Field notes
Field notes
Notes from the office floor.
Plain-English answers to the questions owners of growing trade and wholesale businesses actually ask — written by the person who builds the systems, not a marketing department.
What does back-office automation actually cost? Straight numbers, for once
Nobody in this industry publishes prices, which is exactly why owners assume 'AI project' means a blank cheque. Here are the real cost shapes, what drives them up, and the arithmetic that tells you whether any of it is worth paying for.
The container lands, and the paperwork begins: fixing import admin
Every importer knows the ritual: bill of lading, commercial invoice, packing list, customs entry, duty, and a landed-cost spreadsheet nobody fully trusts. Here's why it stayed manual long after everything else got computers, and what actually works now.
How to stop your team retyping email orders into the system
Customers send orders by email, PDF and WhatsApp. Someone in your office reads each one and types it into Sage, Xero or your ERP. Here's what that actually costs, why it never got fixed, and what works now.
Should you hire another admin person — or fix the system they'd be typing into?
When the office is drowning, the reflex is to hire. Sometimes that's right. But most admin jobs in a growing business are information-moving jobs, and moving information is exactly what's become cheap to automate. Here's how to tell which one you're looking at.
How to chase unpaid invoices without hiring a credit controller
The Friday ring-round is the most hated job in every office — so it quietly doesn't get done, and your cash sits in other people's bank accounts. Here's the chasing system that works, whether you automate it or not.
"Can't we just use ChatGPT for this ourselves?" — an honest answer
Someone in your business — often the owner's son — has already asked this. The honest answer is: for some things, yes, and you should. Here's exactly where ChatGPT stops and a system starts, so you don't pay for the wrong one.