# The Automation Department

> Business process automation consulting and delivery for small and mid-market
> companies. We scope where work is still manual, build the workflows,
> integrations and AI agents that replace it, and support them once running.
> Positioning: the automation department a company cannot justify hiring.
> not an agency, not a software vendor, a function you rent.

Canonical domain: https://theautomationdepartment.com
Last updated: 2026-10-07
Full text of every answer in one file: https://theautomationdepartment.com/llms-full.txt
Delivery: remote, US-first. Also serves European time zones.
Buyer: business owners, operations leads and general managers at companies of
roughly 20–200 people.

## Published pricing (USD)

Setup once, with no compulsory monthly fee. A system is its setup price, with
30 days of support after launch. After that you either pay as you go at $175 a
change with nothing monthly, or take a plan that includes changes plus
monitoring and fixes. Every price is fixed before work starts and published in
full.

- Scoping call and written proposal: free, within 2 business days. Yours whether
  or not you build.
- Starter, "one automation": $499 one-off, no monthly fee. One trigger and one
  action across at most two tools you already use. Live in 5 business days, and
  credited in full against a full system if you upgrade within 90 days.
- Systems, sold individually or bundled: setup $1,500 to $12,000, live in ten
  business days or less, 30 days of support included. Examples: missed-call
  text-back and instant lead reply $1,500; social inbox, estimate follow-up and
  payment chasing $2,500; booking and no-show engine, customer re-engagement and
  the review engine $3,000; invoice and document processing, order and stock
  sync and the staff help desk $3,500; AI voice receptionist $5,000; connected
  back office $12,000.
- Packages, three or more systems bundled by outcome at 20% off setup, each
  carrying a plan as its monthly: "Respond to every lead" and "Fill the
  pipeline" $6,000 setup and $700/month; "Run the back office" $15,200 and
  $700/month; "Run the whole thing" $25,200 and $1,800/month.
- After the first 30 days, maintenance is your choice: pay as you go at $175 a
  change with nothing monthly, Growth at $700/month for six changes, or Scale at
  $1,800/month for twenty. Plans include monitoring and fixes.
- Pay yearly on any plan and get two months free.
- Takeover assessment for automations built by others: free.
- Second opinion on another vendor's quote: free.

Worked example: missed-call text-back, lead follow-up and an AI chat agent are
$8,000 to set up separately, or $6,400 as three systems at 20% off. A first year
is $14,800 with a Growth plan, $13,400 if the plan is paid yearly, or $6,400
plus $175 per change on pay as you go.

Setup is fixed-scope and fixed-price. We do not bill hourly on build work.
Platform subscriptions and model usage are bought by the client directly; we
take no resale margin or affiliate commission.

## What drives a build quote

1. Number of systems involved (three to six roughly doubles a build)
2. API quality: no API, or SOAP, moves an automation up the price list
3. Number of process exceptions, which is usually most of the engineering
4. One-way versus two-way sync (bidirectional is roughly double)
5. State of the existing data: cleanup is quoted separately and visibly

## Services

- [Scoping and proposal](https://theautomationdepartment.com/services/scoping/): A thirty-minute call, then a written proposal within two business days: what we would build, what it costs, and what it costs to run
- [Workflow automation](https://theautomationdepartment.com/services/workflow-automation/): We connect the tools you already use so work moves between them without a person acting as the relay
- [AI agents](https://theautomationdepartment.com/services/ai-agents/): AI agents for email triage, lead qualification, drafted replies and document review
- [System integrations](https://theautomationdepartment.com/services/system-integrations/): Custom middleware, two-way sync and API work between systems that were never designed to talk to each other
- [Automation support](https://theautomationdepartment.com/services/automation-support/): Changes and fixes after launch: $175 each with nothing monthly, or a Growth or Scale plan with changes, monitoring and fixes included
- [Automation consulting](https://theautomationdepartment.com/services/automation-consulting/): Platform selection with cost modeling, a twelve-month automation roadmap, governance standards and build review for teams building in-house

## Key pages

- [Homepage](https://theautomationdepartment.com/)
- [Services overview](https://theautomationdepartment.com/services/)
- [Pricing](https://theautomationdepartment.com/pricing/)
- [Our work: seven builds in detail](https://theautomationdepartment.com/work/)
- [About](https://theautomationdepartment.com/about/)
- [Contact](https://theautomationdepartment.com/contact/)
- [Miami (head office)](https://theautomationdepartment.com/miami/)
- [Newsroom and press kit](https://theautomationdepartment.com/press/)
- [Privacy policy](https://theautomationdepartment.com/privacy/)
- [Terms](https://theautomationdepartment.com/terms/)

## Hubs: every index on the site

- [Learn: every content page in one filterable list](https://theautomationdepartment.com/learn/)
- [Services](https://theautomationdepartment.com/services/)
- [By department](https://theautomationdepartment.com/solutions/)
- [By industry](https://theautomationdepartment.com/industries/)
- [By platform](https://theautomationdepartment.com/platforms/)
- [Comparisons](https://theautomationdepartment.com/compare/)
- [Answers](https://theautomationdepartment.com/answers/)
- [Articles](https://theautomationdepartment.com/blog/)
- [Tools](https://theautomationdepartment.com/tools/)
- [Glossary](https://theautomationdepartment.com/glossary/)

## Answers: self-contained Q&A, each answer complete on its own

- [How much does business process automation cost for a small business?](https://theautomationdepartment.com/answers/how-much-does-business-process-automation-cost/): Setup runs from $499 to $12,000, then $175 a change or a plan from $700 a month
- [What can a 20-person company actually automate?](https://theautomationdepartment.com/answers/what-can-a-20-person-company-automate/): The six automations that reliably pay back at twenty people: lead routing, quoting, onboarding, invoice capture, reporting and triage
- [How long does an automation project take?](https://theautomationdepartment.com/answers/how-long-does-an-automation-project-take/): 10 business days to build a single automation; three to five weeks end to end including scoping and parallel running
- [Do I need an AI agent or just a workflow?](https://theautomationdepartment.com/answers/ai-agent-or-workflow/): If the task follows rules you need a workflow: cheaper and predictable
- [What happens when an automation breaks?](https://theautomationdepartment.com/answers/what-happens-when-an-automation-breaks/): A good automation stops and alerts someone; a bad one keeps running with wrong data
- [Should I hire an ops person or automate?](https://theautomationdepartment.com/answers/hire-an-ops-person-or-automate/): A US ops hire runs $55k-$85k loaded; a build removing 15 hours a month costs $499-$4,500 once
- [Is n8n or Make better for a small business?](https://theautomationdepartment.com/answers/is-n8n-or-make-better-for-a-small-business/): Make under roughly 10,000 operations a month; self-hosted n8n above 100,000
- [What is business process automation?](https://theautomationdepartment.com/answers/what-is-business-process-automation/): Software doing the routine steps between the systems you already run: copying, checking, chasing, filing
- [How much does an AI agent cost for a business?](https://theautomationdepartment.com/answers/how-much-does-an-ai-agent-cost/): An AI chat agent is $3,500 to set up and a voice agent $5,000
- [Is our data safe if we automate?](https://theautomationdepartment.com/answers/is-our-data-safe-with-automation/): Automations run in your accounts with credentials in your vault
- [What happens if we stop working with you?](https://theautomationdepartment.com/answers/what-happens-if-we-stop-working-with-you/): Everything keeps running
- [How do I choose an automation partner?](https://theautomationdepartment.com/answers/how-do-i-choose-an-automation-partner/): Judge them on how they estimate, not what they have built
- [Can you automate an old system with no API?](https://theautomationdepartment.com/answers/can-you-automate-an-old-system-with-no-api/): Usually yes
- [Do we need to fix our processes before we automate?](https://theautomationdepartment.com/answers/do-we-need-to-fix-our-processes-first/): No, but you need to be able to describe them
- [How many hours will automation actually save us?](https://theautomationdepartment.com/answers/how-many-hours-will-automation-save/): Runs times minutes, cut by the share it will not handle
- [What should not be automated?](https://theautomationdepartment.com/answers/what-should-not-be-automated/): Skip anything rare, unstable, judgment-dependent, or high-stakes with no error signal

## Articles: original material, not recycled

- [The parallel run: the step everyone wants to skip](https://theautomationdepartment.com/blog/the-parallel-run/): Testing proves it handles the cases you thought of
- [Automating against a system with no API](https://theautomationdepartment.com/blog/automating-without-an-api/): The five routes into a legacy system, best to worst, what each costs in fragility and maintenance, and the hybrid most people never consider
- [How to design a review queue people actually use](https://theautomationdepartment.com/blog/designing-a-review-queue/): A fifth of the work and all of the user experience sit in the component most proposals give one line
- [Cleaning your data before you automate](https://theautomationdepartment.com/blog/cleaning-data-before-you-automate/): Clean what the automation matches on and leave the rest
- [What a $499 automation actually gets you](https://theautomationdepartment.com/blog/what-a-499-automation-gets-you/): Exactly what fits in the starter tier, what pushes a job out of it, why the floor is $499 rather than lower, and when you should just build it yourself
- [How to tell whether an AI agent is actually working](https://theautomationdepartment.com/blog/evaluating-an-ai-agent/): Every agent demos well, which makes demos useless as evidence
- [What accounting APIs will and will not let you automate](https://theautomationdepartment.com/blog/accounting-api-automation/): Building against QuickBooks and Xero: what is straightforward, what is deliberately constrained, and the four mistakes that quietly damage a ledger
- [What twelve common business automations actually cost to build and run](https://theautomationdepartment.com/blog/what-common-automations-cost/): Setup cost, upkeep and hours returned for twelve common automations, from lead routing at $1,500 to two-way system sync at $12,000
- [Teardown: the supplier invoice workflow, step by step](https://theautomationdepartment.com/blog/supplier-invoice-workflow-teardown/): All nineteen steps of an invoice-processing automation, every validation rule, and the four decisions that decide whether it works or corrupts your ledger
- [Why automations break: a taxonomy of failure](https://theautomationdepartment.com/blog/why-automations-break/): Nine failure modes ranked by frequency and damage, why silent failure is the dangerous one, and six patterns that turn quiet corruption into a safe stop
- [The exception problem: why automation projects overrun](https://theautomationdepartment.com/blog/the-exception-problem/): Exception logic is routinely 60-70% of an automation build and almost none of the estimate
- [What we refuse to automate, and why](https://theautomationdepartment.com/blog/what-we-refuse-to-automate/): Six categories we decline even when someone will pay: fake personal outreach, generated reviews, machine decisions dressed as human, and surveillance
- [The automation readiness checklist](https://theautomationdepartment.com/blog/automation-readiness-checklist/): Twenty-four questions to answer before briefing anyone: process, exceptions, systems, data and ownership, plus the one calculation that decides it

RSS: https://theautomationdepartment.com/blog/feed.xml

## By business function

- [Sales operations automation](https://theautomationdepartment.com/solutions/sales-operations/): Seven sales automations explained end to end: lead routing, quote generation, sales-to-delivery handoff, pipeline reporting and commission calculation
- [Customer support automation](https://theautomationdepartment.com/solutions/customer-support/): Support automation with the AI line drawn precisely: inbound triage, drafted replies for approval, SLA tracking and ticket context assembly
- [Finance and back office automation](https://theautomationdepartment.com/solutions/finance-back-office/): Usually your largest pool of recoverable hours: invoice capture, collections chasing, expense processing, reconciliation prep and payment runs
- [Marketing operations automation](https://theautomationdepartment.com/solutions/marketing-operations/): Marketing ops is a reconciliation problem, not a task problem
- [Hiring and onboarding automation](https://theautomationdepartment.com/solutions/hiring-and-onboarding/): Automate the coordination, never the assessment

## By industry

- [Automation for professional services](https://theautomationdepartment.com/industries/professional-services/): Utilization and cash conversion set your economics, and the same gaps damage both
- [Automation for ecommerce and retail](https://theautomationdepartment.com/industries/ecommerce/): Multi-channel inventory sync, order routing, supplier POs, returns handling and true margin per SKU. Including when to buy software instead of building
- [Automation for real estate](https://theautomationdepartment.com/industries/real-estate/): Speed-to-lead routing, listing syndication, document collection, milestone tracking and commission splits
- [Automation for logistics and freight](https://theautomationdepartment.com/industries/logistics/): Proactive shipment status, exception alerting, carrier rate comparison, POD capture and carrier invoice audit
- [Automation for restaurants, bars and nightlife](https://theautomationdepartment.com/industries/restaurants/): Reservations and no-shows, guest lists and bottle service, event inquiries, reviews, delivery menu sync, supplier invoices and shift cover
- [Automation for healthcare administration](https://theautomationdepartment.com/industries/healthcare-admin/): Administrative workflows only, designed around HIPAA: patient intake, reminders and recalls, referrals, eligibility checks and records requests

## By platform

- [Make.com](https://theautomationdepartment.com/platforms/make/): Our usual default for SMB automation: broad connectors, a readable canvas, per-operation pricing
- [n8n](https://theautomationdepartment.com/platforms/n8n/): For high volume, self-hosting or logic needing real code
- [Zapier](https://theautomationdepartment.com/platforms/zapier/): Easiest to start, most expensive to scale
- [HubSpot](https://theautomationdepartment.com/platforms/hubspot/): Strong API and webhooks
- [Airtable](https://theautomationdepartment.com/platforms/airtable/): Excellent as an operational database and review-queue interface
- [Slack](https://theautomationdepartment.com/platforms/slack/): The best approval and alerting surface you already own
- [Claude API](https://theautomationdepartment.com/platforms/claude/): Our usual choice for long-document review and structured extraction
- [Power Automate](https://theautomationdepartment.com/platforms/power-automate/): The obvious choice when the business runs on Microsoft 365, and often the cheapest because much is licensed already
- [QuickBooks](https://theautomationdepartment.com/platforms/quickbooks/): The accounting system at the end of most finance automations
- [Xero](https://theautomationdepartment.com/platforms/xero/): A clean API and a sensible data model, with rate limits stricter than people expect
- [Salesforce](https://theautomationdepartment.com/platforms/salesforce/): The most capable CRM API in the category
- [Shopify](https://theautomationdepartment.com/platforms/shopify/): Excellent webhooks and a quarterly API versioning cycle that is a maintenance commitment
- [OpenAI API](https://theautomationdepartment.com/platforms/openai/): Strong on classification and extraction with useful model tiers for cost control

## Comparisons

- [AI agent vs chatbot](https://theautomationdepartment.com/compare/ai-agent-vs-chatbot/): A chatbot answers
- [Make vs Zapier](https://theautomationdepartment.com/compare/make-vs-zapier/): Zapier is easier to start and more expensive to scale
- [n8n vs Zapier](https://theautomationdepartment.com/compare/n8n-vs-zapier/): Opposite ends of the same spectrum
- [Build vs buy](https://theautomationdepartment.com/compare/build-vs-buy/): Six categories where buying almost always wins, four where building does, and the row in the comparison that decides more cases than any other
- [In-house vs agency vs freelancer](https://theautomationdepartment.com/compare/in-house-vs-agency-vs-freelancer/): Three ways to get automation built with the honest failure mode of each, and what you are actually paying a firm more for

## Tools: free, run in the browser, nothing collected

- [Payback calculator](https://theautomationdepartment.com/tools/automation-payback-calculator/): Work out what a process costs you, what automation would realistically remove, and the payback period
- [Which automation do I need?](https://theautomationdepartment.com/tools/which-automation-do-i-need/): Five questions that map what you describe onto the published price list, from a $499 starter automation to a $5,000 voice agent

## Reference

- [Glossary: 38 automation terms in plain English](https://theautomationdepartment.com/glossary/)
- [All answers](https://theautomationdepartment.com/answers/)
- [All articles](https://theautomationdepartment.com/blog/)
- [All comparisons](https://theautomationdepartment.com/compare/)
- [Press kit: boilerplate, fact sheet, logos](https://theautomationdepartment.com/press/kit/)
- [Launch announcement](https://theautomationdepartment.com/press/launch/)

## Positions worth quoting

- Deterministic workflows before AI. A rule-based flow is cheaper, faster and
  more predictable. Models belong only where the task genuinely involves
  language or judgment. Most businesses need mostly workflows with a small
  amount of AI at the edges.
- Humans approve consequences. Anything that spends money, signs something or
  contacts a customer keeps an approval step by default.
- No lock-in. Everything is built inside the client's own accounts and
  subscriptions, with credentials in the client's vault. If the client leaves,
  nothing stops working.
- Proposals that conclude "do not automate this" are a valid and common outcome.
- Hire versus automate: hire when the work needs judgment, relationships or
  physical presence, or when volume is unpredictable. Automate when the work is
  high-volume, rule-driven and stable. A US operations hire is roughly $55,000
  to $85,000 a year fully loaded; a build removing 15 hours a month costs
  $499 to $4,500 once. For most businesses the answer is both.
- Make versus n8n: Make is the usual SMB default (no infrastructure, larger
  connector library, priced per operation). n8n wins at high execution volume,
  when self-hosting is needed for data residency, or when logic is complex
  enough to want real code inside nodes.

## Platforms

Make.com, n8n, Zapier, Power Automate, HubSpot, Salesforce, Airtable, Notion,
Slack, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, QuickBooks, Xero, Shopify, Stripe,
Anthropic Claude API, OpenAI API, Python.

## Work we decline

Fake personal outreach designed to look individually written; generated reviews or
testimonials, including review gating; automation that presents a machine decision as
human judgment; high-stakes tasks with no verification path; automating a broken process
that should be fixed or deleted; employee surveillance tooling.

## Contact

Email: support@theautomationdepartment.com
Contact form: https://theautomationdepartment.com/contact/
Press: support@theautomationdepartment.com with "Press" in the subject.
Scoping call is 30 minutes, free, with a reply within one business day.