How to find every automation your business runs: a one-hour inventory

You can find most of the automations your business runs in about an hour, without any special tools. Ask each person what happens “by itself” in their work, check a handful of usual places, and write down five things about each one you find. The list you end up with is the single most useful document you can have before someone leaves, a laptop dies, or you start adding more AI.

What counts as an automation

For this exercise, an automation is anything that happens without someone doing it by hand each time. If you’re unsure, include it. It’s easier to cross something off than to discover it later.

Common examples:

• a report or summary that arrives by email on a schedule
• new orders, invoices or customers copied from one system to another
• reminders or follow-up emails sent automatically
• a spreadsheet that pulls in fresh numbers by itself
• a script someone wrote that runs every night
• an AI assistant that drafts replies, sorts email or writes a weekly update
• a prompt someone pastes into an AI tool every Monday to produce the same document

That last one matters more than it looks. It isn’t automatic in the strict sense, but if only one person knows the prompt and the business relies on the result, it has the same weakness.

Step 1: Ask people (about 30 minutes)

The fastest way to find automations is to ask the people who use them. Send these questions to each team lead, or ask them in a short meeting:

1. What reports, emails or updates arrive for you without anyone sending them by hand?
2. What information moves between systems by itself, such as orders into accounting?
3. Do you use an AI tool for any regular task? Which one, and whose account is it on?
4. Is there anything you’d be stuck without if one particular person was away for two weeks?
5. Have you ever set something up to “just run”? Is it still running?

Question 4 often finds the most important ones. People rarely think of a report as an automation, but they know immediately what they’d miss.

Step 2: Check the usual places (about 20 minutes)

Automations tend to live in the same few places. You don’t need to be technical to look; you need to know where to ask.

• Online automation tools. Accounts on tools such as Zapier, Make, n8n or Power Automate. Each usually has a list of active workflows and shows whose account it belongs to.
• Scheduled tasks on computers. On Windows, the Task Scheduler (a built-in program that runs things at set times) often holds scripts and refreshes. Ask whoever looks after your computers to check the machines of anyone who builds things.
• Email rules and forwarding. Rules that forward, file or reply to messages automatically, especially on shared mailboxes.
• Spreadsheets. Files with macros or scripts, or that pull data from other systems when opened.
• Built-in automations in your apps. Most accounting, e-commerce, scheduling and CRM software has its own automations: reminders, follow-ups, recurring invoices. Check the settings.
• AI tools. Saved assistants, custom instructions, scheduled tasks or connected apps in any AI tool your staff use, including personal accounts used for work.

If a former employee set things up, the place they worked is the place to look first. Follow your company’s policy before accessing anyone’s accounts or files.

Step 3: Write down five things about each one (about 10 minutes)

For every automation you find, write one line with these five facts. A simple spreadsheet or a table in a document is fine.

What it does	Where it runs	Whose login it uses	Who uses the result	Who would notice if it stopped
Emails the daily sales summary at 7am	Sam’s laptop	Sam’s Microsoft 365 account	Sales team	Probably nobody for a few days
Copies new online orders into accounting	Online automation tool	Shared login	Office manager	Office manager, at month-end

Example rows only. Use your own.

“Not sure” is a perfectly good answer in any column. A row full of “not sure” is a finding in itself: it usually means something important lives in one person’s head.

Step 4: Decide what to fix first

Once you have the list, look for rows that combine these warning signs:

• it runs on one person’s computer
• it uses one person’s own login or a shared password
• nobody would notice quickly if it stopped
• the business would be hurt if it stopped, such as missed orders, unpaid invoices or customers left waiting

Anything with three or four of those is your priority. Moving it to a business-owned account, getting it off a laptop and adding an alert will remove most of the risk. The article on what happens when the person who built an automation leaves covers how.

Keep the list alive

An inventory is only useful if it stays current. Two habits keep it that way:

• Add to it whenever something new is set up, including AI tools. One line is enough.
• Check it whenever someone leaves. Before their accounts are switched off, go through the rows with their name on them.

Looking at it once a quarter is plenty for most small businesses.

Checklist

• Ask each team the five questions in Step 1.
• Check online automation tools, scheduled tasks, email rules, spreadsheets, app settings and AI tools.
• Write one line per automation: what, where, whose login, who uses it, who would notice.
• Mark the ones that run on one person’s computer or login, with nobody watching.
• Fix those first.
• Add “check the automation list” to your offboarding checklist.

How StackProbe handles this

The free stack check walks through the same questions in about five minutes and shows you what’s fragile straight away. If you’d like, we follow up with a fuller report and then take on the automations that matter: moving them into a sealed workspace your business owns, watching them every five minutes, and fixing them when they break.