Sample · Automation Blueprint, Mark I

What you receive after a blueprint session

A composite example. The company below is fictional, assembled from patterns we see constantly in owner-led professional firms. Your version is built from your actual workflow.

The firm

Who: a 30-person accounting and advisory practice
Stack: Microsoft 365, a practice platform, one very important spreadsheet
Biggest cost: client onboarding and document chasing
Scale: about 18 hours a week across the team, every week
What broke last: a new client's paperwork bounced between three inboxes for eleven days
Approvers: the managing partner and the operations lead

Ranked automation candidates

1 · Build first

Client onboarding and document chasing

An intake that assembles the checklist per client type, sends the requests, chases what hasn't arrived on a schedule, and files what comes back where it belongs. A person reviews the completed file before the client is told they're done. Recovers most of the 18 hours and shortens onboarding from weeks to days, which the client feels too.

2 · Next

Meeting notes into the system of record

Client calls produce follow-ups that live in whoever attended. Transcripts drafted into file notes and task lists, approved by the person who was in the meeting before anything is saved or assigned.

3 · Later

Recurring status reporting

The monthly client status emails are assembled from data the firm already has. Drafted automatically, sent only after review. Smaller win, so it waits its turn.

What stays human

Anything a client reads gets approved by a named person before it goes out. Advice stays human entirely. The automation multiplies the team's hours; it does not speak for the firm.

The boundary

Not automated, by design: anything touching the tax filing system of record, and anything under the firm's professional review obligations. The blueprint draws this line explicitly so the build never wanders across it. Yours will name your own lines: supervision, audit scope, whatever cannot leave the building.

The sequence

Week 1
Map the onboarding workflow live, using the last messy client, not the ideal one. The firm keeps the map.
Weeks 2 to 4
First piece of the onboarding automation live, with the approval step in place from day one.
Phase two
Meeting notes, then reporting. One thing at a time, each proven before the next starts.

Want yours?

Start with the two-minute readiness check. If there's a fit, the blueprint session maps your workflow, and you keep the map either way.

Take the readiness check