Automating your business with Zapier, Make or n8n: 10 concrete examples
Double entry, forgotten follow-ups, copy-pasting between software: how to automate your small business’s repetitive tasks, with which tool and at what cost.
By Léo Chuzel · Published on · 3 min read
Copying an order into the invoicing software, transferring a form into a spreadsheet, sending the same confirmation email to every customer: in a small business, these little tasks often add up to several hours a week. And they’re a source of errors. Good news: most can be automated, often without heavy development.
How automation works
An automation always follows the same logic: a trigger (a form is filled in, an order is placed, an invoice is paid) causes one or more actions (create a contact, send an email, update a table). Tools like Zapier, Make or n8n connect hundreds of pieces of software in this way.
Zapier, Make or n8n?
- Zapier: the easiest to get started with, with the largest number of connected apps. The price rises quickly with the volume of operations.
- Make: more visual and more powerful for complex scenarios, often more economical at equal volume.
- n8n: an open-source tool that can be hosted on your own server. Ideal for large volumes, sensitive data or custom needs, but it requires technical skills.
10 useful automations for a small business
Sales
- Website form to CRM: every enquiry creates a contact and a reminder task. See our article connecting your website to a CRM.
- Quote follow-up: an automatic email if a quote hasn’t had a reply within eight days.
- Review request: a message with your Google profile link once the job is done. See how to get Google reviews.
E-commerce
- Shopify order to invoicing software: the invoice is created and sent automatically.
- Low stock alert: a message to the team when a product falls below a threshold.
- Reseller orders: a trade order triggers a picking slip and a notification to the warehouse. To go further, read connecting a CRM to Shopify.
Admin
- Supplier invoices: documents received by email are filed automatically and sent to your accountant.
- Weekly report: the week’s revenue, orders and enquiries sent every Monday morning.
- Client onboarding: on signing, creation of the shared folder, sending of the questionnaire and scheduling of the first meeting.
- Appointments: an online booking creates the event, sends the confirmation and schedules a text reminder. See our guide to online appointment booking.
How to identify what to automate
For a week, note every repetitive task: whatever is done more than once a day, whatever consists of copying information from one tool to another, whatever is often forgotten. Then estimate the time spent. A 10-minute task repeated five times a day adds up to more than 200 hours a year.
The precautions to take
- Document your automations: who created it, what it does, which accounts it relies on.
- Plan for errors: what happens if a piece of software is unavailable? An alert should warn you.
- Watch out for personal data: every intermediate tool sees your customer data pass through, so check where it’s hosted.
- Avoid overengineered contraptions: twenty fragile automations chained together are harder to maintain than a clean integration.
What about artificial intelligence?
Automation tools now include AI models: sorting incoming emails, summarising an enquiry, extracting information from an invoice, preparing a draft reply. It’s very effective for sorting and writing tasks, provided you keep human approval on anything that goes out to the customer.
Want to know what can be automated in your business? Our integrations and automations start with a diagnosis of your processes, then we choose the most suitable tool with you, from a simple Make scenario to a custom integration.