Field guide

Low-hanging fruit

The everyday office chores worth automating first.

Every one of these follows the same shape: a scheduled trigger, an automatic draft, and a human who still reviews and sends. Hour figures are typical starting estimates for a small owner-operated business — we re-run them with your actual numbers before quoting.

Recurring Communications
~14 hrs/mo
  • Monthly newsletter — drafted from the month's photos, hires and posts, 5 days before month-end
    4 hrs
  • Review requests — personalized ask 3 days after the invoice is paid
    3 hrs
  • Weekly customer follow-up — a "how did we do" note per job closed last week
    3 hrs
  • Google Business post — short local post drafted each Tuesday from recent work
    3 hrs
  • Dormant customer reactivation — quarterly pull of anyone quiet 12 months, note per person
    1 hr
  • Birthday & anniversary touches — monthly milestone list with notes already written
Getting Money in the Door
~24 hrs/mo
  • Quote & estimate drafting — inquiry becomes a draft estimate from your price list
    8 hrs
  • Unpaid invoice nudges — weekly aging list, reminders pre-written at the right firmness
    7 hrs
  • Receipt capture & filing — photograph it: renamed, categorized, filed, logged
    4 hrs
  • Proposal follow-up sequence — check-ins for day 3, 10 and 21 unless won or lost
    3 hrs
  • Friday money snapshot — in, out, outstanding, biggest overdue account
    2 hrs
  • Vendor price-change watch — flags any line item billed above your recorded cost
The Front Desk
~7 hrs/mo + saved deals
  • Instant inquiry response — every form and email answered in 2 minutes, booking link attached
  • Confirmations & reminders — texts at 48 hours and 2 hours out, replies routed to a person
    4 hrs
  • Cancellation backfill — a slot opens, the waitlist gets texted in order
  • After-hours voicemail triage — transcribed, tagged urgent or routine, reply drafted by 7am
    3 hrs
  • Recurring service scheduling — 11 months on, the maintenance outreach writes itself
  • Lead source reporting — where every lead came from and what it cost per closed job
Paperwork & Reporting
~24 hrs/mo
  • Inbox triage — sorted today / this week / FYI / junk, routine replies pre-drafted
    10 hrs
  • Job-site photo notes — photos in, draft job report and customer write-up out
    5 hrs
  • Monthly owner dashboard — revenue, jobs, leads, close rate, reviews, what changed
    5 hrs
  • Meeting notes — decisions, owners, deadlines, plus the follow-up email
    4 hrs
  • Contract & lease reading — key dates, renewal windows, anything unusual flagged
  • SOP capture — talk through a task for 5 minutes, get a written procedure
Hiring & Compliance
~6 hrs/mo
  • Job posting draft — written in the owner's voice, ready for Indeed and Facebook
  • Applicant screening summary — a paragraph per resume against your must-haves
    4 hrs
  • New hire day-one packet — forms, handbook, first-week schedule, intro email
  • License & cert expirations — employee and manager both nudged 60 days out
  • Insurance & permit renewals — tracked at 90 / 30 / 7 days with documents gathered
  • Timesheet chase — Friday nudge, Monday summary of who's still missing
    2 hrs
Files, Data & Pipeline
~4 hrs/mo
  • Attachment filing — saved to the right client folder, named consistently
    2 hrs
  • Duplicate contact cleanup — weekly scan surfaced for one-click merge
  • Incident & safety reports — verbal description in, formatted report out and filed
  • Referral partner check-ins — quarterly note to each source with what they've sent you
    2 hrs
  • Competitor & market watch — monthly summary of local pricing and new entrants
  • Board or membership report — quarter's activity drafted for the director to edit
The question that builds this list for you
"What do you do the last three days of every month?"

Then keep pulling:

  • What's the last thing you do on Friday before you leave?
  • What did you do last week that you'd never let a new hire touch?
  • Which task gets pushed to Saturday morning?
  • If someone quit tomorrow, whose chores would quietly stop happening?

Schedule and we'll map your list in thirty minutes.

Schedule

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