You do not need AI for this task. You need the repeated steps written down once, and a tool that does the arithmetic the same way every time.
What was eating the manager's time?
I sat down with the owner of some coffee shops and restaurants in town one day. I had scheduled the time to meet with her, as she was interested in learning more about AI. We sat down and talked for a little while, and then I asked her what was one thing in her business that was taking up a lot of her time, or her other employees' time. The first thing she said was that her manager was spending a lot of time manually calculating the servers' tip outs. I told her that she wouldn't need to use AI at all. Instead, I had her write out how the servers' tips were paid out, and then used that information to create a spreadsheet for her. The spreadsheet took the amount of tips the server had made, and would then distribute the payouts to the cooks and bartenders, and then it would show what was left for the server. It was simple math, but even those simple calculations would take up a couple of hours a week for her manager. Now all they have to do is input the total server's tips into the spreadsheet, and it figures everything out, and it double checks the math on it as well to ensure the numbers work out every time.
How was it done by hand?
Before I created the spreadsheet, I was shown the paperwork that would be done each week by her manager. It was handwriting the server's tips, then multiplying that total by .15, and that was the payout for both the bartenders and the cooks. Then the manager would multiply that by 2 and subtract it from the server's total tips, and that would give her what the server got after the payouts. It doesn't sound like much, but doing that for ten plus servers every week, and it starts to eat away at their time for other tasks in a hurry. When calculating that much every week and relying on one person to get it done, and get it done on a deadline, is when mistakes could happen. One wrong number in the server's tips, the percent take out, or in subtracting from the tips, and it could cost the company and the employees their hard earned money. With the manager being the only one with access to those numbers, if they aren't around, then it would fall on someone else to calculate by hand. Now with the spreadsheet, anyone that has access to it can easily enter the numbers in and get them to where they need to be.
What does two hours a week add up to?
As a business owner, if someone came in and asked if they would like to potentially free up 100 hours of time for their managers or their employees, what do you think they would say? The estimate from the owner was that the spreadsheet would save her manager about two hours a week, which over the course of one year is approximately 104 hours that her manager now has open to spend on other tasks. This is also a task that isn't just around for a couple of months. This is something that has to be done for as long as they are open for business. Every year they use that spreadsheet is another 100 hours their manager has available to help in other areas of the restaurant.
What did I build instead?
This spreadsheet was quite easy to build. The first column is the server's name, the second column is their total tips, the third column is the bartender's payout, the fourth column is the cook's payout, the fifth column is the server's take home after payouts, and the sixth column is the sum of the bartender's payout, the cook's payout, and the server's take home, which has to add back up to the total tips. It's not that it just calculates the payouts. The biggest aspect is that it is self checking, so that it's visible, and not just blindly trusting that it is correct.
What changed for the owner?
Getting the spreadsheet didn't just free up time for her manager, it also made things easier for her as the owner as well. Having that spreadsheet means her and her payroll person have verified proof that the calculations are correct, and if the manager is gone, she can take over and do them herself without having to sacrifice hours of her day to get it completed. It has gone from a dreaded task to a task that takes minutes and not hours.
Where does AI fit in a fix like this?
One of the biggest problems with the rise of AI and wanting to implement AI is that, in the rush to want to automate or find where it fits, it often gets pushed in somewhere it doesn't belong. When a business wants to look at implementing AI, the last thing they should do is look to AI. They first need to look for the tasks and things that they do on a regular basis and identify the ones that take up the most time. Once they have done that, then they need to look at the exact system and how that task gets completed. Looking to AI for a magic prompt or a solution won't solve a system or workflow issue.
How can you copy this pattern?
The same pattern works on almost any weekly chore, and a stock count shows it cleanly. Say you run a small shop or cafe, and every week somebody walks the shelves with a clipboard, counting the same items in the same order, then sits down and works out what to order. The pattern starts by writing those steps down once, the list, the order, and the level you want each item kept at, because that part never really changes. Then the sheet carries the repeatable part: you type in the count for each item, and it works out how much to bring that item back up to its level, the same arithmetic done the same way every single week. What does not get handed over is the judgment at the end, because a person still looks over the order before it goes out, and if the sheet says to order forty of something that normally moves two at a time, a human catches that before money gets spent. One weekly task, steps written down, the steady parts carried by a tool, and a person checking the result at the end.
What is one task that keeps eating your time every day, every week, or every month? Let's find a time to find out if AI is a good fit for you. Book your Everyday AI Fix today at: calendly.com
Questions first? Email josh@promptingeveryday.net.