How to automate administrative tasks with AI

Administrative tasks are necessary for businesses – but spending time on them can kill your team’s productivity. If you find yourself drowning in manual processes, you may benefit from using AI tools to automate tasks.

From data entry to creating invoices, AI can be used in many ways. The key to automating administrative tasks using AI is to take a systematic approach. Rather than rushing to automate everything all at once, it’s a good idea to figure out where AI can help to save you the most time. Audit your current processes, prioritise based on impact, and then roll-out any new tools or processes gradually.

So, if you’re looking to save time and create more efficient ways of working, let’s take a look at how to automate administrative tasks using AI.

The administrative burden on small businesses

Small businesses spend a huge amount of time on admin tasks, as you’ll know if you’re a SME owner, or work in a small enterprise. One recent German study found that SMEs spend 7% of their working time on administrative processes. This covers various types of tasks, some of which have a particularly high administrative burden. One study from the UK, for example, found that SMEs lose 24 years per year to financial admin, while another US study found that one third of companies spend at least 11 hours on HR admin tasks each week, including payroll, hiring, onboarding and training.

Every business is different, but some of the most common admin tasks that take up time include:

• Email and communication management: Reading, responding to, and organising the constant stream of emails and messages that ping into your inbox can easily consume hours of the day.

• Data entry and processing: Manually inputting customer information, sales data, and managing inventory into spreadsheets. These are just some of the data tasks businesses are faced with every day.

• Invoice creation and payment tracking: Generating invoices, following up on payments, reconciling banking systems and other related tasks are critical for cash flow but can be incredibly inefficient when done manually.

• Appointment management: Coordinating calendars, booking meetings, chasing for availability and managing client appointments across multiple stakeholders can all add up to several hours every week.

All of this adds up to a huge chunk of work that feels repetitive, with two thirds of global office workers saying that they feel like they’re doing the same tasks over and over again. The staff surveyed said that they waste an average of 4.5 hours every week on time-consuming tasks that they think could be easily automated.

So, not only are employees spending time on repetitive, manual tasks which could be better spent on business-critical activities, but it can also have a negative impact on their morale, too – which could further impact productivity and increase staff turnover.

Can I use AI to automate tasks?

Automating administrative tasks is one of the most common use cases of AI for SMEs – and it’s also perhaps the one that can save you the most time and money, too.

Businesses can automate tasks in two main ways: simple automation that follows basic rules (like automatically filing emails into folders), or AI-powered automation that can handle more complex tasks (like understanding customer questions and suggesting responses).

When it comes to which tasks to focus on, there are several areas that you may want to prioritise, depending on your needs. Here’s how to automate tasks depending on your needs.

Email management and response automation

You can automate email writing as well as email management using AI tools for tasks such as:

• Email writing: Rather than starting from scratch, AI can suggest appropriate responses to emails, speeding up reply times. It can also compose entirely new messages, based on short prompts.

• Email filtering: Categorise incoming emails based on content, sender and urgency to distinguish between important messages and ones that are less critical.

• Automate responses: Create smart templates that can automatically respond to common inquiries, freeing up your team to focus on key tasks. AI can analyse incoming emails and suggest appropriate responses or even send pre-approved replies for frequently asked questions.

• Follow-up emails: Set up automated follow-up sequences for different scenarios, such as customer questions and sales prospects.

Recommended tools:

• Microsoft 365 with Copilot: Your all-in-one AI assistant for more efficient emails, including email drafting, smart replies, meeting summaries and email prioritisation.

• Boomerang Respondable for Gmail: A personal AI assistant for writing better emails. Also allows you to schedule emails for later, track responses and automatically follow-up on emails.

• Klaviyo: An AI-powered email marketing platform that builds exactly what you need, including flows, email content and subject lines, and sending emails at just the right time.

Appointment booking and calendar management

Reduce unnecessary back-and-forth communications when trying to set up meetings, with simple automations such as:

• Easier booking: Allow clients to schedule appointments based on your real-time availability, with automatic confirmations and reminders sent.

• Intelligent scheduling: AI tools can analyse multiple calendars (including time zones, existing meetings and preferences) to automatically suggest the best times to meet.

• Meeting preparation and minutes: Automatically compile relevant documents, previous communications and background information for upcoming meetings, as well as automatically taking notes during the meeting and distributing them afterwards.

Recommended tools:

• Microsoft 365 with Copilot: Automatically summarise key information from emails and previous meetings with Microsoft’s AI-powered assistant, Copilot.

• Clockwise: An AI calendar assistant that automatically finds the best team for the whole team, avoids meeting conflicts, and creates focused time blocks for deep work based on your preferences.

• Otter.ai: A powerful AI tool that provides AI-powered meeting transcription, summary generation, and action item identification.

Invoice creation and payment tracking

Financial administration can take up significant time for small businesses, but AI can streamline most tasks through automation, including:

• Invoice generation: Automatically create invoices based on work completed, time tracking data or project milestones.

• Payment tracking and follow-up: Set up automated workflows to monitor payment status, send reminders and escalate overdue accounts.

• Expense processing: Automatically categorise expenses, extract data from receipts, and match transactions to the correct accounts.

• Financial reporting: Automatically generate reports, compiling data and highlighting key metrics and trends.

Recommended tools:

• QuickBooks Intuit Assist: An AI agent that helps you to categorise expenses and invoices, automate invoices and track payments to speed up end-of-month reconciliation.

• Xero: This accounting tool includes AI-powered features. Bank reconciliations are powered by machine learning, automatic form filling helps to speed up expense reporting and deep insights give you more powerful reporting.

• Vic.ai: AI-powered accounting platform that automates invoicing, manages corporate expenses to reduce manual effort and speed up the approval process.

Document filing and organisation

Document management may not seem like the biggest issue, but the minutes saved per team member can really add up. Ways to automate your document filing and organisation include:

• Automatic document classification: AI tools can analyse documents to automatically sort them into relevant folders based on the content, client, project or other criteria.

• Version control and collaboration: AI systems can track document changes, manage versions, and automatically notify relevant team members of updates.

• Smart document creation: AI can automatically generate routine documents like contracts, proposals, or reports using templates and data from your existing systems, eliminating manual document creation for standard processes.

Recommended tools:

• Microsoft 365 with Copilot: Get AI-powered insights about documents, as well as automatic classification, intelligent search and content generation.

• Google Workspace with Gemini: Google’s next-generation AI is embedded into Google Workspace products, allowing AI-powered search, automated organisation and intelligent collaboration features.

• Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant: This AI assistant offers intelligent document processing, answers questions about PDFs, and AI-powered document analysis and summarisation.

Data entry and form processing

Data entry is one of the easiest administrative tasks to automate – and is also likely to be one where you’ll see the biggest impact. Some of the tasks you can automate include:

• Optical Character Recognition (OCR): Use machine learning to extract printed or handwritten text from images and PDFs, reducing manual data entry.

• Form processing: Automatically pull relevant information from forms, even when they use non-standard formats.

• Data validation: AI tools can identify inconsistencies, errors and duplicates in datasets, and can automatically correct issues.

• Cross-platform synchronisation: Automatically review data across different platforms and databases to ensure they’re consistent, reducing the need for manual reconciliation work.

Recommended tools:

• Zapier: AI-powered automation platform that connects thousands of apps with intelligent workflow creation, AI agents, and smart data processing capabilities.

• Automation Anywhere: Process complex documents with AI-powered Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), automatically extracting data from thousands of documents without the risk of error.

• Hyland IDP: AI-powered document capture and data extraction platform that automatically processes invoices, forms, and business documents.

Work smarter, not harder with AI

There’s a significant administrative burden facing SMEs today – but the good news is that it can be easier with the help of AI.

Whether you need help with data processing or financial admin, implementing the strategies and tools outlined here can reduce time spent on admin tasks – which you can then redirect toward growth, innovation and activities designed to drive your business forward.

Ready to find out more about how AI can supercharge your business? Learn about the best AI agents for SMEs or find out which AI tool is right for you with our comparison guide.