Automating Your Admin: How to Save 5 Hours a Week

You're spending hours every week on admin—quoting, invoicing, following up. But a lot of it could be automated. Here's how to automate your admin and save 5 hours a week—without losing the personal touch.

Where Does Your Time Actually Go?

Before automating anything, understand where your admin time goes. For most mobile vendors, the biggest time sinks are:

• Responding to enquiries
• Creating and sending quotes
• Following up with potential clients
• Sending invoices and chasing payments
• Confirming booking details
• Post-event follow-ups and review requests

Each of these involves repetitive actions that follow predictable patterns. That's exactly what automation handles well.

Email Templates and Quick Replies

The simplest automation is using templates instead of writing from scratch every time.

What to Template

• Initial enquiry response: Thanks for getting in touch, here's what we offer, these are our next steps
• Quote cover email: Attached is your personalised quote, here's what it includes, how to book
• Booking confirmation: Great news, you're booked, here's what happens next
• Pre-event details request: Your event is coming up, please confirm these details
• Payment reminder: Friendly nudge about outstanding balance
• Post-event thank you: Hope everything went well, request for review

Create these templates once, then personalise them for each client. You're not sending identical robotic messages—you're starting from a solid base and adding personal details.

Where to Store Templates

Gmail has a templates feature (Settings > Advanced > Templates). Outlook has Quick Parts. Or simply keep a document with your standard responses that you copy, paste, and customise.

Automated Follow-Ups

Following up with enquiries who haven't responded is crucial—but easy to forget when you're busy. Automation solves this.

Email Scheduling

When you send a quote, schedule a follow-up email for three days later. Gmail and Outlook both allow scheduled sending. Write the follow-up immediately while the enquiry is fresh, then schedule it to send automatically.

CRM Systems

Customer Relationship Management tools like HubSpot (free tier available) or simpler options like Pipedrive let you set up automated follow-up sequences. When someone enquires, the system prompts you or automatically sends follow-ups at set intervals.

Invoicing Automation

Manual invoicing is time-consuming and error-prone. Invoicing software pays for itself in time saved.

What to Automate

• Invoice creation: Pre-populated with your details, just add client info and line items
• Automatic numbering: Sequential invoice numbers without manual tracking
• Payment reminders: Automatic nudges when invoices become overdue
• Receipt generation: Automatic receipts when payments are received
• Recurring invoices: For regular clients or deposit schedules

Tools That Work

QuickBooks, Xero, FreeAgent, and Wave (free) all handle invoice automation. Most integrate with payment processors so clients can pay directly from the invoice, and you're notified automatically when they do.

Quote Generation

Creating quotes from scratch for every enquiry is slow. Standardise your pricing and create a quote template.

Standardise Your Pricing

Have clear pricing for your standard packages. Per-head rates, minimum spends, add-on prices. When you know your numbers, quotes become simple maths rather than fresh calculations each time.

Quote Templates

Create a professional quote template—PDF or Word document—with your branding, terms, and standard information already in place. You just fill in the client-specific details.

Quote Software

Tools like PandaDoc, Proposify, or even the quote features in accounting software let you create, send, and track quotes. You can see when clients open them and set up automatic follow-ups if they don't respond.

Calendar Automation

Your calendar can do more than show appointments. Use it to automate reminders and workflows.

Automatic Reminders

Set up recurring reminders:

• Two weeks before events: send pre-event details request
• One week before: confirm final numbers
• Day after: send thank you and review request
• Deposit due dates: payment reminder triggers

Booking Links

Tools like Calendly let clients book consultation calls directly into your calendar. No back-and-forth about availability—they see your free slots and book one. Automatic confirmation emails go to both of you.

Connecting Your Tools

The real power comes from connecting tools together so actions in one trigger actions in another.

Zapier

Zapier connects different apps and automates workflows between them. Examples:

• New enquiry form submission → Create contact in your CRM → Send welcome email
• Quote accepted → Create calendar event → Generate invoice
• Invoice paid → Update spreadsheet → Send receipt

The free tier handles basic automations. More complex workflows require paid plans, but the time saved often justifies the cost.

Make (formerly Integromat)

Similar to Zapier, sometimes more powerful for complex scenarios. The visual workflow builder helps you see exactly what's happening.

Keeping the Personal Touch

Automation shouldn't make your business feel robotic. The goal is eliminating repetitive mechanical tasks so you have more time for genuine personal interaction.

• Use templates as starting points, not finished messages—always add personal elements
• Review automated emails before they send when possible
• Respond personally to anything that needs a human touch
• Use automation for reminders and prompts, not for replacing genuine communication

Start Small

Don't try to automate everything at once. Pick one pain point and solve it:

1. Identify your biggest time sink
2. Find or create a simple automation for it
3. Use it consistently for a month
4. Refine based on what works
5. Move to the next pain point

Building automation gradually means each piece works properly before you add the next. Rushing creates fragile systems that break at the worst moments.

Final Thoughts

Five hours a week is 260 hours a year—that's over six full working weeks. Time you could spend on events, with family, or growing your business.

Automation isn't about removing yourself from your business. It's about removing the repetitive, mechanical tasks that drain your time and energy. The admin that follows the same pattern every time is ripe for automation. The personal connections, creative work, and actual service delivery—that's where your time should go.

Start with templates. Add scheduled follow-ups. Automate your invoicing. Connect your tools. Each improvement compounds, and before long you'll wonder how you ever managed without it.