Peak Advisers frequently addresses automation and how QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online can help you reduce manual labor inputs in our blogs and newsletters. Sometimes it takes short-term pain to enjoy the long-term gain.

A point that is sometimes overlooked is that it is possible that implementing automation may, in the short term, increase labor inputs. Why? Because variables affecting automation rules are not always understood at the beginning.

Here is an example that I am currently dealing with…

Email account hacked!

When my business email was hacked recently, the cleanup process included deleting all Outlook rules. Unfortunately, many of these rules automatically deleted spam and unwanted emails that I would never read and did not know of their authenticity. 

Those email rules must be recreated; currently, my inbox is overflowing with unwanted emails. As I receive them, I recreate the automation rule for them; not all are deleted. Some are rerouted to other inboxes or people. 

The point is my manual input in managing email has dramatically increased in the past few weeks, but in another week or two, my automation will take full effect, and the labor input will plummet.

Two key takeaways

1. This is how you must think of automation in your business. Start small, realize the labor savings, and move on to another automation. This is the snowball effect, where something small in the beginning has hugely positive impacts. We help business operators implement the snowball effect all the time at Peak Advisers.

2. If you haven’t set up rules in your email system to automatically delete the junk you receive, maybe you should.