Writing
Business automation
The scheduled emails, chasers and hand-offs that stop someone doing it by hand every morning.
Automating Excel Reports: When Power Query Is Enough and When It Isn't
Most Excel reports that take a day a month can be automated inside Excel with Power Query, which is already installed, and that's where to start. Power BI is the right move only when the report has to be shared with people who should see different slices, refresh itself on a schedule without anyone opening a file, hold history the source systems don't keep, or join more than one system properly. Here's the symptom-by-symptom guide, what each fix involves, and the honest line between the two.
How Much Does Business Automation Cost in the UK?
Business automation in the UK costs anything from nothing, when your existing software already does the job, to a quoted agency project with robot licences paid every month. In between sit tool subscriptions you set up yourself, freelancers on day rates around £500, and fixed-price builds. The cost people forget is the upkeep when a supplier changes something.
Is Power Automate Included in Office 365?
Yes. Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) business plans include Power Automate for standard connectors. Premium costs £11.50 per user a month, paid yearly.
Where to Start Automating Finance Admin
Start with the finance admin your accounting software already automates, like bank rules, repeating invoices and invoice reminders, because switching those on costs nothing. Then build the jobs that join systems together, with a credit control digest as the best first one. The list below ranks every common finance admin job by how good a first automation it makes, alongside what Xero, QuickBooks and Sage already do.
Quotes That Go Quiet: Automating the Follow-Up Without Annoying Anyone
A good quote follow-up is a quick check that the quote arrived, one friendly nudge after a week, and a phone call from the owner if it's still quiet after two. Job apps like Tradify, ServiceM8 and Jobber can send the nudges for you, while Xero has no quote reminders at all, so for a lot of trades the most useful automation is a weekly list telling the owner which quotes have gone quiet.
What Can a Small Business Automate? Where to Start, and What to Leave Alone
A small business can automate any job that happens daily or weekly, gets checked by eye, uses data already sitting in a system you pay for, and is easy to spot when it's wrong. That usually means a morning summary, invoice chasing or quote follow-ups. Leave judgement calls, warm customer conversations, constantly changing processes and twice-a-year jobs to people.
Power Automate, Zapier or Make: Which Should a Small Business Use?
If your business runs on Microsoft 365 and your data lives in Outlook, SharePoint and Excel, use Power Automate, because you're probably already paying for it. If you live in lots of small web apps and don't use Microsoft 365, Zapier is the quickest to get going. If you need complicated branching on a tight budget, Make gives you the most for the money.
The 7am Business Summary Email: One Message Instead of Six Logins
A daily business summary email is one short message that lands at 7am with the handful of things that need you today: overdue invoices, today's jobs or bookings, the supplier you owe, anything that went wrong overnight. It reads from the systems you already use, so nobody has to log into six of them before the kettle's boiled. Here's what goes in one, what makes it get read, and how it's built.
How to Automate Overdue Invoice Reminders (and When Xero Already Does It for You)
Xero, QuickBooks Online and Sage Accounting can all email overdue customers on a schedule, and for a lot of small firms switching that on is the whole job. It's worth going further only when chasing needs judgement: one morning list of who's late, who you owe and what's going out today, a phone list for the worst cases, and a record of who promised to pay when.
Top Tools for Power Platform Professionals in 2026
A practical 2026 list of Power Platform tools worth knowing across Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Pages, Dynamics 365, Copilot Studio, learning resources and AI.