We go through how the practice really runs: the quotes you answer at nine at night, the Level 3 still half written, the fee note nobody raised. Then we tell you which of it is worth handing to AI, and in what order.
Most surveyors know AI could take some of this off them. What they are missing is someone who will look at their own week and say which part to hand over first.
You knew what was wrong with the property before you left the drive. Everything after that is turning it into prose, in the right structure, with the right caveats, at the kitchen table after dinner.
There is a report writer with an AI badge on it now. There is a condition rating tool. None of them tell you which part of your week they would actually take off you, and most of them want you to abandon the template you have refined for a decade.
Every enquiry gets a considered fee quote, because you cannot tell the serious buyer from the person ringing round for the cheapest number. That is eight quotes written in your own time for nothing.
None of that is a technology problem. It is a question of which job goes first, and that is the bit we do.
These are the ones that come up in nearly every surveying audit we run. Which of them lands in your plan, and in what order, depends on the work you take, your team, and the software you already use.
Dictation and photographs turned into prose in the evening, element by element, in the structure the report requires.
Produces the draft from your notes and photographs in your own report format, using your own standard phrasing rather than generic wording, ready for you to work on.
Every finding, every condition rating and every recommendation. The surveyor writes the judgement. The automation writes the sentences around it.
Quotes written by hand in the evening, most of them to people collecting three prices.
Answers the enquiry, gathers the property details, tenure and level of service, prices against your own fee scale, and sends the quote while they are still looking.
Anything unusual, and every fee outside your standard scale. You set the scale and the automation applies it.
Bookings slotted in by hand, and three inspections in one day at opposite ends of the county.
Books against real availability, groups inspections sensibly by geography, and sends the access arrangements to the agent and the occupier.
Whether a job fits the day. Some inspections take as long as they take.
Terms sent manually, then chased, then the inspection happens anyway because the buyer is under pressure.
Issues the terms of engagement and scope on instruction, chases the signature, and flags any inspection about to go ahead without signed terms in place.
Agreeing scope and any limitation. That defines your liability and it is not an administrative decision.
Two hundred photographs off a phone, renamed and matched to elements by hand, or not matched at all.
Sorts the photographs against the elements you inspected, names them consistently, and places them in the right sections of the draft.
Which photographs support a finding. That is part of the evidence and the surveyor chooses.
Buyers ring having read one paragraph, and the call takes forty minutes.
Handles the genuinely administrative questions about scope, timescales and what the report covers, and routes anything about a finding straight to the surveyor.
Anything about a defect, a rating or what the buyer should do. That is advice and it comes from you.
Fee notes raised when there is time, and unpaid ones chased when somebody notices.
Raises the fee note on report issue, runs your reminder sequence, and flags anything aged past your threshold.
When a chase becomes a conversation, and what gets written off.
Files assembled properly only when something goes wrong, which is the worst possible moment to discover a gap.
Keeps the file complete as the job runs, the terms, the notes, the photographs, the issued report and the correspondence, and flags what is missing before the file closes.
Responding to a complaint or a claim. That goes to you and your insurer, immediately.
Turnaround and volume figures assembled by hand whenever a panel or referrer asks for them.
Tracks turnaround, volumes and service levels continuously, and produces the report each panel wants in the format they want it.
What you commit to. Service levels are a commercial promise.
Templates updated when somebody notices the guidance moved, usually late.
Watches for changes to the standards your templates depend on and flags the sections that need review, rather than letting a stale caveat sit in every report for a year.
Approving any change to a template. Your reports carry your name and your professional judgement.
CPD hours reconstructed in December, and practice records assembled when the review comes round.
Logs CPD as it happens, tracks the practice records against what your professional obligations require, and warns you well before a deadline.
The declaration itself. It is your name on it.
Nobody starts with eleven. A plan usually puts two live in the first month and leaves the rest ranked and waiting, so when you have the appetite for the next one you already know which it is.
Most of the job is joining up the systems you pay for rather than moving you off them. These are the ones we come across most in surveying, and we have no affiliation with any of them.
Three steps. You do the talking on the first one, and nothing is committed until you have seen what we found.
No prep, no agenda to fill in. We ask the questions and you walk us through how your week actually runs: the jobs, the tools, the emails you send a dozen times a month.
Recorded and written up, so you never repeat yourself.
We work back through the call and map where your time actually goes. Then we find the automations that suit your tools, your team and your budget, ordered so the biggest time saving comes first.
Back with you within a week.
We walk you through the whole report, recommendation by recommendation, and you decide what to take on first. Most people have their first automation running within a week of that call.
The report is yours to keep either way.
The plan tells you what to build. The dashboard shows you what it is doing once it is built, so you can see what you are getting back without asking us.
Set up when the plan is delivered, at app.fewerhours.com under your business name. No shared login and nothing to install.
Every one we build reports the hours it saved and the work it handled, so the value is a number you can check rather than a promise we made.
The rest of the ranked list sits there waiting. When you have the appetite for the next one, you already know which it is.
This works best where the surveyor writing the reports also runs the business. There are a few cases where it would waste your time, and those are worth saying out loud.
Fewer Hours exists because too many owners knew AI could help them somewhere and had no way of telling a good idea from a sales pitch. The plan is the boring part done properly: sitting with the real workflow and working out which jobs are worth handing over.
Whoever takes your call is the person who writes your plan. No account manager, no junior doing the analysis, and nobody trying to move you onto a retainer at the end of it.
Three steps, and you can stop after any of them. The first one is a conversation, and nothing about it commits you to the next.
A short chat about how your business runs. If there’s nothing here worth mapping, we’ll say so on the call.
The full job. We map the workflows, score every candidate, and hand over the ranked list and the 30-day plan.
If you’d rather we built the projects than just planned them, we’ll do the ones the audit put first. Anything from a quick win to a full agent build.
If there are fewer than five of you and admin takes about an hour a day, there probably isn’t enough here to be worth mapping, and we’ll say so. If you already know exactly which job you want automated, skip the audit and just ask us to build it. And if your processes only exist in your head, we’ll tell you to go and write them down first.
If yours is not here, ask on the call. It is twenty minutes about how the practice runs, not a pitch.
It writes the sentences. You write the judgement. It turns your notes and photographs into a structured draft in your own format and phrasing, which is where the evening goes. Every finding, condition rating and recommendation is yours, and a report that left without you writing those would be a professional indemnity problem, not a time saving.
Nothing we recommend forms an opinion, rates a condition or issues anything without you approving it. The plan is explicit about which steps require the surveyor. It is worth telling your insurer what you are doing, and the plan is written so you can hand it to them and they can see the human checkpoints.
No, and if a recommendation required you to, it would be the wrong recommendation. Your template and your standard phrasing are what the drafting is built on. The point is to produce your report faster, not somebody else's report at all.
That is one of the first things we check. Some of it is the API, some is a feature your software already ships and nobody switched on, and some is dictation and a folder joined up properly. Where your system will not do something, the plan says so rather than pretending.
We would not recommend it and we would advise against anyone who does. A condition rating is a professional opinion formed on site by a person who inspected the property. Photographs support the finding. They do not produce it.
Often more than for a larger practice, because you have nobody to absorb the admin and every hour of write-up is an hour you cannot spend inspecting. Report drafting alone usually justifies it if you are doing volume.
Every recommendation states what data it touches and where that data ends up. Keeping client and property data inside systems you already control is the default, and anything that would move it somewhere new is flagged, with the alternative, before it reaches the plan.
The plan lands about two weeks after the call. Most practices have the first automation live within a week of that, because the first one is usually quoting or report drafting and neither needs you to change software.
The call takes twenty minutes and it is about how the practice runs, not about software. The plan lands about two weeks later.