r/Entrepreneur • u/Traditional_Key8982 • 2d ago
Lessons Learned What's one business process you wish you'd simplified earlier?
Looking back at how businesses operate, it's easy to add more tools, spreadsheets, meetings, and steps whenever a problem comes up.
But sometimes the better solution is to simplify the process rather than add another tool.
I'm curious about other founders' experiences:
- What process used to take too much of your time?
- What did you change to make it simpler?
- Did you use a tool, create a checklist, or simply remove unnecessary steps?
I'd be interested to hear what actually worked in practice.
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u/mahee522 2d ago
Bookkeeping for me. I used to copy my Stripe numbers into a spreadsheet every Friday, took like 40 minutes and I hated it. Now I just screenshot the Stripe dashboard and save it in a folder. Nobody has ever asked for the spreadsheet.
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u/DreadnaughtHamster 15h ago
Don’t know if this would be a big privacy risk but I get ChatGPT could keep a running spreadsheet and you just tell it to put the numbers in from your screenshots. Just make sure to save a copy downloaded every week.
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2d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Traditional_Key8982 1d ago
They asked who owns the remaining task when a checklist is removed. This is a good opportunity to explain your thinking and invite a useful discussion. Suggested angle: removing a step should never remove accountability. Keep a clear owner for the work that remains.
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u/Mistr_John_Alex 2d ago
The step I should have cut earlier wasn't the task itself, it was the wait for someone to approve it. I used to route every little change through the owner for a yes, and a quick fix would sit for days. Now we only require sign-off for things that affect money or customer commitments. Everything else gets a short window. If nobody objects by the end of the day, it moves. If you really need a second set of eyes, make the default approve rather than request, and have people flag only what they want to stop.
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u/Clean_Candidate_5496 2d ago
honestly the thing that fixed it for us was writing stuff down. we kept making the same small calls from memory, like which cream color or which template, and every time someone else touched it, it came out slightly off. one shared doc with the answers killed most of the back and forth.
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u/General-Repair4005 1d ago
It's such a pain in the ass to be the one to bring up that it might be time to write stuff down because it's almost like saying you can't trust others, but once it is done... such massive relief.
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u/Traditional_Key8982 1d ago
I can see that. Writing things down can feel unnecessary until the same questions keep coming up. I think it works best when the documentation is treated as a shared reference for everyone, rather than a way to check up on people. It makes consistency easier without having to ask the same questions repeatedly.
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u/Wise_Management_1161 1d ago
The 'simplify instead of adding another tool' line gets repeated a lot but I've rarely seen anyone actually measure it. Half the 'we removed unnecessary steps' stories I've sat through turned out to be one team quietly absorbing the work, so the total time didn't move. What did you track before and after, or was it just that things felt smoother?
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u/PeaceOfZen 1d ago
That's a fair point. I didn't formally track total time before and after, so I can't claim the overall workload decreased. I mainly noticed fewer repetitive emails to write. Measuring time across everyone involved would give a more honest picture
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u/escalicha 2d ago
Feature requests. Ours lived in three places at once: the support inbox, a shared board, and whatever the last call notes said. The result was that the same item got re-argued every quarter and almost nothing got closed.
The fix was not a tool. It was one list and one extra field: every request carries the account name and what that account pays per month. A request from a small account stops surviving a Monday review unless a bigger one is asking for the same thing, and that happens more often than you would think.
The board is deleted. Two of the three entry points are gone.
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u/leapd-ai 2d ago
customer feedback - we used to ship blindly and hoping customers love it - while when we started looking at support emails we realized they were telling us what to build next - we didn't listen- now at my new startup, we have proper system to capture that signal early
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u/Aware_Risk7076 2d ago
Proposals. I used to write every one from scratch like it was a novel. now it's one doc with blanks I fill in, then ChatGPT tightens it up. 2 hours down to about 20 min
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u/Asly97 1d ago
2 hours down to 20 min on proposals is a big cut. When ChatGPT tightens it up, does it already know the client and what you quoted them last time, or do you paste that background in each time?
I used to lose a lot of time re-explaining the same business details to AI tools, so I'm curious how people handle that part.
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u/Aware_Risk7076 15h ago
Honestly I paste a short background doc in each time, just a few lines on the client and what I quoted last. Takes 30 seconds and saves the re-explaining. Not perfect but it works for me
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u/Asly97 12h ago
30 seconds is hard to argue with. Is that one doc per client that you update after each job, or one master file you trim down every time?
Only reason I ask is the "what I quoted last" part. Has an old number ever slipped through because the doc didn't get updated after a price change? And if something kept that background current for you, would that be worth paying for, or is 30 seconds cheap enough that you'd never bother?
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u/PatientlyRelentless 2d ago
Emails and following up on them. All internal emails that needed action or decision were ‘banned’. Directly add everything to a board (Jira for larger teams or Trello for smaller).
Easy to find out the progress rather than going backwards and forwards on emails.
Keep it simple.
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u/nedkrastev 1d ago
Organizing all files and documents properly. Can easily be underestimated when there's a few people working.
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u/Traditional_Key8982 1d ago
Definitely. When there are only a few people, keeping files organised can seem easy to manage informally. But as the team grows, finding the latest version of a document becomes harder. A consistent folder structure and clear file naming can save a lot of back-and-forth.
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u/guy_ships_things 2d ago
- My daily register writes itself at 12:00 from page views with zero manual.
- backfill is safe to rerun
- make a step or delete it before adding another tool to track it
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u/PhoneComfortable8631 2d ago
tres preguntas con bullets y ninguna respuesta concreta, el clásico post de curiosidad que no le importa la respuesta
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u/Adflipr 2d ago
The cleanup. Every process we simplified kept its tool alive, because adding a tool is somebody's job and cancelling one is nobody's. We were paying for three things that sent the same reminder at once, each one added to fix a version of the process that had already changed underneath it.
The ownership point above is the same failure with the other half. We assign an owner for the new step and nobody for the step it replaced, so the old one keeps limping along and quietly costs money. What worked for us was a short "what this process actually runs on" list, reviewed when the process changes rather than on a calendar. Anything not on the list gets cancelled that week.
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u/Traditional_Key8982 1d ago
They pointed out that businesses often keep paying for old tools even after replacing the process. Suggested angle: whenever a process changes, review which old steps and subscriptions can actually be retired.
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u/Lonely-Eye-3317 2d ago
are you trying to do some research, for your next project, kidding. taking cares of emails from day 1
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u/Unhappy-Nature-2119 2d ago
The question already assumes simplifying worked. Where are the founders who cut a process and then watched something break for a quarter? They're usualy not the ones answering this.
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u/Aggravating_Band_388 2d ago
Yeah, buying a tool feels like progress but most of the time it just moves the mess somewhere else. Count the steps in whichever process has the most handoffs, then delete one before you automate anything. Approvals and quoting are where the dead steps hide.
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u/ComparisonTop8547 2d ago
Marketplace reporting. We used to reconcile Amazon, Walmart, and TikTok Shop in three exports every Monday, then argue about which profit number was real.
What simplified it: one SKU-level contribution view with the same columns everywhere (net sales, fees, ads, COGS, returns), updated from settlements not from yesterday's dashboard. Fewer tools, same definitions, one weekly read. The time went from half a morning of stitching sheets to a short check of exceptions.
Biggest unlock wasn't a new platform. It was agreeing what profit means before opening another spreadsheet.
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u/TheseBed8143 2d ago
Copy approvals would be my pick. I'd give each reviewer a specific job - checking product facts, checking legal claims, approving wording - so a factual check doesn't become another full rewrite.
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u/Moonwater7219 2d ago
A lot of businesses try to add more tools to help simplify things which is so backwards... The first thing we usually find when working with a business is a list of random single task programs theyve added to their workflow for god knows what reason 😒
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u/navajotm 2d ago
filming myself. kept writing full scripts and they always sounded fake so now i just use bullets and talk
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u/navajotm 2d ago
I've built skills to help me out, first skill to take the raw footage of me talking and cut it up, then another skill to take my screen recording demo and cut it up, then another couple skills with hyperframes mcp and palmier mcp and a couple others to make the motion graphic video using my demo recordings and films of myself talking
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u/Rare_Requirement_699 2d ago
Barcodes! Selling candles for 15 years with a retail store and vending markets, it was jist my partner and I. So no barcodes needed. When we exploded with growth at year 7/8, and then employees, no items were barcoded, like 300 SKUs! So that was a HUGE learning curve bc without the skus, inventory was a nightmare. If from the beginning I had a barcode for every item, it would have been much smoother.
Also, SOPs,, for like, everything! Again, the employee component. Bc it was owner operated, without SOPs bringing people on was very tough to train and give info that was all in my head.
Now, anytime an issue comes up that someone doesnt know, we make THEM write the SOP in their own words and share with the staff. Now we have a whole book. From simple things like how to handle a refund to something more in depth like how to handle a corporate wholesale order.
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u/QueenD_1996 1d ago
I am working on an SOP refresh effort right now and it is a lot of work because I didn’t keep them properly updated over the last couple of years. Fortunately a friend I trust with ops experience is available to assist.
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u/Auric-Cangul 2d ago
the real pattern is that simplification usually means removing steps, not replacing them with something else. most founders jump to "what tool fixes this" when the answer is just dont do the thing at all
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u/AlexeyAnshakov 2d ago
Client onboarding intake.
We used to send 3 different emails asking for assets, logins, and billing details over two weeks.
Replacing that with a single self-serve form that creates the project workspace automatically cut 80% of the back-and-forth noise.
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u/No-Molasses-2097 2d ago
Invoicing for me. I used to build every invoice from scratch and then spend half a Friday chasing the late ones. Now it is one template and a single reminder that goes out automatically before the due date. The chasing part basically vanished.
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u/Piper_At_Paychex 2d ago
Payroll. Some business owners can be a little overconfident when they start hiring people. They try to do everything themselves and before long, they have hours in a spreadsheet, filings in a separate system and everything in between handled manually. Many come to learn the hard way that moving it all into one platform where time data flows into payroll automatically and filings run on their own removes most of the back and forth.
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u/Latter_Narwhal_1893 2d ago
Everyone answering this will say they killed the Monday status meeting and moved everything into Notion. Nobody ever says the real simplification was firing the person whose whole job was that process, which is why the process is still there.
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u/PrioritySubject1900 2d ago
The whole thing rests on 'sometimes', which is a way of never being wrong. Someone cuts a step, the quarter goes well, and the cut gets the credit instead of the market or the new hire. What did you actually measure before and after?
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u/No-0x 2d ago
following up on estimates. used to mean playing phone tag for two days: call, they don't pick up, they call back while i'm working, repeat. now the rule is text first, call second. a text gets read in minutes, a voicemail might not get heard today. sounds small but it took the biggest time sink of my week down to almost nothing.
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u/PeaceOfZen 1d ago
I wish I'd simplified email management earlier. I started using templates for repetitive replies and saved a lot of time. Sometimes, simplifying your process is better than adding another tool
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u/james-ceo-coaching 1d ago
Approvals u/Traditional_Key8982. For years, every purchase order, refund and supplier query above a tiny threshold landed on my desk, because that’s how it had always worked. A £800 purchase order was sitting in the same queue as a decision that could change the business.
I didn’t buy a tool or add a workflow. I wrote one page: what anyone can approve without asking, up to what amount, and what still comes to me. That’s it. Within a few weeks most of the queue disappeared, and the decisions that did reach me were the ones that deserved my time.
Most businesses add a tool to manage the pile when the real fix is deciding who’s allowed to decide in the first place. Simplifying didn’t mean doing the process better. It meant most of it never needed me.
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u/Wizardof0zzy 1d ago
I'm trying to simplify the approval process for my team. I'm trying to foster a culture of project ownership where not every single minute decision has to go through me, but can be left up to the team leads or done according to the SOPs drafted. Especially in terms of the product and it's continuous updates. It helps move the funnel along without me becoming the main blocker.
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u/manishfromflexprice 1d ago
communication and the company hierarchy, it used to take a lot of time but now almost everyone has complete ownership of what they do so its easier and a lot less messier in terms of communication
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u/saraswati91 Freelancer/Solopreneur 1d ago
That is easy! Month-end revenue reconciliation was a nightmare when I first took it on.
It was with a retail business that had six stores. Closing the monthly revenue accounts was a four-hour tragedy! Turns out, the problem wasn't really the month-end closing. It was everything that wasn't being done throughout the month.
So I built an Excel workbook that flagged discrepancies daily and automated the month-end calculations we needed.
Then finally the 4-hour report was done in 30 minutes!
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u/field_ops_notes 1d ago
Quoting and follow-up is a common one. A lot of businesses send a quote and then follow up only when someone remembers. A simple fix is a fixed cadence: send the quote, check in on day 2, again on day 7, then a final close-out message on day 14, all from saved templates. Keep every open quote in one list with the next follow-up date so nothing depends on memory. No new tool needed, just a checklist and a calendar reminder.
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u/Equal_Department8036 1d ago
Customer messages after a booking.
I run a small trailer and equipment rental. For a while every booking triggered a confirmation, a reminder, a “how was it” follow-up and a review request. Customers ignored most of it and still called me the morning of pickup to ask what time and where.
So I cut it to one message, sent when they book: pickup time, the address, what they need to bring, and one line that says if you’re running late, call us. That’s it.
The morning-of calls dropped off. I only added the running-late line last week, so it’s too early to tell if it helps with late returns.
What I still haven’t simplified is the return inspection. That one keeps growing.
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u/investonomicsedu 1d ago
I write case studies on founders who exited and I see this a lot. One thing I would say is that focus has to be narrow to succeed in most cases. The majority of the 11 founders I've written about stick to a single channel for distribution and growth and nail down the specifics for that one before moving on to another.
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u/ldereximerit 7h ago
order processing for me tbh. we used to retype customer addresses into the shipping software by hand, like an hour a day and constant typos. now a small script pulls new orders and queues the labels automatically, i just glance over them in the morning
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u/Bright_Wall4257 3h ago
Contract management for me. I run contracts, BAAs and renewals for a home health agency, and for a long time everything lived in email threads and shared folders. Finding a notice date meant digging through PDFs.
What made it simpler was putting every contract in one place with the renewal and notice dates pulled out, plus a reminder well before each one hits. Now renewals are a decision we make on purpose instead of something that just happens.
If you're early, even a basic list of every vendor, the end date and the notice period goes a long way.
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u/strangiva 2h ago
reading through these, most of the fixes come back to the same thing, deciding something once instead of over and over. The shared doc for small calls, one list for feature requests, quietly dropping the spreadsheet nobody asked for.
One more along those lines if you're small, give the stuff that drips in all day such as support emails, bug reports, admin bits one fixed slot instead of answering it as it lands. The work doesn't get any simpler, but you stop paying the context switching cost ten times a day, and that's often where the time was really going.
Decent test before adding any new tool is whether you can describe the process in three lines. If you can't, the tool usually just makes the mess run faster.
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