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Pick the nearest answer
About the business
What line of work are you in?
So the report talks about your kind of work, not business in general.
Trades, construction and property maintenance
Manufacturing, engineering and workshops
Professional services - accountancy, legal, consultancy, agencies
Retail, e-commerce and wholesale
Health, care and wellbeing
Hospitality, leisure and events
Property, lettings and facilities
Transport, logistics and distribution
Recruitment, training and education
Something else
About the business
What best describes your business?
It sets the scale of everything else, nothing more.
Sole trader or small business
Growing business
Established business
Large business or enterprise
Where the time goes
How many hours a month go on repetitive manual work?
Re-keying, copying between systems, chasing paperwork, building the same report again.
Under 20 hours
20 to 60 hours
60 to 160 hours
More than 160 hours
Where the time goes
Who does most of that repetitive work?
It decides what getting the hours back is worth, and what you would do with them.
Me, or the directors
Skilled people, pulled off the work we charge for
Admin or office staff
Everybody does a bit
Where the time goes
Roughly what does an hour of that person's time cost you?
Salary and on-costs, not what you charge a client for it.
Around £15
Around £25
Around £40
£60 or more
Where the time goes
How much of that work follows the same steps every time?
Same steps, same order, different details - that is the part a machine can take.
Very little - every job is different
Some of it
Most of it
Nearly all of it - it is the same routine
How the work is tracked
How many separate systems hold your day-to-day information?
Accounts, CRM, spreadsheets, email, a job board, the one nobody admits to.
One or two
Three to five
Six to ten
More than ten
One more on that
Which system does everything else have to agree with?
The one you would believe if two of them disagreed.
The accounts package - Xero, Sage, QuickBooks
The CRM or customer database
A job, practice or booking management system
The e-commerce platform or till
Spreadsheets
There isn't one - they all disagree a little
How the work is tracked
How do you keep track of a job or order, from enquiry to invoice?
Where you would look if a customer rang to ask where theirs was.
Paper, a whiteboard, or in people's heads
Spreadsheets and email
One system built for the job
Several systems that do not talk to each other
How the work is tracked
How often is the same information typed into more than one place?
The clearest sign that two systems are not talking to each other.
Rarely
Every week
Every day
Constantly
One more on that
What gets typed in twice most often?
The first thing that came to mind.
Customer and contact details
Orders, bookings and job details
Invoices, payments and bank entries
Timesheets and hours worked
Products, prices and stock
How the work is tracked
How much do you trust the numbers when you need them?
Duplicate records, out-of-date figures, reports that need checking before you can use them.
They are reliable
Mostly, with some checking
They need cleaning up first
We do not really trust them
One more on that
How long does it take to get figures you would act on?
From wanting to know, to knowing.
The same day
A few days
Weeks - usually after month end
We mostly go on instinct
What you pay others to do
What kind of work do you pay an outside firm or freelancer to do?
Whatever leaves the business - not only admin.
Nothing - we do it all ourselves
Skilled or specialist work - design, development, trades, marketing
A mix of skilled work and routine work
Answering customers - enquiries, bookings, support
Admin, data entry, bookkeeping or back office
What you pay others to do
What does that outsourced work cost you a month?
Everything you pay outside the business, of whatever kind. Nothing if you outsource none.
Nothing
Under £1,000
£1,000 to £5,000
More than £5,000
One more on that
Which outsourced job costs you the most?
The routine one, if there is more than one.
Bookkeeping, payroll or credit control
Data entry and document processing
Call answering, bookings or customer support
Marketing, social posting or lead generation
IT support and administration
Growth
How do new enquiries and leads reach you?
Where growth is won or quietly lost.
A steady flow we handle well
Patchy - some months are quiet
We chase them by hand
We have no reliable source
One more on that
What happens to an enquiry that does not buy straight away?
Most of them, in most businesses.
It is followed up on a schedule
It is followed up when somebody remembers
Usually nothing
Growth
Where do most new enquiries arrive?
The one that matters most. It decides what answering them faster would actually involve.
By phone
By email
Through the website or an online form
Social media, marketplaces or directories
Word of mouth and repeat customers
Growth
Could you take on half as much work again without hiring?
Whether the next order costs you a salary.
Yes, comfortably
Yes, but it would hurt
No - we would have to hire
We are already turning work away
One more on that
Where does the work back up first when you are busy?
The queue everybody ends up waiting on.
Quoting and getting back to people
Scheduling and planning the work
Doing the work itself
The admin and paperwork afterwards
Invoicing and getting paid
Growth
What is a typical new customer worth to you?
First order or first year, whichever you think in.
Under £1,000
£1,000 to £5,000
£5,000 to £20,000
More than £20,000
What you want from this
Which job would you most like to stop doing by hand?
Whatever you thought of first is the right answer. Skip it if none of these fit.
Quotes, proposals and estimates
Invoicing and chasing payment
Scheduling, dispatch and diaries
Onboarding and compliance paperwork
Reports, figures and spreadsheets
Answering and chasing enquiries
Orders, stock and suppliers
What you want from this
What would make this worth doing?
The one that matters most this year. Skip it if you are only curious.
Getting my own time back
Growing without adding headcount
Cutting what the business costs to run
Fewer mistakes and faster service for customers
A business that runs without me in the middle of it
That is enough for your report. Want a sharper one?
8 more one-tap questions, about a minute. They do not change
your score or your figures - they change how specific the report can be.
✓ What you run on, and how approvals happen✓ Where the work is done, and whether you have tried this before✓ A first call that starts from your situation, not from scratch
Yes, ask me more
No thanks, carry on
Going deeper · 1 of 8
Which of these does the business run on?
Tick all that apply. It tells us what can be joined up rather than replaced.
Xero, QuickBooks, Sage or FreeAgent
Microsoft 365 - Outlook, Excel, Teams, SharePoint
Google Workspace - Gmail, Sheets, Drive
A CRM - HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho
Job, practice or booking management software
Shopify, WooCommerce, a marketplace or a till system
Paper forms, job sheets or a diary
Going deeper · 2 of 8
How do approvals and sign-offs happen?
Quotes, purchases, holiday, timesheets, anything that waits for a yes.
Emails back and forth
On paper or in person
Inside a system, with a record
We rarely need them
Going deeper · 3 of 8
How often is a document produced from a template?
Quotes, contracts, reports, certificates, letters - the same shape with different details.
Many times a day
Most weeks
Rarely
Going deeper · 4 of 8
Where is the work done?
It decides whether anything we build has to work on a phone.
Mostly on site or on the road
A mix of office and site
In the office or at home
Going deeper · 5 of 8
Have you tried to automate any of this before?
Either answer is useful.
No
Yes, and it stuck
Yes, but it was abandoned
Somebody in-house builds things when they have time
Going deeper · 6 of 8
Who looks after your systems day to day?
It decides how much looking-after anything new can need.
Nobody in particular
Somebody in the team, on the side
An outside IT firm
Our own IT person or team
Going deeper · 7 of 8
If the numbers stood up, when would you want something in place?
No commitment - it tells us how to pitch the first conversation.
As soon as possible
In the next three months
Some time this year
Just exploring for now
Going deeper · 8 of 8
Who would decide on a project like this?
So the report reaches the right people.
Me
Me and a business partner
A board, a head office or a finance director
Know the real figures?
Every box is optional and the report is complete without them. Anything you
do know replaces an estimate.
The last five open up what the questions cannot see: what mistakes and reporting
cost, software you could consolidate, enquiries that go cold, and time spent chasing money you are
already owed.
What does the business do, and what eats the time?
optional, one or two lines
This is what lets us name the actual jobs worth automating in your trade, rather than talking in general terms.
Where shall we send it?
Your savings manifest is written the moment you press the button, and emailed to you as a PDF.
Send me my savings manifest by email. I understand these are estimates based on my answers, and I can ask to hear no more at any time.
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We count how far visits get through the questions, anonymously, to keep them short.
The report is an estimate to argue with, not a quotation.
