Five tasks worth automating before anything else

Automation gets oversold. But there are a handful of jobs that almost every business does manually and almost never should.

1. Following up with new inquiries. A reply within five minutes dramatically outperforms one sent the next morning. An automatic first response buys you time without losing the lead.

2. Booking appointments. Every back-and-forth email about timing is a chance for someone to lose interest.

3. Sending invoices and reminders. Chasing payment is the least enjoyable part of running a business and the easiest to hand to software.

4. Moving data between apps. If you are copying the same information into two systems, that is a job for an integration, not a person.

5. Reporting. A simple weekly summary that lands in your inbox beats a dashboard nobody opens.

Fix those five and most owners get back the better part of a day each week.