Published by CXJ Labs, an automation company. Not independent. Read our disclosure.
The Automation Index

Which business admin can be automated, and by how much?

50 common business processes, broken into 289 tasks. For each one: the share automatable today, the hours it saves, the tools and the workflow. Every estimate shows its method and sources.

Processes
50
Median share automatable
69%
Hours back a week, all 50
289

The short answer

Most business admin is more automatable than people think, and less than vendors claim. Across the 50 processes here, the median is 69% of task time automatable with tools available today. The parts that move information automate well. The parts that need trust, judgement or negotiation mostly do not, and those are usually where the money is made.

Published by CXJ Labs. Estimates are ours, anchored on McKinsey and O*NET data. How we estimate. Updated 2026-11-09.

The Index: all 50 processes
ProcessAutomatable todayHours back / weekHours by hand
Operations
Meeting notes and action items75%7.510.5
Shared inbox triage76%1013.5
Internal request intake70%69
SOP documentation59%58.5
Shift handover reports67%5.58
Purchase orders69%710
Data entry between systems80%8.510.5
Appointment setting
Appointment reminders82%7.59
Appointment booking82%78.5
Rescheduling and cancellations72%3.55
Missed-call text back63%3.56
Lead qualification60%6.510.5
Speed to lead65%711
Social DM appointment setting44%9.521
Follow-up
Lead follow-up61%712
No-show follow-up69%34.5
Post-call follow-up68%69
Quote follow-up51%3.57
Review requests72%4.56
Lead reactivation63%58.5
Sales admin
Proposal generation71%710
Contract generation and e-signature82%5.57
Call notes and CRM logging81%1417.5
Commission tracking74%57
Pipeline stage updates66%5.58.5
Sales to delivery handoff58%47
Lead routing88%1213.5
Onboarding
Client onboarding55%5.510.5
New hire onboarding54%4.58
Onboarding document collection74%5.57.5
Account provisioning61%46
Customer welcome sequences69%5.58
Employee offboarding56%35.5
Reporting
Weekly KPI reporting76%4.56
Sales pipeline reporting61%3.55.5
Marketing attribution reporting69%4.56.5
End-of-day reports68%69
Cash-flow reporting67%34.5
Client reporting66%69.5
Invoicing and payments
Invoice creation and sending83%56
Overdue payment reminders63%35
Failed payment recovery64%3.55
Payment reconciliation71%45.5
Expense receipt capture77%6.58.5
Payroll preparation68%3.55
CRM hygiene
Duplicate contact merging74%45.5
Contact data enrichment78%1215.5
Lead source tagging67%46
Stale deal clean-up63%3.56
Form-to-CRM data capture88%89.5

Hours are for each entry's stated scenario, not your business. Open an entry to see its assumptions, or download the data.

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What is admin costing you?

Multiply your team size by weekly admin hours and hourly cost, and the yearly figure is usually larger than expected. The calculator shows the cost and the hours you could get back, using the Index median as a guide.

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