Five jobs a small business should automate first

Every few weeks someone tells you to automate the business, and nobody says where to start. The wrong start is expensive: a large package that needs every department to change at once, and is quietly given up. The right start is one small job that repeats every day.

What makes a job worth doing first

A job is a good first choice when:

• it happens every day or every week
• the steps are the same each time
• it depends on somebody's memory
• a miss costs an order, a payment or a customer
• the owner has to ask before it gets done

The five jobs

1. Follow-up reminders. Enquiries to call back, quotations to chase, payments past their due date. The work is simple. The only hard part is remembering. On a sheet, this is one column: the next follow-up date. See why enquiries go cold and payment follow-up.

2. The order list. What is pending, what goes out today, what is late. Today this lives in chats, a register and someone's head. On a sheet, it is one row per order with a promised date and a stage. The order register format is the place to begin.

3. Tasks given to staff. Who was told what, by when, and whether it got done. On a sheet, it is one row per task with one name and one due date. See why your team forgets tasks on WhatsApp.

4. The owner's evening report. Orders received, material dispatched, money collected, tasks late. If you make a round of calls every evening to collect this, it belongs on your list. Once jobs 1 to 3 are in a list, the report is only a count of that list:

3 October. Orders received 14, dispatched 11, late 3. Collected today ₹1,48,000. Overdue parties called: 6 of 9. Tasks late 2: bank reconciliation, quote to Bluecore.

5. Dates that come back. AMC renewals, compliance filings, insurance and licence renewals, stock that needs reordering. Each one is easy to do and easy to forget, and it is noticed only after the date has passed. On a sheet, it is one row per item: what it is, the date, the person responsible and where the papers are kept. Sort it by date and open it every Monday.

Choose your first one with your own numbers

Copy this table and fill it in for your own business: the hours from one week, the misses from last month.

Hours a week is the time you and your staff spend on the job, including the asking and reminding. Misses are the times it went wrong: a forgotten call, a late dispatch, a lapsed renewal. Pick the row with the most misses. If two are close, pick the one with more hours.

Finish that one fully before you touch the next. Finished means the old way has stopped: no second notebook, and the owner reads the new list.

What not to start with

• Anything that needs every department to change together. Start with one process and one team.
• Accounts and billing. Tally or Busy already does this. Leave it alone.
• A process that is not settled yet. If the steps change every week, software will only lock in the confusion.
• A job that takes ten minutes a month. It is not worth a system.

Start on a sheet

Run the chosen job on a shared sheet for two weeks, with one person responsible. Two things can happen. The sheet holds, and you have solved the problem for free. Or it breaks, because people do not update it or reminders are missed, and now you know exactly what a system must do. Write those points down and take them to any seller you speak to.

Sheet or system?

A sheet is enough while one careful person can keep it current and remind the others. A small system helps when the reminding itself becomes a daily job, or when staff need to update from their phones. Read Excel or software? to judge your own case.