Process discovery and prioritisation
We sit with your team, map the work as it actually happens, and rank the candidates by hours saved and risk reduced. You get a written automation roadmap whether you build with us or not.
Business process automation · Australian SMEs
Automate the repetitive admin work slowing your business down.
Practical business process automation for Australian SMEs. We use the right tool for the job — Microsoft 365 and Power Automate, Python, APIs, UiPath, on-prem scripts, browser automation — and we support what we deliver.
Working with Australian small and mid-size businesses since 2019. Tool-agnostic. No-licence-required options available.
Microsoft 365
Power Automate
Python
APIs
UiPath
Browser automation
The reality
Still paying people to move data around?
Most SMEs lose hours every week to admin work that no human needs to do. The symptoms are familiar.
- Copy-pasting between a spreadsheet and an accounting system.
- Manually generating the same report every Monday morning.
- Approving the same kind of request in three different inboxes.
- Re-keying data because two systems don't talk to each other.
- Chasing people for timesheets, expense claims, or sign-offs.
- Downloading CSVs from one portal to upload to another.
- Sending the same templated email after every job, sale, or enrolment.
- Reconciling invoices line-by-line because nothing reconciles them for you.
If any of these sound like your business, you're paying people to do work software should be doing.
The approach
The right tool for the job — not automation for automation's sake.
Most consultancies sell you their one tool. We pick the lowest-cost reliable option for each process. Sometimes that's a no-licence Python script on your own server; sometimes it's Power Automate inside the Microsoft 365 you already pay for; sometimes it's a browser bot for a system with no API. We tell you which, and why.
Microsoft 365 + Power Automate
You already pay for it. Best for approvals, notifications, SharePoint and Teams workflows, and stitching Microsoft apps together.
Python scripts
No per-seat licence. Best for heavy data work, file processing, scheduled jobs, and anything that needs to run on your own server or laptop.
APIs and webhooks
Direct, fast, and reliable. Best when both systems expose them. Often invisible to staff — work just happens.
UiPath / licensed RPA
When the scale, audit trail, or system complexity justifies the licence cost. Common for finance and large operational teams.
On-prem and self-hosted
Sensitive data, regulated industries, or systems that can't reach the public internet. We build it to run inside your network.
Browser automation
When a vendor system has no API and no integration — we drive the browser the way a person would, on a schedule, reliably.
Services
What we build
Six services covering most SME automation work. Each is priced as a fixed-scope engagement after discovery, not by the hour.
Approvals and notifications
Stop chasing sign-offs across email, Teams, and shared inboxes. We build approval flows that route to the right person, escalate when ignored, and log every decision.
Data movement and reconciliation
Daily, weekly, or on-demand transfers between your systems. Invoices, payroll, CRM, inventory, bank feeds — moved accurately, logged for audit, with failure alerts so you find out before a customer does.
Scheduled reports and dashboards
The Monday-morning report, the month-end pack, the board summary — generated and delivered without a person assembling it. Output to PDF, Excel, email, SharePoint, or Power BI.
Browser and legacy-system automation
For the systems vendors won't integrate with. We script the browser, the desktop app, or the on-prem tool, and run it on a schedule with the same reliability as an API call.
Custom small tools
Internal forms, calculators, lookup tools, simple web apps. When the gap is a tool nobody sells, we build the smallest thing that fixes it.
Example outcomes
What this looks like in practice
Real categories of work we've delivered for Australian SMEs. Specifics anonymised; no invented numbers.
Accounts payable
Invoices arriving by email, manual coding into the accounting system. Now coded, routed for approval, and posted automatically; exceptions flagged for review.
Payroll preparation
Weekly time-sheet validation done by hand. Now pulled from the rostering system, cross-checked against leave, and assembled ready for the pay run, with a single management approval step.
Manufacturing reporting
Production data scattered across machines, spreadsheets, and an ERP. Now consolidated into a daily efficiency view the plant manager opens with coffee.
Recruitment intake
Applications coming in across job boards and email. Now pulled into one tracking sheet, scored against the role, and the shortlist drafted before the recruiter starts their day.
Sales handover
Won-deal handover from sales to operations done by forwarded email. Now triggered from the CRM, with onboarding tasks created automatically and the customer emailed the same hour.
Compliance evidence
Quarterly audit evidence assembled manually from five systems. Now collected continuously, stored where the auditors look, and a summary report generated on the date the auditor asks for it.
How it works
How it works
Five steps. Most projects are in production within four to eight weeks of discovery, depending on access and approvals on your side.
- STEP 01
Discover
A half-day on site with the people who do the work. We map the process, the systems, and where time leaks out. Output: a written summary you can read in fifteen minutes.
- STEP 02
Prioritise
We rank the candidates by hours saved, risk reduced, and technical fit. You decide what to build first. No pressure to build with us.
- STEP 03
Prototype
A working version of the first process, end-to-end, on a small dataset. You see it run before we scale it. Typically one to two weeks.
- STEP 04
Deploy
Roll out to production. Documentation, training for the business owners, hand-over to your IT team if you have one.
- STEP 05
Support
We monitor it, alert on failures, and fix issues under an agreed SLA. You can take support in-house at any time; the documentation is yours.
Why BotWork
Automation that fits the business you already run.
Seven things that make us different from a typical automation vendor.
Tool-agnostic by design.
We don't sell licences. We pick the lowest-cost reliable option for your specific process.
Australian-based, SME-focused.
Local hours, plain English, GST invoices. We work with businesses your size, not enterprises with a chief automation officer.
Fixed-scope, fixed-price.
Discovery costs are quoted up front. Each automation is quoted before we start. No hourly drift.
No-licence options first.
If a Python script on your existing server solves the problem, we'll tell you. Licensed tools are a choice, not a default.
Production-grade from day one.
Logging, error handling, failure alerts, and documentation come standard — not as a paid extra.
You own what we build.
Source code, documentation, credentials, and runbooks live in your accounts. We can leave and you can keep running.
Support like production IT.
When something breaks at 7am on a Monday, you call us, not a chatbot. Australian business hours, with after-hours options on the larger engagements.
Governance
Built to keep working after go-live.
Automation that breaks silently is worse than no automation. Eight things we do as standard.
Credentials in your vault
API keys and service accounts live in your password manager or secret store — never in our laptops, never in the code.
Logging on every run
Every automation writes a log entry: when it ran, what it processed, what it produced. Available to your team, retained for audit.
Failure alerts to a human
When something breaks, a real person on your side hears about it within minutes. Email, Teams, SMS — your choice.
Documentation as a deliverable
A written runbook for each automation: what it does, how to run it manually, who to call when it breaks.
Change control
Updates go through a documented review. No surprise changes to production. Every change is logged and reversible.
Clear ownership
Each automation has a named business owner inside your organisation. We are not a single point of failure.
Approvals where they matter
Anything that pays money, contacts a customer, or changes a record gets a human in the loop until you decide otherwise.
Support that picks up the phone
Defined response times. Australian business hours by default; extended SLAs available for revenue-critical processes.
FAQ
Questions Australian SMEs ask us
Software doing the repetitive bits of admin a person currently does. Generating reports, moving data between systems, routing approvals, reconciling records. Not robots. Not AI replacing your staff. Just removing the parts of the day they shouldn't be spending time on.
Often, no. If we can solve it with Python on a server you already have, or with Power Automate that's included in your Microsoft 365 subscription, we will. Licensed tools (UiPath and similar) are a choice we'll recommend when the scale or the audit requirements justify them — not by default.
AI is useful when an automation needs judgment a fixed rule can't make: classifying a free-text request, summarising a long document, extracting data from a PDF that varies every time. We use it where it earns its place, not as a marketing word.
No. The most cost-effective automation projects we run are with businesses of 10 to 200 people. Smaller businesses often have more repetitive admin per person, and less specialised IT to do the work themselves.
In practice, no. The work we automate is the work nobody wanted to do anyway — the data entry, the chasing, the assembling. Staff move onto higher-value work or get their evenings back.
Discovery is a fixed fee scoped to the size of the business. Individual automations are quoted before we start, fixed price. A typical first project for an SME ranges from low single-digit thousands to mid five figures depending on scope and integrations.
You own the source code, the documentation, the credentials, and the runbooks from day one. They live in your accounts. Another competent developer or IT partner can pick up where we left off without calling us first.
For most clients, in your existing systems and accounts. Where data is especially sensitive — health, finance, regulated industries — we build automations that run on your own infrastructure, never sending data outside your network. We sign NDAs and Data Processing Agreements as a matter of course.
Browser automation. We drive the system the way a person would — clicking, typing, downloading — on a schedule, reliably, with the same logging and failure alerts as any other automation we build. It's the right answer often enough that we treat it as a first-class option, not a workaround.
A working prototype on a single process, end-to-end, is usually one to two weeks from the end of discovery. Full production rollout is typically four to eight weeks total, depending on access, approvals, and how many systems we're touching on your side.
Send us one repetitive process.
We'll tell you whether it's worth automating, what we'd build, what it would cost, and what you should leave alone. Fifteen-minute call, no obligation.