15 Flow Chart Examples You Can Copy (+ Free AI Flow Chart Maker)

The fastest way to make a good flow chart is to start from one that already works. Below are 15 flow chart examples across business, engineering, education, and everyday life — and because each includes a ready-to-paste prompt, you can recreate any of them in seconds with Infogiph's free AI flow chart maker instead of drawing boxes by hand.

New to the notation? Skim our flowchart symbols guide first — though with AI generation, the tool applies the right symbols for you.

Looking for a classroom classic? The algorithm flowchart, do-while loop flowchart and problem-solving flowchart each get a step-by-step breakdown below.

Business Process Flow Charts

1. Customer Onboarding Flow

Sign-up → email verification → profile setup → first-use tutorial → activation check, with a reminder branch for users who stall.

Prompt: "Flowchart of customer onboarding: user signs up, verifies email (resend after 24h if not), completes profile, takes product tour, then success team checks activation after 7 days."

Open this as an editable template: User Onboarding Flow Diagram

2. Purchase Approval Workflow

Request → manager review → decision diamond: under $1k auto-approve, over $1k finance review → PO issued or rejected with reason.

Prompt: "Purchase approval flowchart: employee submits request, manager reviews, purchases under $1,000 are approved directly, over $1,000 go to finance, approved requests get a PO, rejections return to employee with feedback."

Open this as an editable template: Approval Workflow Diagram

3. Hiring Pipeline

Application → screen → phone interview → technical/panel round → offer → negotiation → hire, with rejection exits at each stage.

Open this as an editable template: Hiring Pipeline Diagram

4. Customer Support Escalation

Ticket in → auto-categorize → tier 1 attempts fix → unresolved after SLA? → tier 2 → engineering escalation → resolution and follow-up survey.

Open this as an editable template: Customer Support Flow Diagram

5. Invoice & Payment Collection

Invoice sent → due date reached? → reminder sequence → paid / 30-days overdue → collections decision.

Open this as an editable template: Invoicing Workflow Diagram

For the card-payment side specifically, start from the payment processing flow diagram template — it maps the full checkout → gateway → processor → banks path and is ready to rename to your stack.

Technical & Engineering Flow Charts

6. Login Authentication Logic

Credentials in → validate format → check against database → 2FA required? → success or specific error paths (wrong password, locked account).

Prompt: "Flowchart of a login flow with input validation, credential check, optional two-factor authentication, account lockout after 5 failed attempts, and password reset path."

7. Do-While Loop

The classic CS assignment: execute the body once, test the condition, loop back while true. See the step-by-step do-while loop flowchart below.

8. CI/CD Deployment Pipeline

Commit → automated tests → pass? → build → staging deploy → smoke tests → production deploy → rollback branch on failure.

Open this as an editable template: CI/CD Pipeline Diagram

9. Incident Response Runbook

Alert fires → severity triage → P1? page on-call : create ticket → mitigate → root cause → postmortem.

Open this as an editable template: Incident Response Decision Tree

10. Data Processing Pipeline

Ingest → validate schema → clean/transform → quality check loop → load to warehouse → notify consumers.

Open this as an editable template: ETL Pipeline Diagram

Education & Everyday Flow Charts

11. Essay Writing Process

Pick topic → research → outline → draft → self-review loop → peer feedback → final edit → submit.

12. Science Experiment Method

Question → hypothesis → design experiment → collect data → results support hypothesis? → conclude or revise and repeat.

13. "Should I Buy It?" Decision Chart

A fun personal-finance classic: Do I need it? → Can I afford it without credit? → Have I wanted it for 30 days? → Buy / Wait / Skip. Charts like this one are really decision trees — we collected ten more in our decision tree examples.

14. Morning Routine Optimizer

Wake up → workout day? → branch routines → common path to work. Simple, and a great first flowchart to practice with.

15. Troubleshooting Tree ("Wi-Fi not working")

Router lights on? → restart → other devices affected? → ISP status → escalate to provider. The template behind every good support doc.

Algorithm, Do-While Loop and Problem-Solving Flowcharts

These three are the flowcharts students and new developers are asked for most. Each is written out step by step, with the standard symbol in brackets, so you can draw it by hand or paste the prompt into the AI flowchart maker.

Algorithm flowchart: find the largest of three numbers

An algorithm flowchart shows the exact steps a program follows. Every decision must be a yes/no test a computer could evaluate.

1. Start (oval).
2. Input A, B and C (parallelogram).
3. Is A greater than B? (diamond).
4. Yes: is A greater than C? If yes, the largest is A. If no, it is C.
5. No: is B greater than C? If yes, the largest is B. If no, it is C.
6. Output the largest number (parallelogram), then End (oval).

Ties still work: when two values are equal, the chart outputs one of them, and that value is the correct maximum.

Prompt: "Algorithm flowchart to find the largest of three numbers: start, input A, B and C, compare A with B, compare the larger one with C, output the largest, end."

Do-while loop flowchart

A do-while loop runs its body first and checks the condition afterwards, so the body always executes at least once. In the flowchart, the decision diamond sits after the body, and its "true" arrow loops back up. Example: print the numbers 1 to 5.

1. Start (oval), then set i = 1 (rectangle).
2. Print i (parallelogram).
3. Add 1 to i (rectangle).
4. Decision: is i <= 5? (diamond). True: arrow back to step 2. False: End (oval).

In code, that's i = 1; do { print(i); i = i + 1; } while (i <= 5);. The only visual difference from a while loop is where the diamond sits. A while loop tests first, so its body can run zero times.

Input validation is the classic real-world case: ask for a PIN, read it, and loop back while it's invalid. The question must appear at least once, which is exactly the do-while shape.

Prompt: "Do-while loop flowchart: start, set i to 1, print i, add 1 to i, check whether i is at most 5; if yes loop back to print, if no end."

Problem-solving flowchart

A problem-solving flowchart turns a general method into a loop: define the problem, find the likely cause, test a fix, and check the result before closing it.

1. Define the problem in one sentence (rectangle), for example "Weekly sign-ups dropped."
2. Gather data: when it started, what changed, and who is affected.
3. List possible causes and rank them by likelihood.
4. Choose a fix for the most likely cause and implement it.
5. Measure the result.
6. Is the problem solved? (diamond). Yes: document the fix and End. No: return to step 3 and test the next cause.

The loop back from the last diamond is what separates a problem-solving flowchart from a checklist. You keep testing causes until the result, not the effort, says you're done.

Prompt: "Problem-solving flowchart: define the problem, gather data, list and rank possible causes, implement a fix for the top cause, measure the result, check if it's solved; if not, loop back to the next cause; if yes, document and end."

How to Recreate Any of These in 30 Seconds

1. Open the AI flow chart maker (free, browser-based).
2. Paste one of the prompts above — or describe your own process in the same plain-language style.
3. The AI generates the flow chart with correct symbols, decision branches, and clean layout.
4. Edit anything on the canvas, then export PNG, SVG, GIF or MP4. All four formats are on the free plan, with a small watermark.

The pattern to steal from these examples: name the steps, name the decisions, name what happens on each branch. If your description contains those three things, the generated chart will be right on the first try most of the time.

Want more to copy? Browse workflow diagram examples with symbols and swimlanes for team processes, or decision tree examples for branching judgment calls.

What Makes These Examples Work

• One process per chart. The onboarding example doesn't also explain billing.
• Decisions are questions with labeled exits. "Under $1k?" → yes/no, not vague forks.
• Failure paths are drawn, not implied. Rejections, retries, and escalations appear explicitly.
• Flow runs one direction (top-down or left-right), with loops drawn as clear returns.

FAQ

Where can I make these flow charts for free? Infogiph's AI flow chart maker generates any of these from the prompts above. The free plan includes 5 AI generations and PNG, SVG, GIF and MP4 exports with a small watermark. You sign in with Google; no credit card is needed.

What are the main flowchart symbols? Ovals for start/end, rectangles for steps, diamonds for decisions, arrows for flow. Full reference in our flowchart symbols guide.

Can I generate a flow chart from an existing SOP document? Yes — paste the SOP text and the AI extracts steps and decisions into a chart. It's the fastest way to visualize documentation you already have.

---

Pick an example, paste the prompt, and generate your flow chart free.