Guides to automating repetitive work.
Plain guides for the operations and finance teams of small and mid-size businesses: what to automate first, which tool to try, and when to bring in a developer. Each one links to the builds on this site that it draws on.
Talk through your own caseHow to automate repetitive work
To automate repetitive tasks, list what your team repeats for a week or two and time it. Score each task on how often it runs, how long it takes, what a mistake costs and whether its steps follow rules. Then automate the best-scoring task with the simplest tool that does the job: a built-in feature first, then spreadsheet formulas, then a no-code tool such as Zapier, Make or Power Automate, and only then scripts, APIs or a custom build. Bring someone in when a system has no connector, a half-finished run would leave bad records, or the volume makes per-run billing hurt.
Automate copy-paste between apps
To stop copy-pasting between two applications, try these in order and stop at the first that works: a native integration, a scheduled import or export, a no-code tool such as Zapier, Make or Power Automate, desktop RPA, an API integration and, when a system has no API, browser automation. The right one depends on whether both apps expose the data, how often it moves, what a failed run costs and who will maintain it.