Automation doesn’t have to mean complex workflows or expensive tools. Some of the biggest time savings come from simple connections between the tools you already use. Here are three that almost every business can set up in under an hour each, and that will start saving time immediately.
1. New enquiry to CRM (automatically)
If someone fills in your website contact form and the first thing that happens is an email to your inbox, you’re already behind. That email gets buried, the lead gets forgotten, and three weeks later you find it while searching for something else.
Instead: connect your contact form directly to your CRM. Every new enquiry creates a contact record, triggers a notification to the right person, and starts a follow-up reminder. Tools like Zapier or Make can do this in minutes with no code. Most CRMs also have native form integrations.
Time saved: 15-30 minutes per day on manual data entry and follow-up tracking.
2. Invoice sent, follow-up scheduled (automatically)
Chasing payments is painful but necessary. The manual approach (checking who’s overdue, writing a polite email, remembering to check again next week) eats time and mental energy.
Most accounting tools (Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent) can send automatic payment reminders on a schedule. If yours can’t, a simple Zapier workflow can watch for overdue invoices and send templated reminders. Set it up once and never think about it again.
Time saved: 1-2 hours per week on payment chasing.
3. New client onboarding (semi-automatically)
When you win a new client, a predictable sequence of things needs to happen: welcome email, project setup, access credentials, kickoff meeting invite, internal handover notes. If any of these are manual, someone either forgets a step or spends time recreating the same sequence every time.
Build a simple onboarding automation: when a deal is marked as “won” in your CRM, automatically send the welcome email template, create the project in your PM tool, and add the kickoff meeting to the calendar. The human still does the thinking. The system handles the admin.
Time saved: 30-60 minutes per new client.
Start small, build up
These three automations won’t transform your business overnight. But they’ll give your team back several hours a week that were being spent on repetitive admin. And once you see how easy it is, you’ll start spotting automation opportunities everywhere.
Want to know where automation could make the biggest difference for your business? Take the free Digital Maturity Audit for personalised recommendations.