What are the things every small business should automate? We asked successful entrepreneurs and small business owners to share their best insights on how they automate their repetitive business tasks. From appointment schedulers to email marketing, you’ll find several suggestions that may help you decide on ways small business automation can streamline your operations.
Here are 10 things every small business should automate:
1. Appointment scheduler.
2. Invoicing management.
3. Social media.
4. Applicant Tracking System (ATS) recruiting.
5. Customer service.
6. Daily reporting.
7. Review monitoring.
8. Supply chain management.
9. Net Promoter Score (NPS) feedback.
10. Email marketing.
We’ve interviewed 10 business owners to help you find the automation processes that could help reduce your operational workload significantly. Here’s a deeper look at each one.
1. Appointment scheduler
Small business owners should automate their appointment scheduling using a calendar integration tool. Tools like Calendly or Picktime are low to no-cost options. Using appointment scheduling apps can decrease the need to speak to every client that reaches out to you. It can also eliminate hiring an additional employee to manage appointment setting workflow.
Small business owners can also gain valuable insights by adding a questionnaire to the scheduler. You can find out what the client needs assistance with, helping you prepare for your meeting. You can also gather helpful information like email addresses, phone numbers, and knowledge of how they found out about your business.
Annette Harris, Harris Financial Coaching
2. Invoicing management
An automated invoicing system simplifies billing, minimises errors, and accelerates payments, making it essential for industries like construction, real estate, and freelancing. It streamlines the process by generating invoices automatically, sending reminders, and integrating online payment options. This improves cash flow, keeps records organised, and reduces administrative work.
3. Social media
If there is one thing that every business needs to automate, it is posting on every social media platform. If you’re posting on one platform such as Instagram, your post also needs to automatically publish on Pinterest, Facebook, X, LinkedIn and so on. Social media marketing is such a crucial part of a small business’s success, and there’s nothing more important than reaching as many audiences as possible. Automating this part of your social media will go a long way.
Sean Lau, LivingOutLau
4. Applicant Tracking System (ATS) recruiting
Automating ATS recruiting helps provide small businesses with more qualified and motivated candidates, which is crucial in a tight job market. ATS recruiting automation platforms are faster, usually more responsive, and far more cost-effective. When small businesses automate ATS recruiting, they can bring on new team members while still having the time and budget to develop other strategic areas.
Ricardo von Groll, Talentify
5. Customer service
With less access to resources, small businesses need to manage the challenge of being both creative yet consistent in their approach to customer support. After all, the success of any business depends on its customers and their willingness to make repeat purchases.
By automating your customer support process, you can treat customers the way you would if you had more time. This sounds counter-intuitive, but customers are often frustrated by hard-to-find contact links and slow responses to their enquiries.
By responding to queries immediately, you can keep customers happy, retain them, and increase their lifetime value. Just make sure the responses are accurate, thorough, and on-brand. Customer support automation software can also give you a great overview of recurring concerns, alongside customer wants and needs, providing insights that may help you improve your product, service, and overall strategy.
Andy Way, PartyLite
6. Daily reporting
If your business relies on digital channels to generate revenue and sales, automate your daily reporting so that you’re pulling in data from different online sources. This could be a combination of:
• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console
• Google Ads
• Facebook Ads
Use Google Data Studio to combine the data and automatically email you a report every morning, or every Monday morning if you find daily updates distracting. Having visibility of your performance in a single view is key to making sound decisions.
Shoaib Mughal, Marketix
7. Review monitoring
Staying on top of customer reviews is no easy task, especially if you’re listed on a lot of platforms. Unhappy customers turn to public platforms when they feel stuck, which gives you an opportunity to spot problems, find the root cause, and fix them. The faster you get to those reviews, the better your chance of resolving them.
Positive reviews are an incredible opportunity to engage happy customers and your team. Some businesses even share positive reviews on social media to drive engagement. In both cases, time is of the essence, and nobody has time to check each platform manually every day. There are plenty of review monitoring tools available, and most are very affordable. Reviewflowz is a free option if you’re using Slack.
Axel Lavergne, Reviewflowz
8. Supply chain management
Automating your supply chain management system is one of the best ways to handle business operations. A good system eases demand and supply checks, ensuring your inventory is well prepared to meet requirements. Having a real-time system that tells you when to order, how much to order, and how to maintain a good lead time schedule takes a significant amount of guesswork out of your day.
Johannes Larsson, Financer.com
9. Net Promoter Score (NPS) feedback
Every business should be collecting customer feedback. If you are, you know that it can be a time-consuming process. And if it’s collected manually, you risk gathering feedback at the wrong times or missing the opportunity entirely. NPS feedback is crucial to customer relationship management and future marketing strategy.
One example: an automation that sends an NPS survey to customers the day after an event or purchase. From there, you can automate referral requests from customers who gave a 9 or 10 rating, and send internal notifications to your team when someone scores lower. The whole system runs without anyone having to remember to do it.
Datis Mohsenipour, Outback Team Building & Training
10. Email marketing
Email marketing campaigns are still greatly underestimated. Small businesses can automate them and devote the time saved to other activities. With email marketing, you’re building a community around your product and brand, and it consistently delivers one of the best conversion rates of any marketing channel. A few examples of automated email campaigns include:
• Welcome emails
• Abandoned cart emails
• Birthday/anniversary emails
Tomaš Novák, Marketing Miner
The theme running through all of this is simple: less time spent on repeatable tasks means more time for the work that actually moves your business forward.
The same idea applies to how you manage costs.
At Mighty, members don’t spend time comparing vendors or negotiating pricing individually. That work is done at scale, so the savings show up without the legwork.
See what Mighty members are saving →
FAQ
What does automation mean for a small business?
Automation means using software or tools to handle tasks that would otherwise need to be done manually. For small businesses, that typically covers things like appointment scheduling, invoicing, social media posting, customer follow-ups, and reporting. The goal is to reduce repetitive admin so you and your team can focus on higher-value work.
Which business tasks are easiest to automate first?
The quickest wins are usually the tasks you do most often and that follow a predictable pattern. Appointment scheduling, invoice reminders, and social media posting are common starting points because the tools are affordable, easy to set up, and deliver immediate time savings. From there, customer feedback collection and review monitoring are worth tackling next.
How much does business automation software cost?
It varies widely. Many tools have free tiers that are perfectly adequate for small businesses, including scheduling tools like Calendly and review monitoring software. Paid plans for more advanced automation typically run from $10 to $100 a month depending on the platform and features. The time savings usually far outweigh the cost.
Can automation replace staff in a small business?
Automation handles repetitive, rules-based tasks but it doesn’t replace the human side of running a business. What it does is reduce the admin burden on you and your team, so people can focus on work that genuinely needs a person behind it. Most small business owners find it’s less about reducing headcount and more about stopping skilled people from spending their day on low-value tasks.
What is supply chain automation and do small businesses need it?
Supply chain automation uses software to monitor stock levels, trigger purchase orders, and manage lead times without manual input. For small businesses that carry inventory, it can prevent both stockouts and overstocking. Combined with group purchasing arrangements that pre-negotiate supplier pricing, it’s one of the more powerful ways to get costs and operations under control at the same time.
How does Mighty help small businesses save time and money on purchasing?
Mighty is a group purchasing organisation, which means members pool their buying power to access supplier rates that most independent businesses couldn’t negotiate on their own. Instead of spending time shopping around for better prices or renegotiating contracts individually, members get access to pre-negotiated savings on things they’re already buying. It’s a bit like automating the deal-finding part of your purchasing.