20 Business Tasks You Should Stop Doing Manually

Every business has them: repetitive tasks that consume hours of skilled workers' time, that everyone agrees should be automated, yet somehow persist month after month. The cost is staggering. A mid-size business with 10-50 employees typically wastes 20-40 hours per week on tasks that could be fully automated with today's tools.

Here are 20 tasks you should stop doing manually, organized by business function. For each one, we explain why it is costing you more than you think and what the automated alternative looks like.

Hours wasted per week on manual tasks by business function

Order Processing (Tasks 1-5)

1. Entering orders into your system. Whether orders arrive via email, phone, web form, or EDI, they should flow into your order management system automatically. Manual order entry is the single biggest time sink for most operations teams. See our data entry automation solutions.

2. Sending order confirmations. Every order should trigger an immediate confirmation email with order details, expected delivery date, and tracking information when available. This takes zero human effort when automated.

3. Generating pick lists and packing slips. If your warehouse team prints these manually or writes them by hand, you are introducing errors and delays. Automated pick list generation ordered by warehouse zone saves 30-40% of picking time.

4. Updating order status across channels. When an order ships from one system, every connected channel (marketplace, website, CRM) should update automatically. Manually updating order statuses across three platforms wastes 15-20 minutes per order.

5. Processing returns and exchanges. Returns should trigger automated inventory updates, refund processing, and customer notifications. Manual return processing is slow, error-prone, and frustrating for customers.

Finance and Accounting (Tasks 6-10)

6. Creating and sending invoices. Invoices should generate automatically from completed orders or delivered services. Our invoice automation checklist walks you through the complete setup.

7. Chasing overdue payments. Payment reminders should follow a pre-set escalation schedule. No one on your team should spend time writing "just checking in on invoice #1234" emails.

8. Reconciling bank transactions. Modern accounting platforms can match 85-95% of bank transactions automatically using rules and machine learning. Manual reconciliation should be the exception, not the rule.

9. Generating expense reports. Receipt scanning, categorization, and report assembly should happen automatically. Tools that connect credit card transactions to accounting categories eliminate the dreaded end-of-month expense report scramble.

10. Running payroll calculations. Time tracking, overtime calculations, tax withholding, and direct deposit should all flow automatically. Manual payroll is not just slow; it is a compliance risk.

Customer Service (Tasks 11-14)

11. Answering "where is my order" questions. Proactive shipping notifications and self-service tracking portals eliminate 60-70% of customer service tickets. Stop paying agents to look up tracking numbers.

12. Routing support tickets to the right team. Auto-classification based on keywords, customer tier, and issue type ensures tickets reach the right person immediately instead of bouncing between departments.

13. Sending follow-up satisfaction surveys. Post-interaction surveys should trigger automatically 24-48 hours after ticket resolution. Manual survey sending is inconsistent and biased toward positive interactions.

14. Updating CRM records after interactions. Every call, email, and chat should log to the CRM automatically. Sales and support teams waste 20-30% of their day on manual CRM updates.

Inventory and Shipping (Tasks 15-17)

15. Updating stock levels across channels. When a unit sells on Amazon, your Shopify and wholesale portal quantities should adjust instantly. Manual inventory updates are the primary cause of overselling. Check our inventory sync solutions.

16. Creating purchase orders for restock. When inventory hits a reorder point, the PO should generate and route for approval automatically. Waiting for someone to notice low stock and manually create a PO leads to stockouts.

17. Printing shipping labels one at a time. Batch label generation with automated carrier rate shopping saves 2-3 hours per day for stores shipping 50+ orders. Read our shipping automation checklist for the full breakdown.

Marketing and Admin (Tasks 18-20)

18. Sending welcome email sequences. New customer onboarding emails should trigger automatically based on signup, first purchase, or account creation. No one should manually send a welcome email.

19. Compiling weekly reports. If someone on your team spends Monday morning pulling data from five systems into a PowerPoint, that process should be automated end-to-end. See our Monday morning automations guide.

20. Scheduling social media posts. Content calendars with scheduled posting are table stakes. Manually logging into each platform to post wastes creative talent on logistics.

Use the 5-5-5 rule to prioritize your automation roadmap

The Bottom Line

You do not have to automate all 20 tasks at once. Use the 5-5-5 framework: automate five quick daily tasks this week, five weekly tasks this month, and five complex workflows this quarter. Within 90 days, you will have reclaimed 15-20 hours per week for your team to spend on work that actually grows the business.

Not sure where to start? Take our automation readiness quiz to get a personalized priority list based on your specific operations.