in the session, who doesn't remember either, so the question lands with finance.

A quick reference guide is the page both of them should have had open. It assumes the training happened and gives the reader only the steps and the field they forgot.

This guide covers what a QRG is and when it's the right format. It includes a copyable template and three sample QRGs, shows how to generate a QRG from a screen recording with Clueso, and covers keeping one to a single page and accurate after the next release.

What is a quick reference guide?

A quick reference guide (QRG) is a one-page document that reminds a trained user how to complete a small set of related tasks in a system, or which shortcuts to use. It lists the steps, on-screen labels, and fixes someone needs in the middle of the work, and leaves background and policy to the training it follows.

People often confuse it with two neighboring documents. A job aid walks someone through a single task while they do it, and an SOP sets the official process, with owners and approvals written above the steps. A QRG covers several related tasks, or a set of shortcuts, for someone who already knows the process and needs the detail they forgot.

If your reader is doing one task with the page open beside the screen, you want a job aid, and how to create a job aid that stays accurate covers that format. Our guide to writing step-by-step guides compares QRGs, job aids, SOPs, help articles, and manuals side by side.

When should you use a quick reference guide, and when shouldn't you?

A QRG works when the reader understands the task and is missing a detail, such as a field name, a menu path, or the fix for an error they've seen before. It fails when the reader doesn't understand the task yet, because a page of terse steps gives them nothing to reason from.

The questions people ask after a rollout tell you which column you're in. If the helpdesk keeps answering "where do I find the currency field?", one QRG answers it for everyone. A question like "why do I need a project code at all?" is different, and the person asking needs the reasoning from training or the SOP. Managing systems change with SOPs and job aids covers how those documents split the work during a rollout.

What goes in a quick reference guide template?

When every QRG answers the same questions in the same order, readers learn where to look after using two or three of them. The template follows the order a reader scans in, from what the page is for down to what to do when something breaks. Copy it into Word, Google Docs, Confluence, or Notion.

The last two rows are the easiest to leave off. Nobody updates a page that has no owner after a release, and the date is the only way a reader can tell whether the page describes the system in front of them.

What do quick reference guide examples look like?

The three samples below were written for this post and aren't real company documents. The on-screen labels in the first and third are placeholders, so swap in whatever your system shows. The shortcuts in the second are real and come from Microsoft's list of Excel keyboard shortcuts.

Sample 1: Submit an expense claim

A task QRG for an HR or finance tool, the kind people reach for in the first weeks after go-live.

• Who it's for: Employees who completed expense training.
• Before you start: A photo or PDF of the receipt, and the project code if a client is paying.
• Steps:

1. Select New expense and upload the receipt.
2. Check the amount, date, and merchant read from the receipt, and correct any that are wrong.
3. For a receipt in another currency, set Currency to the currency on the receipt.
4. Choose a Category. If a client is paying, select Client billable and enter the project code.
5. Select Submit for approval. The status changes to Pending.

• If something goes wrong: If Submit for approval is grayed out, a required field is empty, usually Category. If a claim comes back as Returned, read the approver's comment, fix the claim, and submit it again.
• Owner: Finance operations. Last checked: November 10, 2026, against the current release.

Sample 2: Excel shortcuts for month-end reporting

A shortcut QRG, where the table carries the whole page.

• Who it's for: Analysts who build month-end reports in Excel for Windows. Mac shortcuts differ.

• If something goes wrong: If F4 does nothing, you aren't editing the formula. Press F2, select the reference, then press F4. On many laptops, the F keys also need the Fn key held down.
• Owner: The reporting lead. Last checked: November 10, 2026, against Microsoft's published list.

Sample 3: Approve purchase requisitions in a new ERP

Several related tasks for one role, which is the shape most rollout QRGs take.

• Who it's for: Budget holders who approve requisitions, after approver training.
• Before you start: Your account needs the approver role. If you can't see Approvals, ask IT to add it.
• Approve a requisition: Go to Approvals > Requisitions, open the requisition, check the cost center and total, and select Approve.
• Send one back: Select Return and type what needs to change in Comment. The requester gets it back as a draft.
• Hand off approvals while you're away: Go to Profile > Delegation, choose a colleague, and set the dates.
• If something goes wrong: If a requisition you expected isn't in your list, it may be over your approval limit and routed to the next approver.
• Owner: ERP training lead. Last checked: November 10, 2026, against the current release.

How do you keep a quick reference guide to one page?

When a QRG draft spills onto a second page, the extra length usually traces back to one of these habits.

Write for one role. A requester and an approver use the same system and need different pages. When a draft serves both, split it into two QRGs before you cut a word.

Cut what the training covered. Purpose, policy, and screen tours belong in the training or the SOP. The QRG keeps the labels to click and the errors people hit.

Say where the action happens, then name the label exactly. The Microsoft Writing Style Guide tells writers to put the location before the action ("On the Design tab, select Header Row") and to shorten simple sequences with right angle brackets, as in Select Accounts > Other accounts > Add an account. It also warns that screen readers can skip those brackets, so check with an accessibility expert before you use them in a digital QRG.

Move anything parallel into a table. Shortcuts, error codes, and "if this, then that" fixes read faster as two columns than as sentences. Digital.gov's plain language guidance makes the same case: tables show relationships that dense text hides, and most readers only need the rows that apply to them.

Crop every screenshot to the field it's about. A full-window screenshot of a screen the reader already knows can take a third of the page without showing them anything new. When you're done, print the page at normal size. If it needs a second sheet, split it by role or by task group.

How can Clueso generate a quick reference guide from a screen recording?

Writing a QRG by hand means doing the task in one window and writing in another, stopping after every click to take and crop a screenshot. With Clueso, an agentic video platform for businesses, you do the task once while recording, and Clueso writes the guide. Your work moves to choosing which tasks deserve a QRG and cutting the draft down to reference length.

1. Record the task once. Use the Clueso screen recorder Chrome extension, or upload a recording you already have. Talk through it roughly as you click, naming each field by its on-screen label.
2. Let Clueso write the steps. It generates a step-by-step guide from the recording, with a numbered step for each action and a zoomed-in screenshot taken at each click.
3. Trim it to reference length. That first draft is written for someone doing the task for the first time, so it runs longer than a QRG. The article copilot's Shorten and Remove extra images presets cut it down, and you can ask it in plain words to drop the intro and keep only the labeled steps.
4. Put it in your QRG format. Save the template from this post as a custom article prompt, available on Solo and above (see plans). Apply it to each guide, and every QRG in a set comes out with the same parts in the same order.
5. Export or publish it. Download it as DOCX or PDF to print, copy it as rich text, Markdown, or HTML into your wiki, or publish it to a Clueso help center.

The same project also produces a narrated video of the task, for people who'd rather watch it once before they keep the page open. When the process lives in training slides rather than on a screen, Clueso builds the video and guide from a slide deck or document instead. Step-by-step guides are on every plan, and the Free plan includes 10 article exports a month, enough to build a first set of QRGs for one system.

On the Enterprise plan, the Auto Updates add-on records the flow again in your current product after a release and rewrites the guide to match the new screens. The free SOP generator does the same job for SOPs, and our job aids page covers the single-task format.

Try it on one task: record the task your helpdesk answers most often, let Clueso write the guide, and shorten it to a one-page QRG.

How do you keep a quick reference guide current after a release?

Nobody notices a stale QRG until someone follows it into a menu that moved. A few habits catch the mismatch before a reader does.

Put the owner, the last-checked date, and the system version at the bottom of every QRG, as the template does. When a release lands, the owner runs each QRG for that system against the live product and updates the date, even if nothing changed. Readers who see a date from this month know the page was checked against the screen they're looking at.

Add "check the QRGs" to each system's release checklist, next to the training update. When the release notes rename a label, search your QRGs for the old label in bold, and every match is a page to fix.

Printed copies need separate tracking, because a page pinned beside a desk doesn't update when the file does. Keep a note of where each printed QRG is posted and replace those copies when the file changes. For libraries in the hundreds, how to automatically update help center articles covers finding what a release broke at that scale.

Frequently asked questions

What else is a quick reference guide called?

Quick reference card, quick reference sheet, and cheat sheet all describe the same one-page reminder. Some teams also call it a job aid, though a job aid usually covers a single task from start to finish. A quick start guide is different: it gets a new user set up for the first time, while a QRG assumes setup and training are done.

Can you make a quick reference guide for Excel?

Yes, and shortcut sheets are among the most common QRGs. Sample 2 above covers 10 shortcuts for month-end reporting on Windows. Microsoft publishes the full list of Excel keyboard shortcuts, so pick the ones your team uses rather than reprinting all of them.

How do you make a quick reference guide in Word?

Start a blank document and set Layout > Margins to Narrow so the page holds more. Insert a two-column table for the steps or shortcuts, with the title and audience above it. Put the owner and last-checked date in the footer so they print on every copy, then print one page to check it fits.

What software can generate quick reference guides from a screen recording?

Step-by-step guide generators turn a recording into numbered steps with screenshots, which you then trim into a QRG. Clueso generates the step-by-step guide and a narrated video from the same recording, and on Solo and above a custom article prompt keeps every guide in your QRG format. For HR tasks like submitting expenses or requesting time off, record each task once in the system employees use and export the guide as PDF or DOCX.

Pull last month's helpdesk questions about your newest system and find the task people asked about most. Write its QRG with the template above, put your name and today's date at the bottom, and send it to the next person who asks. If they finish the task without a follow-up question, write the next one.