I Scored 34/100 on an Automation Quiz — Here's What I'm Fixing

I run a small graphic design studio -- six people, a mix of freelancers and full-time. We do good work. Clients are happy. But I'd been hearing about automation for years and never really looked into it. I figured we were too small to bother.

Then a friend sent me a link to FlowAudit's automation readiness quiz. “Takes 60 seconds,” she said. “Just try it.”

Taking the quiz

The questions were straightforward -- how we handle invoicing, how we onboard clients, whether we have documented processes. I answered honestly, which meant a lot of “we do it manually” and “it depends on who's handling it.”

My score: 34 out of 100.

That stung. But the report didn't just give me a number -- it gave me three specific recommendations ranked by impact.

My top 3 recommendations

Here's what FlowAudit flagged:

1. Automate invoice follow-ups. We were sending manual reminder emails for overdue invoices. Sometimes we forgot. Sometimes we were too polite. The quiz estimated we were losing 2-3 hours a week on this alone.
2. Standardize client onboarding. Every new project started differently depending on who set it up. No checklist, no template, no automatic welcome email. The report pointed out this was causing scope creep and missed kickoff steps.
3. Centralize project status reporting. We were spending Friday afternoons manually compiling updates from Slack, email, and Trello into a client-facing summary. Classic automation candidate.

What I fixed first

I started with invoice follow-ups because it was the easiest win. I set up automatic payment reminders in QuickBooks -- three days after the due date, then seven, then fourteen. Took about 20 minutes to configure.

In the first month, our average days-to-payment dropped from 38 to 22. I'm not chasing anyone anymore. The reminders just go out, and people pay.

That alone is saving me about 5 hours a week when I factor in the mental overhead of tracking who owes what and deciding when to follow up.

What's next

I'm working on the client onboarding workflow now -- building a Zapier automation that triggers when a new project is created in our PM tool. It'll send a welcome packet, create a shared folder, and add the kickoff checklist automatically.

My goal is to retake the quiz in three months and see how much the score moves. I'm betting I can get above 60.

Curious where you stand?

If you're like me -- busy running a business, vaguely aware that you could be more efficient, but not sure where to start -- just take the quiz. It's free, it's fast, and the recommendations are surprisingly specific.