We go through how your agency really runs: the portal enquiries, the referencing chases, the certificates falling due. Then we tell you which of it is worth handing to AI, and in what order.
Most agency owners 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.
Portal leads land all day and they ask the same three things: is it still on, what is the deposit, when can I see it. You know the answers. You typed them this morning and you will type them again before you go home.
Your CRM has an AI button now. The portals have a lead tool. There is a chatbot in every trade email you get. None of them tell you which job in a lettings week they would actually take off you.
A chatbot nobody set up will happily tell an applicant a property is available when it went under offer on Friday. That is not AI failing. Nobody ever pointed it at your stock, your terms, or your tone.
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 lettings audit we run. Which of them lands in your plan, and in what order, depends on your book, your team, and the system you already work in.
Rightmove, Zoopla, the website form and the info@ inbox all land in the same place, and somebody reads every one before anything happens.
Reads each enquiry, works out which property it is about, answers availability, rent, deposit, pets and parking from your own listing data, and offers the viewing slots that are genuinely free.
Anything about affordability, adverse credit, or a tenancy already running goes to a negotiator unanswered.
A slot agreed over four emails, then rebooked when nobody turns up.
Offers real availability, writes the booking into the diary, sends the confirmation with the address and access notes, and reminds both sides on the morning.
Access on an occupied property still gets a call.
Chasing the applicant for payslips, the employer for a reference, and the guarantor for anything at all, one email at a time.
Tracks what is outstanding on every applicant, chases on your own schedule, and tells you the moment a file is complete or has stalled.
The decision on a marginal reference. That is a judgement call and it stays one.
Gas safety, EICR, EPC, deposit protection deadlines and licence renewals live in a spreadsheet somebody has to remember to open.
Watches the dates across the whole book, raises the job with enough notice to get a contractor booked, chases the certificate, and files it against the property.
Booking the contractor and signing anything off. The responsibility is yours and the plan says so in writing.
Reports arrive as three words and a photo, and someone rings the tenant back to find out what has actually broken.
Asks the tenant the questions you would have asked, sorts emergency from routine against your own thresholds, and drafts the job for the right contractor.
Anything involving heat, water, gas, electrics or safety goes to a person the moment it is flagged.
Monthly updates written by hand, one landlord at a time, usually late.
Pulls the month's rent, arrears, works orders and compliance status, and drafts the update in your own wording, ready to check and send.
You read it before it goes. Every time.
Somebody notices a payment is late, then writes the first, second and third chaser from memory.
Spots the missed payment, sends your own escalation sequence on your own timings, and logs every contact so the trail is there later.
The point where arrears become a conversation, or a notice, is yours.
End dates get spotted late, so renewals are rushed and some tenancies roll over by accident.
Flags every tenancy months out, drafts the renewal offer, and follows up until you have an answer either way.
The rent review figure, and the decision not to renew.
Writing the same description for the fourth two-bed on that road, then cutting it down again for each portal.
Drafts the listing from the details and photos you already have, in your house style, in the length each portal wants.
Nothing goes live unread. A description is a statement you are on the hook for.
The same documents assembled by hand for every tenancy, and half the time one of them is missing.
Assembles the pack, sends it in the right order, chases the signatures, and files what comes back against the tenancy.
Inventory and check-out condition. Somebody looks at the property.
Nobody starts with ten. 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 lettings, 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 one person can still see the whole book. 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 your agency runs, not a pitch.
Every recommendation states what data it touches and where that data ends up. Keeping personal 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.
That is one of the first things we check. Some of it is the API, some is a feature your CRM already ships and nobody switched on, and some is email and a shared sheet joined up properly. Where your system will not do something, the plan says so rather than pretending.
Only where you decide it should, and never on arrears, notices or anything to do with safety. Most agencies start with drafts a person sends, then let the simplest replies go on their own once they have watched them for a few weeks.
Usually yes if there is a managed book, because managed work repeats on a schedule and that is exactly what automates well. If you are sales only with a handful of listings, we will probably tell you to save your money.
Watching dates and chasing certificates is one of the safest places to start. Nothing signs anything off. The legal responsibility stays with the agency and the plan is explicit about which steps a person has to take.
It should not. Anything that writes gets set up on your own past correspondence rather than a stock template, and everything landlord-facing stays a draft until somebody at the agency has read it.
The plan lands about two weeks after the call. Most agencies have the first automation live within a week of that, because the first one is usually enquiry triage and that does not need anyone to change system.
Either. The plan is yours to take to anyone, including whoever supports your CRM. If you would rather we set up the first two, that is a separate job and you decide after you have read the plan.
The call takes twenty minutes and it is about how the agency runs, not about software. The plan lands about two weeks later.