Process Automation Audit

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when you need to:

• Identify which business processes should be automated first
• Estimate ROI for automating specific workflows
• Get tool recommendations for automating repetitive tasks
• Build a prioritized automation roadmap for a solopreneur or small team

DO NOT use this skill for building the actual automations, writing code, or configuring specific tools. This is for auditing and planning only.

Core Principle

AUTOMATE THE BORING, REPETITIVE, AND ERROR-PRONE — NEVER AUTOMATE WHAT REQUIRES JUDGMENT, CREATIVITY, OR HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS.

Phase 1: Process Inventory

Map all current processes before identifying automation candidates.

Required Inputs

Process Mapping

For each process the user describes, document:

## Process: [Name]

**Frequency:** [Daily/Weekly/Monthly]
**Time per occurrence:** [X minutes/hours]
**Monthly time cost:** [Frequency x Time]
**Error rate:** [Low/Medium/High]
**Current method:** [Manual/Semi-automated/Fully manual]
**Steps:**
1. [Step 1]
2. [Step 2]
3. [Step 3]

GATE: Present the process inventory and confirm completeness before scoring.

Phase 2: Score and Prioritize

Evaluate each process for automation potential.

Automation Scoring

Score each process on four dimensions (1-5):

## Automation Priority Matrix

| Process | Time Saved | Repeatability | Error Impact | Ease | Total | Priority |
|---------|-----------|---------------|-------------|------|-------|----------|
| Invoice sending | 5 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 19 | HIGH |
| Social scheduling | 4 | 4 | 2 | 5 | 15 | MEDIUM |
| Report generation | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 11 | LOW |

ROI Estimate

For each high-priority process:

**Process:** Invoice sending
**Current time cost:** 4 hours/month
**Hourly value of your time:** $100
**Monthly cost of manual process:** $400
**Recommended tool:** [Tool name]
**Tool cost:** $30/month
**Setup time:** 2 hours (one-time)
**Monthly time after automation:** 30 minutes
**Monthly savings:** $350 (net of tool cost)
**Payback period:** Immediate

GATE: Present priorities and ROI estimates. Get approval before recommending tools.

Phase 3: Tool Recommendations

Match each automation opportunity with specific tools.

Recommendation Format

For each process, recommend 1-2 tools:

## Recommended Automations

### 1. [Process Name] — Priority: HIGH

**Recommended tool:** [Primary recommendation]
**Alternative:** [Backup option]
**What it automates:** [Specific steps from the process map]
**What still needs human input:** [Steps that cannot be automated]
**Setup complexity:** [Low/Medium/High]
**Monthly cost:** $[X]
**Integration with current stack:** [How it connects to existing tools]

Common Solopreneur Automation Stack

Reference these categories when making recommendations:

• Email/CRM: Follow-up sequences, lead tagging, welcome emails
• Invoicing: Recurring invoices, payment reminders, expense tracking
• Scheduling: Appointment booking, calendar management
• Social media: Content scheduling, cross-posting
• Documents: Proposal generation, contract sending
• Reporting: Dashboard creation, metric alerts

Phase 4: Implementation Roadmap

Deliver a phased plan for implementing automations.

90-Day Roadmap

## Automation Roadmap

**Month 1 — Quick Wins**
- [ ] Set up [Tool 1] for [Process] (estimated: 2 hours)
- [ ] Set up [Tool 2] for [Process] (estimated: 1 hour)
- Expected time savings: [X] hours/month

**Month 2 — Core Systems**
- [ ] Implement [Tool 3] for [Process] (estimated: 4 hours)
- [ ] Connect [Tool 1] to [Tool 3] via [integration]
- Expected time savings: [X] hours/month

**Month 3 — Optimization**
- [ ] Review automation performance
- [ ] Fix any broken workflows
- [ ] Identify next batch of processes to automate
- Expected total time savings: [X] hours/month

Maintenance Schedule

Recommend a monthly 30-minute automation check: verify workflows are running, review error logs, update any broken integrations.

Anti-Patterns

• Automating everything at once — implement one automation at a time. Stack failures are hard to debug.
• Automating broken processes — fix the process first, then automate. Automating a bad process makes bad things happen faster.
• Over-engineering — a simple Zapier workflow beats a custom-coded solution for most solopreneurs.
• Ignoring the human steps — every automation has handoff points where a human needs to review, approve, or intervene.
• No error handling — automations fail silently. Always set up failure notifications.

Recovery

• User has no budget: Recommend free tiers first (most tools have generous free plans). Prioritize automations that save enough time to justify paid upgrades later.
• User is not technical: Stick to no-code tools with visual builders. Avoid anything requiring API configuration.
• User automates something and it breaks: Help them identify the failure point, set up error alerts, and create a manual fallback procedure.
• Process is too complex to automate fully: Recommend semi-automation — automate the repeatable parts and keep human judgment for the rest.
• User has analysis paralysis: Pick the single highest-ROI automation and start there. One working automation builds confidence for the next.