How do you give AI your price book, manuals and SOPs?

What you are setting up

Your price book, your equipment manuals and your standard operating procedures (SOPs, the written steps for how a job is done in your business) hold most of the answers your team asks each other all day. Give an AI tool access to them and someone can type 'what do we charge for a water heater flush?' and get an answer taken from your own file, with the passage shown.

The tool searches your files at the moment of the question, reads the closest passages and answers from those. That is why the documents matter more than the tool: it can only be as right as what it finds.

Get the documents in order first

Gather the current version of each document in one folder. Then take out the old price lists, the three copies of the same manual and the draft nobody finished. Move the old versions somewhere the tool does not look, rather than leaving them beside the new file. A drive with three price lists gets a confident answer from the wrong one.

Decide which file is the single source of truth for each topic. If the price book exists as a spreadsheet and a PDF that disagree, settle that before anyone asks a question. If a procedure only exists in your senior tech's head, write it down now, even roughly.

Put them where the tool can read them

There are three common routes. A project or workspace inside a business AI assistant, where you upload the files and add standing instructions. A knowledge tool built for searching company documents. Or a set-up that searches the folders you already keep in your shared drive. The right one depends on how many files you have, how often they change and how many people will ask.

Whatever you pick, the tool can see whatever its account can see. Connect only the folders it needs, with permissions that match your people, or the newest hire may be told what is in the wage file. Instruct it to answer only from the documents, to name the document and passage it used, and to say it does not know when the answer is missing.

Test it with twenty real questions

Ask your team for the twenty questions they really ask: what a job costs, which part fits this unit, what the steps are for a callback, what the warranty covers. Put each one to the tool and check the answer against the document it names. Add a few questions you know are not in the files. A good set-up says it does not know instead of guessing. Fix the documents or the instructions, then run the twenty again.

Where to start this week

Pick one set of documents, usually the price book or the procedures for one job. Clear out the old copies, put the current ones in one folder and name one person who owns it. Set the tool up for a small group, run the twenty questions and keep a note of every wrong answer. Tell staff to read the passage shown as well as the summary.

Then keep it current. Each time a price or a procedure changes, replace the file the same day and remove the old one. Check that your tool re-reads changed files. Keep customer records and anything private out of the folder unless the plan's data terms clearly allow it.