The 10-Minute Process Audit — Free · Keep it forever
Find out how much time
your team wastes on work
software should be doing
10 processes. A time-cost calculator. A 7-day action plan. If your team is spending more than 5 hours a week on any of these — you're paying for work that should be automated. This document shows you exactly what it's costing and what to do first.
✓ No email required · ✓ Print it · ✓ Share with your ops team · ✓ Keep it forever
40%
Of workday spent on repetitive tasks that could be automated
$25K
Annual cost of one employee doing 10hrs/week of automatable work
94%
Of workers perform tasks that are partially or fully automatable
6 weeks
Avg time from discovery to first automation live in production
PART 01The 10 processes to audit right now
For each process, estimate how many hours per week your team spends on it. Be honest — include the coordination time, the chasing, the re-keying, and the fixing mistakes. The score column indicates automation priority: H = high, M = medium, L = low.
#
Process
Hrs/week
Priority
01
Client / patient intake
Form → record → schedule → confirm
02
Invoice generation + payment follow-up
Create → send → chase → reconcile
03
Appointment reminders + confirmation
Remind 48hr → 24hr → 2hr → rebook
04
Document collection + chasing
Request → remind → escalate → log
05
Approval workflows
POs, leave, contracts — route, chase, log
06
Staff onboarding / offboarding
Access → training → equipment → comms
07
Compliance evidence collection
Logs → screenshots → policies → audit pack
08
Lead / referral follow-up
CRM entry → outreach → sequence → notify
09
Weekly / monthly reporting
Pull data → format → send to leadership
10
Data entry across disconnected systems
Re-keying data between tools manually
H — High
Automate first. Biggest time drain + highest ROI.
M — Medium
Automate second. Good ROI, moderate complexity.
L — Low
Automate later. Smaller gains or harder to automate.
PART 02What it's actually costing you
Use this formula for any process: (Hours/week × 52) × average hourly cost of the person doing it = annual cost of that manual process. These examples use $45/hr for admin staff and $150/hr for senior/professional staff.
Patient intake · 45 min per patient
40 patients/month × 0.75hrs = 30hrs/mo
30hrs × $45/hr = $1,350/mo
$16,200/year on one manual process
Invoice chasing · 3 hrs/week
3hrs × 52 weeks = 156hrs/year
156hrs × $45/hr = $7,020/year
$7,020/year in AR admin alone
Compliance evidence · 3 days/quarter
4 × 24hrs = 96hrs/year (senior staff)
96hrs × $150/hr = $14,400/year
$14,400/year per audit cycle
Staff onboarding · 10 hrs per hire
8 hires/year × 10hrs = 80hrs/year
80hrs × $150/hr (senior) = $12,000
$12,000/year for a team of 50
PART 03Your 7-day automation action plan
Day1
Fill in Part 01 with your ops lead — every row, honest hours
Do this with one other person who sees where time actually goes. Solo audits are inflated by 30%. Add the hours in the right column. Total them at the bottom.
✓ Win: a real map of where time is going
Day2
Run the cost calculator on your top 3 time drains
Use the formula: (hrs/week × 52) × hourly rate. Write the annual cost next to each process. Make the invisible cost visible — this is the number that justifies any automation investment.
✓ Win: a business case in writing
Day3
Write down exactly what triggers each process and what the output should be
Every automatable process has a trigger (form submitted, email received, date reached) and an output (record created, email sent, approval routed). Writing this down is 80% of the automation design work — and it's free.
✓ Win: automation-ready process specs
Day4
Pick ONE process and try automating the first step using free tools
Zapier free tier, Make.com free tier, or n8n (self-hostable, free). Take the single highest-volume trigger in your top process and automate just that first step. You don't need to automate the whole thing — just prove it's possible.
✓ Win: proof of concept live
Day5
Interview the person doing the most manual work — record it
Ask: "Walk me through exactly what you do when [trigger happens]." Record on Zoom or Loom. The transcript is your process documentation. Most automation projects fail because the spec is written by someone who doesn't do the work.
✓ Win: ground-truth process documentation
Day6
Identify which tools your processes touch and check if they have APIs
Every tool with an API can be automated. Google "tool name + Zapier" or "tool name + Make.com" — if there's a native integration, automation is fast and cheap. If not, check for a REST API. No API = automation is harder but not impossible.
✓ Win: automation feasibility map
Day7
Book a vendor-neutral 30-min process audit — bring your worksheet
By day 7 you know which processes cost the most, what triggers them, and which tools are involved. Any automation partner worth working with should be able to give you a fixed-price quote on the spot. If they can't scope it without a billable discovery phase — walk away.
✓ Win: a real quote from a real number
PART 045 questions to ask any automation partner before you sign
Q1
"Can you give me a fixed price before any work starts — not an estimate, not a range, a number you'll honour?"
Red flag if no
Q2
"Who maintains the automations after you build them? What happens when a connected tool changes its API?"
Red flag if vague
Q3
"Can you show me an example of a compliance-aware automation you've built for a [healthcare / legal / finance] client?"
Expect a real example
Q4
"Will you walk me through the automation in a test environment before it goes live on real client data?"
Red flag if skipped
Q5
"If I want to stop working with you, do I own the automations? Can I run them without you?"
Red flag if hostile
If your audit shows 10+ hrs/week lost — let's get them back.
Synethost Flow offers a free 30-minute process audit for any SMB. We map your top processes, calculate what they're costing, and give you a fixed-price quote to automate them. You keep this worksheet and the audit report either way.
synethost.com/flow
Fixed-price builds · No hourly billing · Shield clients get 15% off