ASME WPS template in Excel: free download and what it must contain

If you have ever had to issue a WPS to ASME IX, you have probably been through this: open a template inherited from another company, change half a dozen fields and hope the client’s inspector does not ask questions. It works right up until the day it does not - and when it does not, the cost shows up as a rejected test coupon, a redone qualification and a job standing still waiting for a document.

With that in mind, I have made the Excel WPS template I use in my own qualification work freely available. It is a file ready to adapt, bilingual (Portuguese/English) and structured to the 2025 edition of ASME IX.

What a WPS has to contain

ASME Section IX organises the variables of a WPS into blocks, and a decent template has to cover all of them:

• QW-402 - Joints: joint type, groove angle, root opening, backing and retainers.
• QW-403 - Base metals: specification, P-Number, Group Number and qualified thickness ranges for groove and fillet welds.
• QW-404 - Filler metals: SFA, AWS classification, F-Number, A-Number, consumable form and thickness ranges by process.
• QW-405 - Positions: welding positions and progression (uphill or downhill).
• QW-406 - Preheat: minimum preheat temperature and interpass temperatures.
• QW-407 - Post-weld heat treatment: type, holding temperature, time and heating and cooling rates.
• QW-408 - Gas: shielding gas, trailing gas and purge, with composition and flow rate.
• QW-409 - Electrical characteristics: current, polarity, voltage, travel speed and heat input per pass.
• QW-410 - Technique: stringer or weave bead, interpass cleaning, back gouging, stick-out, single or multiple pass.

If the template you use today has no field for one of those variables, it is incomplete. And a missing essential variable is exactly the sort of thing an experienced auditor finds in five minutes.

What comes with the template

The file I am making available is not a blank sheet. It comes:

• With every QW-402 to QW-410 block laid out in the classic WPS format, on a single print-ready sheet;
• Bilingual, with each field in Portuguese and English - useful for anyone exporting or serving a foreign client;
• Completed with a real example of combined GTAW + FCAW welding on P-No. 1 steel, with a TIG root and flux-cored fill, including current, voltage and travel speed ranges per pass;
• With a document control header: WPS number, revision, sheet and the supporting PQR;
• With signature fields for the Level 2 Welding Inspector, Quality Control and the client.

The worked example is deliberate. I have seen plenty of people get stuck not for lack of knowledge of the code, but because they had never seen a genuinely complete WPS - knowing what to write in a field such as “back gouging method” gets a lot easier with a reference in front of you.

An honest warning before you use it

No template replaces engineering work. The values in the file come from one specific case: a different material, process or thickness calls for a different analysis of variables. And a WPS is only worth anything when it is supported by a PQR - the record of the tests that prove the procedure works.

Use the template as a starting point and as a checklist of what must not be missing. Do not use it as a shortcut around qualification.

How to get the template

The download is free. Fill in the form below with your e-mail and I will send you the file:

→ Send me the WPS template in Excel

Want to learn to build a WPS from scratch?

The template solves the formatting. What it does not solve is the technical decision behind each field: which P-Number to use, when the Group Number matters, how to set parameter ranges to qualify the thickness your production actually needs.

That is exactly what I teach in the course Writing a WPS - ASME IX (2025 ed.): 8 modules running from the fundamentals of the code through to building the PQR and the databook documents. People on the priority list hear about the class opening first.

And if your company needs a qualified procedure now, without waiting for a course, XP also writes and qualifies WPSs as a service.