You cannot start a Checklist without a Template.

Templates are for planning the work

Templates are the recipe book for your businesses success. Once you know what needs to be done in a given situation or repeatedly to be successful you write it down and delegate it out.

This is where you define what will become your checklist. It is the master record of how you always want the job to be done.

You add and remove individual items here and set what kind of evidence if any you want to be collected as part of performing the job.

Checklists are for doing the work

Checklists are a copy of a Template. You took that process out of the folder, made a photocopy, or printed it out and now you are going to follow it and fill it in. Checklists are a guide to keep you on track and become a record that you followed the recipe.

They are a given run or copy of that Template.

Checklists can only be ticked/done - they cannot be edited.

To change the content of a Checklist, you need to edit the Template you start them from.

So to build out a process you would first define the work to be done in a template.

Then when ever you want that job to be done in a tracked/accountable way you start a Checklist from that Template and all the activity against that checklist is logged to the user doing it.

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Your templates are like your library or source of processes for the business. Your checklists are like photocopies of those templates as of when they were started.

This idea separates the concepts of planning the work, and doing the work.