6 Best Task Automation Software You Need in 2023
Task automation software — a name that means nothing to so many people, but everybody uses it in some way. It surrounds us at all times, even without us realizing it.
The average citizen spends many hours at work. Too many hours. What if we told you that you could save a lot of time by automating some of your tasks? While some of your dozens of daily tasks are variable, others are regular and recurrent — and therefore, easily automated!
Automate time tracking with zero effort
Timeular has been recognized as the most intuitive time tracking tool for teams and individuals. Join over 50,000 team members and start track your time automatically
But what is task automation software anyway, and what is it for? Don’t worry. We have asked these questions too. Luckily for you, we’ve found the answers!
What is task automation software?
Task automation software is a tool that helps you reduce or eliminate the manual effort required by some tasks. This kind of software is critical for those who want to be more efficient.
Several platforms allow you to automate tasks, from the simplest to the most complex. However, the task automation we usually experience in our daily lives is that of small, simple, repetitive tasks that steal useful time despite not having great complexity.
Thus, automating tasks aims to help people streamline their processes, leaving them free to use the time saved on tasks that really make a difference. In essence, task automation is a mechanism for increasing productivity.
With so many options available, choosing a task automation software that meets your specific needs is not easy, as it will depend on what you want to automate.
To help you with this choice, we have reviewed some of the best task automation tools available today. If you want to learn more about them — just keep reading!
Read: Why task automation is one of the best tips to improve business efficiency.
The best 6 task automation software
Now that you understand the benefits of automating tasks, it’s time to learn about some tools that can help you, your team, and your organization to become more productive.
Our list compiles software for different purposes, so you can get a macro perspective of what you can achieve using several platforms.
1. Timeular – Automatic time tracking
Let’s be honest: nobody likes to track time, and many people don’t know what time tracking is.
It’s often a boring activity, needed to increase billable hours or to understand how much time a task has weighed on a certain project. Fortunately, Timeular takes the boring part out of time tracking by living up to its slogan — Work smarter, not harder.
With Timeular, an automatic time tracker app, you can measure your time in one click, identify where your precious time is going, and completely transform your productivity!
One of its most amazing features is the 8-sided time tracking cube, which automatically tracks activities when flipped.
Track your time with a physical Tracker
“I am not one that finds joy in tracking my time. Thankfully, I can now simply flip the Timeular Tracker.” – Melissa, Senior Analyst in Health
So instead of jotting down on spreadsheets or paper how long you took on a task, ending up with inaccurate counts, just use Timeular.
The app is very intuitive and easy to use and integrates with over 3,000 apps, such as Google Calendar, Asana, Zapier, Jira, and many more!
The Timeular app also allows you to automate reports, instantly export your data to CSV, PDF, or Excel, and share them with your team and clients. These features make Timeular the best time tracking app on the market.
How Ricola automatically populates timesheets for their team of 500+ people
With Timeular’s automation features, you can:
- Automatically track the time you spend on each activity with the time tracker cube or keyboard shortcuts;
- Easily build a time-tracking habit;
- Automate client reports and invoicing;
- Keep a close eye on project budgets to effectively monitor their progress and profitability;
- Add time entries automatically into a spreadsheet to create custom reports;
- Send emails to clients when you start tracking their projects;
- Track overtime hours;
- Track PTO and employee leave absences;
- Connect your calendar and push time entries automatically;
- Learn and boost your productivity through advanced insights and trends.
Automate time tracking with zero effort
Timeular has been recognized as the most intuitive time tracking tool for teams and individuals. Join over 50,000 team members and start track your time automatically
2. Zapier – Automation platform
Zapier is the only tool we have included in this article that is exclusively dedicated to automation. It’s one of the top productivity apps for Mac, Windows…for everything!
This automation tool allows you to create workflows and connect various apps to each other for greater productivity. “Imagine all the apps you use for work talking to each other.”
This is how Zapier starts explaining how it works on its website. Zapier works on a logic of if/then, that is, conditions. So, whenever a certain action you have previously defined happens, it will trigger a reaction.
For example, you get a new lead through Facebook. Using Zapier, you can automate what happens from there. You can set that every time a new lead drops, all your team members receive an email, the lead’s email address is automatically added to Mailchimp, and a personalized email is sent. All this instantly and automatically, without anyone actually having to do anything.
Zapier + Timeular = Unlimited possibilities to track time 100% automatically
Connect Timeular to your project management tools and other apps used daily and track productivity automatically. Your team will love it!
The best part: Zapier is a no-code automation tool, which means that anyone can program.
With Zapier you can:
- Streamline task creation, communication, and more by automatically creating tasks and sending custom notifications;
- Automatically create tasks from notes and documents for new meetings;
- Keep your inbox clean and organized;
- Create folders and files for new projects;
- Add tasks from a project management app to your personal to-do list app.
- … so much more!
This software works with more than 5,000 apps, so imagine how many triggers you can base a zap on — the possibilities are endless! Zapier has a free plan, but you don’t get access to a lot of integrations.
To take advantage of Zapier’s capabilities, you can choose one of several paid plans. The highest tier for enterprises starts at $599 per month for 100,000 tasks.
3. Trello – Project management
Trello is one of the best tools for managing remote employees.
This awesome task and project management tool allows you to manage individual or teamwork, offering users collaboration tools that make project management and remote work much easier.
One of the great advantages of Trello is that it scales with your team as it grows.
Automation-wise, Trello accomplishes what it sets out to do: eliminate small, repetitive tasks and free up time to do what really matters. So, with Trello, you can:
- Use language commands to automate workflows and other actions effectively;
- Automate your calendar to perform certain actions at a specified day or time;
- Trigger specific actions (i.e., sending an email) when the app detects certain criteria (i.e., the due date is up);
- Automate some actions in other apps your team relies on, like Slack and Jira;
- Share automatic updates with external stakeholders and clients when a task status changes.
Trello can be used in mobile or desktop versions, but, unfortunately, only the mobile app version allows you to work offline.
Pricing-wise, Trello has a free plan that is ideal for small organizations. If you need a more premium feature set, prices start at $6/month/user.
- Read also: Trello time tracking integration
4. Hubspot – Customer relationship management
Nowadays, you will be hard-pressed to find anyone unfamiliar with Hubspot. If you need an all-in-one marketing, sales, content management, and customer service platform, this CRM is your best friend.
Hubspot has a wide range of automation features, from email marketing automation to sales funnel automation. It’s a powerful tool that automates and optimizes many user journey tasks, not just the “simple” ones.
Here are some of the things you can do with Hubspot’s automation features:
- Trigger internal notifications to your team when a contact takes a specific action;
- Set up workflows for follow-up contacts (i.e., alert sales to follow up with someone; send a thank you email to a loyal customer; schedule a related products email to go out after a purchase…and so much more!);
- Understand your customers’ history and automate responses based on previous purchases or lifetime value;
- Integrate with external apps and trigger events in those applications;
- Easily segment contacts into smart lists;
- Collect, store, and use data in your marketing strategy so you can offer your customers a personalized experience;
- Use automation to customize content sent to prospects and customers.
We could keep going all day. The possibilities are endless. However, all this doesn’t come cheap, so Hubspot is more expensive than the other tools we present in this article.
Pricing starts at $800/per month, and for enterprise-level clients can cost up to $3200/per month.
Read also: Hubspot time tracking
5. XERO – Accounting
For many, accounting is a nightmare. Dozens of stubs and papers are on the desk, processes that are repeated every month and that create stress and anxiety for the company’s financial officer.
With Xero, you can automate time-consuming financial and administrative tasks that give you a headache. Make payments on time, send invoices to your customers, and fulfill all your commitments easily and automatically. With XERO’s automation features, you can:
- Automate invoices and guarantee clients pay on time;
- Send automatic invoice reminders and repeating invoices, so you don’t have to remember to send or chase invoices;
- Set up bank rules to automatically code transactions on your bank reconciliation screen;
- Automatically match your transactions to those in your bank statement;
- Track transactions in real-time and generate automatic reports;
- Recover all your data in seconds thanks to automatic backups.
Automation in accounting software is particularly relevant because there’s no margin for error when dealing with our business money.
XERO has three pricing plans – Starter, Standard, and Premium – that accommodate businesses in various stages. The cheapest option starts at $22 per month, with the possibility of adding some add-ons for very affordable prices.
Read also: Find out how to boost productivity with Xero time tracking.
6. Google Looker Studio (Data Studio) – Analytics & Reports
Do you know why Google Looker Studio is one of the best 5 task automation software? Because it’s a must-have for those working in digital and who need to create reports.
Often, weekly, monthly, or semi-annual reports are a way to tell the story of your business to stakeholders and investors and convince them to continue to invest. Also, they help you understand the health of your business and identify improvement opportunities. However, making reports is extremely time-consuming.
Google Looker Studio, formerly known as Google Data Studio, helps you turn your data into useful dashboards and custom reports that are easy to understand and share.
Unlike Google Analytics or HubSpot, Data Studio is not a data source. It only combines data from different sources, analyzes it, and helps you create interactive reports, charts, and dashboards.
With Google Data Studio, you can:
- Connect with a large number of data sources and automatically pull data from the desired source;
- Join data from multiple connectors and automate the process of calculating some KPIs;
- Keep your dashboards updated automatically in real-time with relevant business metrics and KPIs.
- Schedule e-mail deliveries for Google Data Studio reports for your team members;
- Automatically personalize your Data Studio reports with your company’s branding.
The best part about Google Data Studio? It’s free, which is hard to beat.
Automate time tracking with zero effort
Timeular has been recognized as the most intuitive time tracking tool for teams and individuals. Join over 50,000 team members and start track your time automatically
How to choose the best task automation software?
At this stage, you already know some of the best task automation software on the market. However, we may not have covered some of your needs — worry not, today there are tools to automate anything you can imagine.
So we leave you with some factors to consider when choosing task automation software.
1. Pricing
Some software is free, and some come with a price tag. Evaluate your company’s needs and determine the price you are willing to pay. Usually, cheaper tools have fewer features or allow fewer users than more expensive ones.
2. Features
One of the most important criteria. Assess your operation and its specific needs and write down everything that your task automation software should do in order to save you time (and therefore money) and increase the team’s productivity.
Look carefully at each software’s features before committing to one.
3. Compatibility with different types of devices
Nowadays we need to walk around with our office in our hands. So it’s essential that you choose software that is compatible with various devices and preferably allows you to work offline.
Avoid tools that don’t have a mobile version.
4. Integrations
What other tools does the software integrate with? The more integrated a platform is, the more versatile it is.
Look for software that integrates with your email, calendar, and other apps. Talk to the support teams before buying task automation software and understand how easily it integrates with other tools.
Conclusion
Every day we complete small repetitive tasks that make us waste a lot of time, whether in our personal or professional lives.
When it comes to productivity, you must take a critical look at how you’re using your time and reflect on whether those little tasks are holding you back.
Choosing one of the best task automation software can help you recover that lost time. A nice proposition, right?
We hope this article has helped you understand how task automation software can help you focus on more meaningful tasks that get the needle moving and get better results!
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