Business process automation guide /
Which internal jobs are worth handing over, and what it takes to hand one over.
We look at the jobs your people repeat every week and send you back which of them are worth handing over first.
By Reece Rainer
spareday, Newcastle NSW
Last updated
31 August 2026
Read time
6 minutes
Business process automation is automation, which means a job that runs without anybody remembering, applied to the repeated jobs inside a business. The copying between systems, the standard email, the approval that waits three days on somebody's desk.
It is the inside half of the business rather than the customer facing half. What follows is which jobs are actually worth handing over, what it takes to hand one over properly, and where it goes wrong.
One that happens often, the same way every time, with no judgement call in it. Frequency matters more than size: a two minute job done forty times a week beats a half day job done once.
The test is simple and it holds up. A job that happens the same way every time can be handed over. A job where somebody weighs something up cannot, and trying is what produces the automations people quietly turn off.
The classic one is data typed into two systems by a person. It is common, it is cheap to fix, and it is the job nobody ever puts on a list because it feels too small to mention.
business.gov.au keeps its own rundown of the tools, which is a plainer starting point than most vendor sites.
Because in a small business the repeated jobs sit on the people you can least afford to have doing them, and they only get done when somebody remembers.
In a business with three or ten people, the administration lands wherever there is a gap, which is usually on the owner or on the one person who is good at computers.
The cost is rarely dramatic. It is an evening a week, a job that got missed, and the fact that the whole thing stops when that person is on leave.
The other half is consistency. A job that happens automatically happens the same way every time, which matters most for the ones that only get noticed when they are missed.
Anything typed in twice, anything that starts with a person copying something, and anything that waits on somebody noticing an email. Those cover most of what is worth doing.
Finding the first one takes a short conversation rather than a review of the whole business.
Ask the people doing the work rather than the owner. The answers are different, and the people doing it have a list ready.
Automating a process nobody wrote down, automating a bad process faster, building something only one person understands, and nobody noticing when it silently stops.
These are the four we see, and all of them are avoidable before anything is built.
That last one is the reason ours are built to say something when they fail. A job that used to be done by a person was at least visible when it stopped.
Ask the people doing the work, pick the job that repeats most, write it down properly, build the smallest version, watch it, then take the next one.
What do you do every week that a machine could do. They know, and nobody has asked them.
Frequency over size. A small job done constantly is worth more than a big job done monthly.
Every step, in order, including the exceptions. If three people do it three ways, agreeing on one way is the actual work.
One job, end to end. Not a platform, not a system. One job that used to need a person and now does not.
Including what it does with the odd cases. And make sure it tells somebody when it fails.
Which will be quicker, because the connections between your systems already exist by then.
The writing down takes longer than the building, on nearly every job. Once one is running, the ones after it are faster because the hard connections already exist.
A business with a process nobody has written down is not slow to automate, it is not ready to. Writing it down is worth doing regardless of whether anything gets built.
Ask what happens when it fails, who owns what gets built, whether it runs on tools you already have, and what a change costs. The failure question is the one that gets skipped.
We do this work in Newcastle, so we are not neutral. These are the questions we would want asked of us.
Plenty of this can be set up by somebody in the business who enjoys it, and some businesses do exactly that. The part worth paying for is usually the writing down and the failure handling.
If you do one thing after reading this, ask the person who does the most admin what they type in twice. That answer is the first job worth automating, and it is nearly always already known to somebody who was never asked.
It happens often, the same way every time, with no judgement call in it. Frequency matters more than the size of the job.
Anything typed into two systems by a person, anything that starts with copying, and anything waiting on somebody noticing an email.
That page is the customer facing half: missed calls, follow ups, review requests. This is the inside half: the jobs your own people do by hand.
Often not. Connecting the tools you already pay for is usually the cheapest version and the one with most of the benefit.
Automating a process nobody wrote down, which builds one person's version of it and breaks for everybody else.
One monthly fee that covers everything, month to month, with no lock-in contract. The number depends on what your business needs, so we give it to you on the call.
Reece has a strong understanding of AI agents and automation, and was happy to share how he uses it in his business and how to apply it within mine.
I now have a custom dashboard that lets me track exactly what my competitors are doing, spot viral content trends in real time, and script high-performing content ideas on demand. The difference has been night and day. I’m no longer guessing.
Reece has been generous, reliable and knowledgeable in creating an online presence for our sporting club. He is good to work with and has good technical abilities.