Somewhere around twenty people, the busywork stops fitting into the gaps. Tasks that one person used to handle between meetings now take half of somebody's week, and nobody quite owns them. These five workflows come up in almost every audit we run. None of them is glamorous, which is exactly why they are worth fixing first.

1. Invoice intake

Invoices arrive by email, in a shared inbox, as PDFs, photos and the occasional spreadsheet. Someone opens each one, types the details into the accounts software, checks it against a purchase order and chases the right person for approval.

What to automate: collect attachments from the inbox, read the supplier, amount, dates and line items, match them to the purchase order, and route anything unusual to a person. Everything that matches can be filed and queued for payment without anyone retyping it.

Watch out for: new suppliers and amounts above your usual range. Those should always go to a person, at least at first.

2. Lead routing

A new enquiry lands through the website, a demo form or an email. In many teams it sits until someone notices it, reads it and forwards it on. By then the prospect has often spoken to a competitor.

What to automate: enrich the lead with company details, decide who should own it based on region, size or product, create the record in your CRM and notify the owner within a minute, with the context they need to reply well.

Watch out for: routing rules that nobody can see. Write them down somewhere the sales team can read and change.

3. Onboarding checklists

Every new starter needs accounts, access, equipment, a welcome email and a first-week plan. The checklist usually lives in one person's head or in a document that is slightly out of date.

What to automate: one form kicks everything off. Accounts get created in the tools the role needs, tasks go to IT and the manager, the welcome pack goes out on the right day, and the new starter's buddy gets a reminder.

Watch out for: offboarding. Build the reverse at the same time, so access is removed as reliably as it was granted.

4. Weekly reporting

On Monday morning someone exports numbers from four tools, pastes them into a spreadsheet, fixes the formulas that broke and writes a summary. It takes hours, and the report is out of date by Wednesday.

What to automate: pull the figures straight from the source tools on a schedule, build the same tables and charts every week, and draft a short written summary of what changed. A person reads it and adds the context only they know.

Watch out for: reporting on everything. Agree the five numbers that drive decisions and start there.

5. Follow-ups

Quotes that never got a reply. Contracts waiting for a signature. Invoices a week overdue. Each one is a small task, and together they quietly cost a lot of money.

What to automate: track anything that is waiting on someone else, send a polite reminder after an agreed number of days, escalate to a person when the reminders don't work, and keep a single list of what is still open.

Watch out for: tone. Automated chasers should sound like your team, and important clients may deserve a personal note instead.

Start where the hours are, not where the technology is most exciting.

How to pick your first one

Don't try to fix all five at once. For each workflow, estimate how many hours it takes across the team each week, how often mistakes happen and how annoying it is to the people doing it. The one that scores highest on hours and lowest on risk is usually the right place to start. It pays for the next one, and it shows the team what good looks like before you touch anything more sensitive.

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