Stop Hiring. Start Automating. A Checklist.

You're drowning in admin. Your first instinct is to hire someone. An office assistant, a VA, a part-time admin person. £22-28K salary, plus employer's NI, plus the time it takes to recruit, train, and manage them.

Before you do that, I want you to spend 20 minutes with this checklist. Because at least half of what you're about to hire for can be handled by tools that already exist — many of them free.

The Admin Task Audit

Grab a piece of paper. Write down every repetitive task that's eating your time or your team's time. Be specific. Not "admin stuff" — the actual tasks.

Here's what I usually see when I do this with business owners:

| Task | Frequency | Time per week | |------|-----------|---------------| | Chasing invoices | Weekly | 3-4 hours | | Data entry between systems | Daily | 5-7 hours | | Scheduling meetings | Daily | 2-3 hours | | Responding to enquiries | Daily | 3-5 hours | | Creating reports | Weekly | 2-4 hours | | Onboarding new clients | As needed | 2-3 hours each | | Posting to social media | Daily | 1-2 hours | | Filing and organising documents | Ongoing | 2-3 hours |

Now total up the hours. For most small businesses, it's 20-30 hours a week. That's a full-time role — but it's not one role. It's fifteen different micro-tasks that don't need a human brain.

The Automation Checklist

For each task on your list, run through these three questions:

Question 1: Is this task rule-based?

If you can write out the steps as "when X happens, do Y," it can be automated. Invoice chasing: when an invoice is 7 days overdue, send reminder email. That's a rule. No human judgment needed.

Question 2: Does it involve moving data between systems?

Copying information from one place to another — an email into a spreadsheet, a form submission into your CRM, a timesheet into your invoicing tool. This is what automation tools were built for.

Question 3: Does it require a human decision?

Some tasks genuinely need judgment. A complex client complaint. A tricky scheduling conflict. A sensitive email. If the answer is yes, keep it human. If the answer is "not really, I just do it because I always have," automate it.

Free and Low-Cost Tools by Task

Here's what I recommend for the most common tasks. All of these have free tiers that are genuinely usable for small businesses.

Invoice chasing and payment reminders

• Xero or QuickBooks (built-in automated reminders)
• Set up: 15 minutes. Saves 3+ hours/week.

Data entry between systems

• Make.com (free tier: 1,000 operations/month)
• Zapier (free tier: 100 tasks/month)
• Set up: 1-2 hours for your first automation. Saves 5+ hours/week.

Scheduling meetings

• Calendly (free tier: 1 event type)
• Cal.com (open source, free)
• Set up: 20 minutes. Saves 2+ hours/week.

Responding to enquiries

• A simple FAQ page with a Tally or Typeform intake form
• ChatGPT or Claude for drafting email responses (you review and send)
• Set up: 1 hour. Saves 2+ hours/week.

Creating reports

• Google Sheets with scheduled data imports
• Looker Studio (free, connects to most data sources)
• Set up: 2-3 hours. Saves 2+ hours/week.

Client onboarding

• A Notion or Google Docs template with a checklist
• Automated welcome email sequence via Mailchimp or Brevo (free tiers available)
• Set up: 2 hours once. Saves 2+ hours per new client.

Social media posting

• Buffer (free tier: 3 channels)
• Postiz (open source, self-hosted)
• Set up: 30 minutes. Saves 1+ hours/week.

Document organisation

• Google Drive with a clear folder structure and naming convention
• Zapier to auto-file email attachments
• Set up: 1-2 hours. Saves 2+ hours/week.

The Decision Framework

Once you've gone through your task list, you'll have three piles:

Automate now (free tools) — Tasks that can be solved with a free tool in under 2 hours of setup time. Do these this week.

Automate with help (paid tools or custom build) — Tasks that need some integration work or a tool with a paid plan. Budget £50-200/month. Still cheaper than a hire.

Keep human — Tasks that genuinely require judgment, empathy, or creative thinking. These are the tasks worth paying a person for.

The Maths

A part-time admin hire costs roughly:

• £12-14/hour, 20 hours/week = £12,480-14,560/year
• Plus employer's NI (13.8%) = £1,722-2,009
• Plus recruitment costs, training time, holiday cover
• Total: £16,000-20,000/year minimum

The automation stack I described above costs:

• Make.com Pro: £8/month
• Calendly free: £0
• Xero Starter: £15/month
• Buffer free: £0
• Total: £276/year

Even if you add a few paid tiers and some custom integration work, you're looking at £1,000-3,000 for the first year — including setup.

That's a 5-10x difference. And automations don't call in sick, don't need managing, and run at 3am without complaint.

What To Do Right Now

1. Write your task list — every repetitive thing you or your team does
2. Run each task through the three questions above
3. Pick the easiest automation win — usually invoice reminders or meeting scheduling
4. Set it up today — not next week, today. It takes 20 minutes.
5. Track the time saved for one month

If you save 10+ hours a week, you've just given yourself back a day. Use it to grow the business, not manage the admin.

Want me to audit your task list and recommend the exact automation stack for your business? Book a free call — it takes 15 minutes.