Small businesses: 5 admin tasks to automate first

How to spot a task worth automating

A good candidate ticks three boxes: it comes up often, it always follows the same rules, and it doesn't need your expertise. Write down what you do in the evening for a week: the list is usually very telling.

1. Quote follow-ups

A quote with no reply after a week has often been forgotten by the customer, not turned down. A short, polite follow-up sent automatically after 7 days and again after 15 gets quotes signed that would otherwise have gone unanswered.

In France, the quote itself must include mandatory information (breakdown of services, unit prices, labour, travel costs, total excluding and including VAT): a good template fills it in automatically every time.

2. Invoice reminders

Nobody likes chasing a customer for payment. A schedule of reminders that runs on its own, and stops as soon as the payment arrives, solves most late payments without conflict.

The full method: Unpaid invoices: setting up payment reminders that work.

3. Appointment and servicing reminders

A text message the day before the appointment cuts wasted trips. And for servicing trades (boilers, vehicles, air conditioning), an automatic reminder on the anniversary date brings customers back without you having to think about it.

4. Google review requests

The day after every job, a text message with a direct link to your Google profile. That's what steadily grows your number of reviews, one of the levers of local SEO. The rules to follow: Google Business Profile: get more reviews.

5. Re-typing between your tools

The customer copied from the quote to the invoice, then to the accounts, then to the calendar: every re-typing takes time and creates errors. Connecting your tools (quoting software, calendar, accounting, email) removes this double entry.

It's all the more useful now that e-invoicing is becoming mandatory in France: your invoices will have to go through an approved platform, so you might as well have everything flow without copy-pasting.

What you'd better not automate

A dispute, a complaint, an unhappy customer, a complex quote: nothing replaces your phone call. Automation should free up time for these moments, not take you away from them.

Start with a single task, the one that costs you the most time, and measure the hours saved before moving on to the next.

When your spreadsheets can no longer keep track of it all, a custom app can take over: how to choose. And what we can automate for you: automation & custom software.