10 Tasks You’re Still Doing Manually (That You Really Shouldn’t Be)
If you’re an SMB still burning time on manual tasks, you might as well be faxing invoices and asking Jeeves for help. It’s 2025, and automation isn’t just for massive enterprises with boardrooms full of swivel chairs and jargon. It’s for you, the business owner juggling 94 things before your first coffee kicks in.
At Tier 3 Solutions, we help businesses like yours swap chaos for calm using smart automation tools. So, let’s call out the madness. Here are 10 tasks you’re probably still doing manually, and why it’s time to stop.
1. Chasing Invoices Like a Digital Debt Collector
Still manually emailing clients with a “Just following up…” nudge? Let automation do the awkward chasing for you—politely, consistently, and without making it weird.
Bonus: Automated systems don’t forget, take bank holidays off, or feel passive-aggressive about late payments.
2. Scheduling Meetings With Email Ping-Pong
“Are you free Wednesday?”
“No, what about Friday?”
“You mean this Friday?”
Please, no more.
Online schedulers can sync with your calendar, auto-send reminders, and free up hours of back-and-forth misery.
3. Manually Onboarding New Clients
Copy-pasting welcome emails and setting up user accounts one by one? That’s not onboarding, that’s onboarding pain.
Automated workflows can handle documents, permissions, and welcome messages, making you look slick and professional (without lifting a finger).
4. Password Reset Requests
Unless your job description includes “Professional Password Whisperer”, get a self-service system in place. You’ve got routers to configure and clients to rescue.
5. Daily System Checks
Logging into every platform to check uptime, disk space or backups? That’s an intern’s job, if you had one. Monitoring tools can ping you only when things go wrong (and yes, silence becomes golden).
6. Social Media Posting
Still logging in daily to post? Tools exist that can queue, schedule, and even recycle your greatest hits. Unless your dream is to become a part-time social media manager, let the robots handle it.
7. Backups That Depend on You Remembering
If your backup plan is “I’ll do it Friday”, your recovery plan is “panic and tears”. Automate it. Set it. Forget it. Sleep better.
8. Manually Updating Spreadsheets
If you’ve ever copied and pasted data from one spreadsheet to another, congratulations, you’ve wasted time and increased your chance of a catastrophic typo. Integrate your systems and let automation update the numbers for you.
9. Following Up with Leads
If leads are leaking out of your inbox like water from a cracked bucket, it’s time to seal it up. Automate follow-up emails, drip campaigns and reminders so no hot lead goes cold.
10. Checking in With Your Team
You don’t need a daily round of “How’s it going?” messages. Use project tools that track progress, send alerts, and give you visibility at a glance, without feeling like a micromanager in a trench coat.
Final Thought: Your Time Is a Premium Service
Every minute you spend doing what a machine could be doing is a minute you’re not growing your business, serving your clients, or plotting world domination (or at least your next holiday).
At Tier 3 Solutions, we help businesses across the UK cut the manual faff and plug in powerful automation that actually works. Want to get started? Let’s chat. No jargon. No fluff. Just results.
Ready to automate the nonsense? Let’s talk.