Free Resource
A complete, public checklist of the 30 highest-leverage things small businesses with 1–50 employees should automate. Use it to identify your starting point.
This checklist covers the 30 most common workflows U.S. small businesses with 1–50 employees should consider automating, organized by category and ranked by typical impact-to-effort ratio. For each item, you'll see why it matters, the tools we recommend, and approximate effort to implement.
For each item, mark:
Sort the “manual and painful” items by frequency, time per occurrence, and cost of mistakes. The top 1–3 are where to start.
Every form submission becomes a CRM record automatically, with source tracking, owner assignment, and timestamp.
Why: Manual entry costs hours/week and loses leads.
Inbound lead → automated email or SMS confirming receipt within minutes.
Why: Conversion drops sharply after the first 5 minutes.
Rules-based or round-robin assignment to the right rep automatically.
Why: Removes manual triage and politics.
AI reads form responses or call transcripts and adds a structured summary to the CRM.
Why: Reps start the call already informed.
Automated email/SMS sequences for leads not contacted in X days.
Why: Half of all leads die from neglect, not rejection.
Discovery info → templated proposal → review → send → e-sign → CRM update.
Why: Saves 1–2 hours per proposal, sends faster.
Calendar integration so prospects book themselves into the right rep's calendar.
Why: Removes 5+ emails per booking.
When a CRM deal closes, the project record auto-creates in your ops tool with all data prefilled.
Why: Removes hours of manual handoff per deal.
New customer → portal access → onboarding form → kickoff scheduled → 30/60/90-day check-ins.
Why: Consistent customer experience, faster time-to-value.
Job created → assigned tech notified via Slack/SMS within seconds.
Why: No more “I didn't see the email.”
Automated text/email at key milestones: appointment confirmed, on-the-way, completed.
Why: Customers feel updated; office gets fewer “where are they?” calls.
Request → review → approve/reject → next step. With audit trail.
Why: Removes email back-and-forth, creates audit trail.
Document received → AI parsed → routed → tracked → archived.
Why: Hours of manual reading become minutes.
Inventory level → threshold check → alert + reorder workflow.
Why: Prevents stockouts.
Job done → invoice drafted from data → review → send via Stripe/QuickBooks.
Why: Faster cash collection, fewer errors.
Stripe payment → mark deal won, trigger onboarding, notify team.
Why: No more “did they pay?” checks.
Failed charge → retry sequence → customer notification → escalation.
Why: Recovers ~30% of failed payments automatically.
Receipt photo → AI extraction → category + project tagging → accounting tool.
Why: Saves accounting clean-up time.
X days before invoice → reminder. After due date → escalation sequence.
Why: Most overdue invoices need reminders, not collections.
First day trigger → accounts created in tools, welcome emails, manager notified, training scheduled.
Why: Removes 2–4 hours of manual onboarding per hire.
After milestone → automated survey → response logged → low scores escalated.
Why: Catches problems before they become churn.
60/30/15 days before renewal → owner notified, customer engagement check.
Why: No more surprise non-renewals.
Project complete → wait X days → personalized review request → tracking.
Why: Most happy customers will leave a review if asked.
Customer churned > 90 days → personalized re-engagement sequence.
Why: Recovers 5–15% of past customers.
Each Monday → metrics calculated → email or Slack post to team.
Why: Same metrics, no manual export.
Live view of jobs, leads, exceptions, capacity.
Why: Owner stops asking “what's the status?”
Metric jumps or drops by X% → alert sent to owner/manager.
Why: Problems found before they're disasters.
Incoming email → category → owner → priority → drafted reply.
Why: Removes 1–3 hours/day of manual triage.
For each pending lead/customer, AI drafts the next-best follow-up email — rep reviews and sends.
Why: Reps follow up with everyone, not just easy ones.
Internal Slack bot answers “how do we usually handle X?” by searching team docs.
Why: New hires ramp faster, knowledge stops living in heads.
For each item you marked “manual and painful”: score impact (1–5) and effort (1–5), then calculate priority (impact ÷ effort). Top 3 by priority → start there.
We use this exact framework in our automation diagnostic. If you want help going through it, that's literally what the diagnostic is for.
Tell us the problem →
