Checklist

The checklist I ask for before an AI Audit.

The actual intake list, the same four items the audit’s own form asks for, published ungated. For each: why I want it, what counts when you do not have it, which is most shops, and how to tell it is enough. Work through it and you have either done the first day of the audit yourself or found the first finding.

No email required. No gate. Four items, one person, one table. Nothing here needs a password, a P&L, or a customer record.

The four things Book a 30-minute call

Why I ask before I arrive

The interviews are the audit. Everything else, the map, the count, the blueprint, comes out of an hour with each person who does the work, walking their week in percentages and then the workflow inside the biggest slice. An hour is not long. If the first twenty minutes go on who reports to whom and which software the shop runs, the hour is a third gone before we reach the thing that actually leaks.

So I ask for four things first, and build a rough map from them before anyone sits down. The map is meant to be wrong. Its job is to let me ask “the accepted quote goes into the schedule here, and who types it?” instead of “so, tell me about your process.” The corrections people make to the map are where the findings come from, and every one gets cited to the person who made it or the document they already had.

The list is short on purpose. It is the third of twelve steps, it takes the person you nominate an afternoon spread over a week, and it is deliberately the same list whether the shop has six people or sixty. What changes with headcount is the number of interviews, not the intake.

The four things, and what counts when you do not have them

The wording in the grey box is the wording on the intake form, verbatim. Below each, why I want it, what to send if the tidy version does not exist, and the test for whether it is enough.

01

Org chart

Departments, reporting lines and who runs what.

Why I want it

Not for the hierarchy. For the handoffs. A job crosses every line on that chart, and each crossing is a place it gets re-typed or waits. The chart tells me who to interview and in what order, so the schedule works back from the person who sells to the person who invoices.

If you do not have it

A list of names with what each person actually does, in one line each, is the org chart. “Dana: phones, quotes, invoices, and the schedule when Mike is out” is more useful than a box diagram, because it says where the overlap is.

It is enough when

I can read it and say, for every job type, who touches it first and who touches it last.
02

Process material

SOPs, induction packs, work instructions, anything you already hand a new starter.

Why I want it

Written procedures are rare and I do not expect them. What I am really asking for is anything that shows how the shop believes a job is supposed to move, so I can compare it with how the interviews say it actually moves. The gap between those two documents is usually the audit.

If you do not have it

The induction email. The laminated sheet by the phone. The pinned message in the crew group chat. The quote template itself, because a template is a procedure written as a form. The spreadsheet, whose columns are the fields the tool is not capturing. If none of those exist either, that is not a gap in the intake; it is the first finding, and it goes in the blueprint as one.

It is enough when

You have sent me whatever a new starter would be handed on day one, however scrappy.
03

Tool access

The tools you run and who can grant access to each. Do not send passwords here; tell me who can grant access and I will ask them.

Why I want it

Because the arrows between tools are where the hours go, and I need to see both ends of each arrow. Which field-service product, which accounting package, which phone system, which spreadsheet, and who can grant a read-only login to each. I look at how the tools are configured, not at the customer data in them.

If you do not have it

A list of the tools with the name of the person who administers each is the whole ask. If nobody knows who administers one, write that down; it is an answer.

It is enough when

One line per tool: what it is, what it is used for, who can let me in. No passwords, ever. I will ask the administrator directly.
04

Job journey

A plain enquiry to delivery to paid view of a job. A paragraph is fine if you have no diagram.

Why I want it

The map I build before the interviews starts from this. It does not have to be right; it has to be yours. The interviews will correct it, and the corrections are where the findings come from.

If you do not have it

A paragraph. “A call comes in, Dana writes it up, Mike quotes it from the truck, if they say yes Dana puts it in the schedule, the tech does it and texts Dana, Dana invoices, Sarah does the books on Fridays.” That is a job journey. It is better than most diagrams because it names the texts.

It is enough when

A reader who has never seen the shop could follow one job from the phone to the bank without asking a question.

The one person

Before the four things, one name. The audit’s second step is that you nominate a single person on your side who owns three things: the tool access, the replies, and the calendar. Not the owner, usually, because the owner is the person the interviews most need to be honest about. Often the office manager, who already knows where every spreadsheet is.

The job is small and specific. Gather the four items, or say which do not exist. Tell me who administers each tool so I can ask them for a login. Put the interview invites on the calendar, one person at a time, working back from sales. Chase the typical-week tables so they arrive three business days before each session. A couple of hours a week for two weeks. If nobody can be that person, that is worth knowing before we start, and it is the first thing I will ask on the call.

The typical-week table

Not intake from the shop; intake from each person I interview, sent back before their session. It is the single most useful page in the audit, and it takes fifteen minutes.

Activity, what you spend time on	% of a typical week	Tools you use for it




Total	100

Percentages, not a diary. A diary records a week that happened to be unusual; a percentage is what the person believes their job is, and the gap between the two is often the first finding. An example of the shape, from a finance role: Payroll 30, reconciling card transactions 20, internal meetings 30, everything else 20.

I read the table before the call. The largest slice is the first workflow we walk, until I can draw its inputs and outputs: where the work starts, what is copied, where it lands. Then one question that produces most of the blueprint: if this got faster, where would the hours go? More of the same, better quality, more customer contact, or the thing that never gets done. That answer is written down, because it is where the recovered hours are pointed.

It is a review of the process, not of the person, and the prep note says so in those words. One person per session, two at most. If job security is in the air in the shop, I say plainly at the start that the map is of the work.

What I do not need

The list people expect to be asked for, and why it is not on the list above.

Passwords

Never. I ask the person who administers each tool for a read-only login of my own, and it is removed when the audit ends.

Your P&L

The audit counts hours first and turns them into dollars second, using a loaded hourly rate per role, which is one number per role from payroll. It does not need the profit and loss, and it does not need the bank balance.

Customer records

I look at how the tools are configured and how a job moves, not at who your customers are. Where an example job is useful, the office picks one and the name is not what I am reading.

A software wish list

The blueprint says configure, connect, build, or leave it alone, for each leak, ranked by what it recovers. A wish list arrives with the answer already decided, and it is usually a build. Bring the list to the presentation if you like; it is not intake.

The self-audit version

You can run the four items on yourself before talking to anyone, and the result is useful either way. Write the one-line org chart. Gather whatever a new starter is handed. List the tools and who administers each. Write the job-journey paragraph. Then read them back as if you had never seen the shop.

Three things tend to happen. The job-journey paragraph names a text message, a sheet, or a “then Dana puts it in” at least twice, and each of those is a re-type with a cost. The tool list has one tool nobody administers and one nobody uses. And the procedures folder is either empty, which means the job lives in people’s heads and the shop is one resignation away from not knowing how it invoices, or it contains a document that describes a process nobody has followed since the software changed.

Any of those is a finding, and the leaks map has a test for each that puts a number on it. If the numbers are small, you are done, and you have written the four documents the shop needed anyway. If they are not, you have done the intake, and the audit starts at the interviews.

What happens next, in twelve steps

The checklist is step three. This is the whole run sheet, the same one the audit is delivered from, so you can see where the intake sits and what it feeds. Sized by headcount, because headcount is interview count. A 15 to 30 person shop is typically two interview days. Larger shops take more days, up to a week. Intake and the first map happen before interview week. The written blueprint is presented inside two weeks of the last session. We set the exact week after you name the people.

01

Audit deal signed

Outcome, scope, and decision-makers agreed. Sales calls are done. This is the start of delivery, not discovery.
02

Nominate an owner

Client names one champion who owns tool access, replies, and the calendar.
03

Collect the basics

Org chart, roles and emails, written SOPs / training, tool access, and a high-level job journey. Questions a form should have answered.
04

Build the first map

Skeleton process map of how a job moves through departments and tools. Enough to ask good questions. Not enough to skip the interviews.
05

Size the audit

Headcount sets interview count and days. Roughly 2 days at 15–30 people, up to a week as it grows.
06

Build the schedule

Group related roles. Work back from sales when possible. Invites on the calendar.
07

Book small interviews

One person preferred, two maximum. Process review, not a performance review.
08

Send the prep email

At least three business days before each interview. Tools they use, and a typical week in percentages.
09

Review the typical week

Read the percentages before the call. The largest slice is the first workflow to walk.
10

Run the interviews

Full week → workflow inside the largest task → infinite-time question. What is painful, manual, repetitive. Where the saved hours should go.
11

Record evidence

Transcribe every session. Every gap on the map gets a source: a person or a document they already had.
12

Quantify, rank, and present

Hours first, dollars second, forecasts last. Recoverability 0.6–0.8. Blueprint: map, findings, recoverable hours, redirect, priority matrix. Agreed priority is the close.

The five stages the map is drawn in, and the ones the blueprint ranks leaks by: win the work, price the job, run the job, get paid, keep the customer.

A fixed fee, $5,000, sized by headcount. If the recoverable savings in the blueprint do not cover it, you do not pay, and you keep the blueprint. The first step is a 30-minute call, and the second is the name of the one person.

Book a 30-minute call → How the AI Audit works

Questions people actually ask

What is a business process audit checklist?

The list of things an auditor asks for before walking your process, so the interviews go at the work rather than at the org chart. Mine is four items: who does what, whatever written procedures exist, which tools and who administers them, and a plain description of how a job moves from enquiry to paid. Everything else comes out of the interviews.

Do I need written procedures before an audit?

No, and most shops do not have them. What I need is whatever shows how the shop believes a job is supposed to move: an induction email, the laminated sheet by the phone, the quote template, the spreadsheet. If none of that exists, the audit starts with the finding that the job lives in people’s heads, which is a real finding with a real cost, and the blueprint says what to write down first.

How long does the intake take on my side?

An afternoon for the champion, spread over a week. The four items are a list of names, a folder of whatever exists, a list of tools with an administrator beside each, and a paragraph. Then each person I interview spends fifteen minutes filling in the typical-week table before their session. That is the whole ask, and it is deliberately small, because the interviews are the work.

What if my processes are all in people’s heads?

Then say so, and send the job journey as a paragraph. The interviews are built for exactly that shop: one person at a time, walking their week in percentages, then the workflow inside the biggest slice. The map gets drawn from what they say, with each gap cited to the person who described it. A shop with no written procedures is not behind; it is the normal case.

Will you need access to my software?

Read-only, to the tools that carry the job: the field-service or construction or property platform, the accounting package, the phone system if it has a log. I look at configuration, not customer data. The champion tells me who administers each; I ask them directly; nothing is sent by email; the access is removed when the presentation is done.

What happens after I send the four things?

I build a first map from them, size the interview week by headcount, and send each person a prep note at least three business days before their session. Sized by headcount, because headcount is interview count. A 15 to 30 person shop is typically two interview days. Larger shops take more days, up to a week. Intake and the first map happen before interview week. The written blueprint is presented inside two weeks of the last session. We set the exact week after you name the people. At the end you hold a written blueprint and we agree one priority. A fixed fee, $5,000, sized by headcount; if the recoverable savings do not cover it, you do not pay, and you keep the blueprint.