Every place someone retypes the same information is a leak, and a good first thing to automate. This worksheet makes those places visible in about twenty minutes.
What's inside
- A fill-in table for every tool you pay for
- A way to spot where data gets entered twice
- How to rank what to fix first
How to fill it in
- List every tool your business uses, including the unglamorous ones: the spreadsheet, the shared inbox, the paper job folder.
- For each, write what lives there and who types it in.
- In the last column, write where that same information gets typed again somewhere else.
- Circle every row where you wrote something in that last column. Those are your leaks.
The map
| Tool | What lives here | Who types it in | Where it gets retyped | Who owns it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Example: Field software | Jobs, schedule, invoices | Office manager | Weekly numbers sheet | Pat |
Ranking your leaks
For each circled row, score two things from 1 to 3: how often it happens (3 = daily) and how much it hurts when it's wrong or late (3 = it costs money). Multiply them. The highest scores are where automation pays back fastest.
If two tools don't connect at all, that's still useful information. Many tools you already pay for can be linked without replacing anything.