Win back time for your business by automating repetitive tasks

If you're self-employed or a business owner, you'll know that a productive Monday morning can set the tone for the entire week. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always go to plan and the following scenario is all too familiar.

9 am. You kick off your week feeling motivated, ready take big strides toward hitting your goals. Logging into your business account, you notice that a client still hasn't paid you. You send them an urgent reminder e-mail. At the same time, you receive a message from your accountant who still hasn't received last month's receipts.

11 am. After collecting and submitting the missing documents, you start scheduling a meeting with a supplier. After a lot of back and forth, you finally manage to arrange a time slot.

12 pm. You already feel a little drained and check the time. The morning has flown by and you still haven’t made any progress on the work you’d planned to get done.

Repetitive and time-consuming tasks are common for every company. Although they're essential to the smooth running of your business, they quickly eat into your precious time and energy.

Fortunately, there are solutions that can automate your recurring, low-value tasks. And despite what many people think, you don’t need to invest heavily or know how to code in order to implement efficient automation systems for your business.

In this article, we'll get you up to speed on a range of solutions that can simplify your day-to-day admin.

Entrepreneurs and many company employees alike are often burdened with time-consuming micro-tasks.

These tasks can impact all areas of the business - from slowing down admin and sales prospecting, to interfering with day-to-day planning, customer communication, and partner relations.

Companies of all sizes and industries have a lot to gain from setting up efficient automation systems that simplify routine tasks.

By freeing themselves up from repetitive tasks, entrepreneurs can become more productive and focus on the strategic projects that bring true added-value to their business.

Repetitive tasks often don't require much thought or creativity, but they do require thorough work.

For example, when copying data from one platform to another, you must be careful not to make any mistakes. Or when you prepare an invoice, you need to check that it includes all the required legal notices and correct totals.

When performing these tasks manually, no one is immune to making mistakes and, consequently, disrupting the flow of business operations.

By automating these routine tasks, you can significantly reduce the risk of human error and stay on top of your to-do list, without the hassle.

Employees are often the first to be affected when it comes to repetitive and time-consuming tasks.

These duties slow down your team’s progress on value-added projects and can even have a negative impact on their motivation.

By using specialist software to automate routine tasks, employees can free up time and energy to work on more valuable projects. With more opportunities to take the initiative and use their expertise, they’re more likely to enjoy their work and commit themselves to your company.

Task and process automation simply makes the completion of certain tasks automatic, with the help of a digital system.

Before setting up your automation system, you’ll need to identify all the tasks you want to automate.

Bear in mind that you shouldn’t necessarily automate a task just because it’s time-consuming. Some tasks, no matter how repetitive, are essential to your company’s progress. These require careful reflection and a human touch.

In general, it makes sense to automate tasks that:

• Have low added value.
• Are time consuming.
• Do not require creativity, emotional intelligence, or specialist knowledge.
• Give employeeslittle sense of accomplishment or visibility.
• Can be done equally well (or better) by an automated system.
  
  

To identify these tasks, try monitoring your schedule for a week or so to get a clearer idea of how you actually spend your working hours. You may be surprised to find that you’re often interrupted by trivial, time-consuming micro-tasks that block your progress on more important projects.

If you have employees, consider talking to them about whether there are specific, recurring assignments that hinder their productivity.

Here are some examples of potentially low value-added tasks:

• Invoicing (preparing quotes or invoices, and then sending, receiving, signing, and filing them).
• Sending receipts to your accountant.
• Labelling your e-mails.
• Entering data manually and transferring it from one platform to another.
• Sending out reminders to customers or stakeholders.
• Writing low-priority e-mails and booking meetings.
• Integrating blog articles on your CMS.
• Scheduling posts for your social media platforms, or sending out newsletters.

Before implementing an automation system, you'll need to look for practical, easy-to use software that can help you manage your daily workload.

In most cases, it's best to keep things simple and avoid juggling between too many apps. That’s where all-in-one solutions come into their own. It all depends on your company’s size and specific needs, but it’s always worth considering:

• A finance management solution, such as Qonto, to keep your business finances safely organized under one roof.
• Apps for communicating and organizing your daily work, such as an email account, an online calendar, etc. Google Suite is a great option because all of its apps are fully integrated and synchronized. Meaning that, if you receive an email invitation via your Gmail account, the event is automatically created on your Google Calendar. Although we may already take this kind of automation for granted, it’s a clear example of how shortcuts can simplify our daily work lives.
• CRM software (Customer Relationship Management) to help you manage contact with your customers - especially useful if you have a large customer base.

Some apps, such as Zapier or Intergromat, help you build custom automations to suit your specific needs.

Equipped with “no-code” software like this, you can create custom, integrated automations between your work apps without having to write a single line of code.

On Zapier, for example, you can create workflows called "Zaps". This entails choosing a trigger - the app ‘event’ that starts the workflow. Then, a zap includes one or more search and action steps that follow this trigger.

In practice, the trigger could be receiving a transfer on Qonto. The automated action that follows could be the creation of a new entry in a Google Sheet to record the transaction.

At first, automation software may seem tricky to grasp. But it's actually a lot easier to use than it seems. It's worth spending a little time discovering how it can help you - hundreds of micro-tasks can simply be automated, freeing up your schedule for value-added projects down the road.

Here are some more examples of task automation to get the ball rolling:

• Update your CRM based on the answers received via a Typeform questionnaire.
• File and store documents in Dropbox that are received by e-mail.
• Create receipts on your invoicing software after receiving a payment via Stripe or PayPal.
• Connect your Qonto account to Air Table to create a dashboard that automatically records your transactions.

Let's take a closer look at the tasks you can automate for your business.

Managing a company's finances and admin is a particularly time-consuming activity. To save precious energy, try automating the following tasks:

• Preparing invoices
  

Creating a new invoice on a Google doc or spreadsheet is not particularly efficient. For each new invoice, you'd have to check that all the necessary legal mentions are included and manually enter details such as invoice numbering, your client's contact information, the service you provided, etc.

To simplify your workflow, consider a specialist solution that helps you manage and automate your customer and supplier invoices.

Already a Qonto customer? Make the most of our built-in invoicing solution to create and send your documents in just a few clicks.

• Matching invoices to your bank transactions
  

If you have a Qonto account, you can simply email us your invoices and we'll automatically match them to the right transactions.

• Signing documents (contracts, quotes, etc.)

If we had to rank the most tedious tasks, signing documents would probably take the top prize. Identifying the relevant signee, printing the document and handing it to them, waiting for them return it, and then scanning and sending the signed copy....

Using a solution for electronic signatures makes this process far easier and saves you precious time.

• Paying suppliers

With Qonto, you can send your invoices by e-mail and we'll automatically retrieve your supplier's IBAN and the total to be paid. All you have to do is hit "Confirm."

Do you have several payments to make? Take advantage of our “bulk transfer” feature and pay all your expenses in a few clicks.

• Reminders in case of late payment

Unpaid invoices are surely entrepreneurs' biggest pet peeve. And for good reason - late payments can have a big impact on a company's cash flow.

When you're working with multiple customers, it can be tricky to stay on top of invoice due dates. As a result, delays pile up and you can feel like you're losing track.

To avoid unpleasant surprises, try using cost recovery software to automate your reminders.

• Reminders to employees in case of missing receipts

If you run a company with several employees, you've probably already had to deal with unsubstantiated expense reports.

This is a delicate situation because your accountant cannot close your books without the necessary receipts. You must therefore identify who is late and follow up with them until they provide you with the correct documents - another time-consuming task that prevents you from moving forward on the projects that really matter.

To save time, solutions like Qonto offer a useful feature - automatic reminders for employees. You no longer have to chase up colleagues for receipts, with one click you can send out an e-mail to everyone who is overdue.

You can also automate a variety of routine sales and marketing tasks, freeing up your time to focus on the bigger picture.

Prospecting

Sales prospecting is a crucial activity for any company, regardless of its size or industry. But in the early stages of the sales cycle, you can easily automate a variety of small, repetitive tasks.

This is particularly the case when sending:

• Cold outreach messages.
• Initial prospecting emails in response to a lead's action.
  
  

There are a variety ways you can automate and personalize your sales outreach campaigns. For example, you can fill out pre-existing e-mail templates to initiate outreach after a specific trigger (e.g when someone subscribes to your newsletter, they receive a confirmation/welcome e-mail).

Another time-sapping task is scheduling meetings with potential customers, colleagues, or partners. By using a solution such as Calendly, you can limit unnecessary exchanges and give your contact the choice of selecting an available time slot in your calendar.

Publishing content

As an entrepreneur, you’ll know how crucial a solid communications and content strategy is to building brand awareness and establishing your company’s expertise.

But some tasks, especially when it comes to distributing content, are particularly time-consuming:

• Integrating articles on your blog CMS.
• Scheduling posts on social media platforms.
• Formatting and sending out newsletters.
  
  

To give yourself a helping hand, try out an app that automates your content distribution (such as Buffer for scheduling posts on social media, and MailChimp for sending out your newsletter). Remember to reuse email templates every time you need to format your newsletter.

Have you considered automating content creation?

AI chatbots like ChatGPT have taken the world by storm, and many businesses have been tempted to use them for writing content such as articles, guides, social posts, and emails.

But the results are not always what you'd hope them to be - the technology still has some way to go to be fully relied upon for creating high-quality content. To really stand out from the crowd, focus on producing creative, original content with a unique brand voice. However, you can certainly use AI chatbots to generate ideas and conduct research.

Keep in mind that when it comes to task automation, the best approach is to delegate low-level tasks and devote your energy to the creative projects that bring true added value to your business.

Looking for a finance management solution that saves you time on your day-to-day tasks? Open a Qonto account today, integrate your favorite apps, and maximize your productivity.