Home / Features / Automations / Workflow Templates
Feature
Do not start every automation from a blank page.
Start from an automation somebody has already thought through, then change what your business does differently.
Overview
Automate the repeat work around the real work.
Most of the automations a workshop wants are the same ones every other workshop wants: chase the lead that’s gone quiet, create the project when the quote is accepted, remind people about missing timesheets, tell someone when a job’s status changes.
Because they’re common, they don’t need building from scratch. WorkGuru’s automation sets are organised by the area they act on — leads, quotes, projects and tasks among them — so you can start from a workflow that already has a sensible trigger, sensible conditions and a sensible action, and adjust it rather than assembling one from an empty screen.
The practical benefit isn’t the time saved building. It’s that a pre-built automation encodes decisions you might not think to make — that a daily lead chase should exclude won and lost leads, for instance. Those are the details that make the difference between an automation that helps and one that annoys everybody.
Anything you start from a template is still yours to change, and it’s managed from the same Workflow Dashboard as anything you build yourself.
What’s inside
What you get
01
Sales templates
Quote follow-up and open opportunity reminders.
02
Job templates
Alerts and handovers around operational work.
03
Purchasing templates
Approval and order-related reminders.
04
Inventory templates
Low-stock and replenishment alerts where supported.
05
Timesheet templates
Missing-time reminders.
06
Accounts templates
Invoice-ready and related operational handovers.
The reality
Why you need it
The idea is obvious but the setup is not.
Everyone can name three things they’d like automated. Far fewer get built, because going from “we should chase quiet leads” to a working rule involves decisions you don’t know you need to make. A template has already made them.
Every automation becomes a mini project.
Which is why most businesses have none. If each rule requires a planning session, the payoff never justifies the effort, and the whole capability sits unused.
Different staff build the same rule differently.
Then you have three follow-up automations with slightly different timing and wording, and no one is sure which customers are getting which. Starting from the same template means the business behaves consistently.
Good automations never get reused.
Somebody builds something genuinely useful for their area, and nobody else finds out. Templates are partly a way of not solving the same problem twice.
Nobody knows what to automate first.
The most common blocker. A library is a set of suggestions from people who’ve watched a lot of businesses do this — which is worth more at the start than a blank screen and good intentions. Start with something that only notifies, before anything that creates records.
How it works
How it works
01
Browse the library
02
Pick a template
03
Check the trigger
04
Adjust the rules
05
Review the action
06
Turn it on
Capabilities
What it does
Capability
Sales templates
Automations around the selling end — a lead arriving, a follow-up falling due, a quote being accepted. The documented lead automations include an event trigger when a lead is created and a daily timer across open leads for age-based reminders and gone-quiet nudges, with won and lost leads excluded.
Capability
Job templates
Automations around project and task work — status changes, tasks falling overdue, work moving between stages. These are the ones that most often replace somebody in the office remembering to check something.
Capability
Purchasing templates
Purchase order templates are designed to assist workflows where you repeatedly purchase the same items. This feature can be found under Administration>Purchase Templates.
Inventory templates
Low-stock and replenishment alerts where supported.
Timesheet templates
Missing-time reminders.
Accounts templates
Invoice-ready and related operational handovers.
Day to day
What does that actually look like?
You want to chase old quotes.
Start from a quote follow-up pattern instead of designing the rule from scratch.
Managers keep missing approvals.
Use an approval reminder starting point and set the rules that fit.
Friday is spent chasing timesheets.
Start with a missing-timesheet workflow.
Accounts asks which jobs are ready.
Use a completed-job handover pattern.
Purchasing needs low-stock warnings.
Start from a stock alert template where supported.
What you get out of it
What changes
Get useful automation live faster
Start with a known pattern.
Make setup less intimidating
Show the business what good workflows can look like.
Keep repeat processes more consistent
Use common starting rules.
Learn from real use
Adjust the template after seeing how it behaves in the business.
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Discovered their contract work wasn’t profitable.
We didn’t wanna pay 100 grand upfront for a program – but then we found WorkGuru.
Nick Mazzella, Administrator, Frontline Trays & Trailers
Fit
Will it work the way we do things?
“Templates will not match exactly how we work.”
They won’t, and they’re not meant to. A template is a starting point with the structure already right — the trigger, the conditions, the shape of the action. You change the parts that are specific to you. That’s still much less work than starting from nothing.
“We only need one automation.”
Then set up one. There’s no requirement to adopt a suite of them, and one well-chosen automation that removes a recurring piece of chasing is a perfectly good outcome. Most businesses that end up with a dozen started with one.
“We want to build our own.”
Then build your own — templates are optional. It’s still worth looking at what’s in the library first, because the pre-built ones tend to encode edge cases you’d otherwise discover the hard way, like which records a daily timer should skip.
“Will templates change our jobs?”
Only in the ways you set up. An automation does what its actions say — sends an email, creates a task, raises an invoice. Nothing changes how your work is structured. If you’re uneasy, start with one that only notifies rather than one that creates records.
By trade
Where this gets used
Works with
Connected features
Automations
Templates are the starting point for the wider automation capability.
Quote Management
Use open quote context for sales workflows.
Purchase Approvals
Use buying context for approval workflows.
Timesheets
Use time records for missing-time reminders.
Stock Control
Use inventory conditions for stock workflows where supported.
Invoicing
Use job completion as part of the billing handover.
FAQs
Workflow Templates questions
What is a workflow template?
A pre-built automation you can start from rather than building the rule yourself. It comes with a trigger, conditions and actions already configured for a common situation, and you adjust it to suit how your business actually works.
Can templates be changed?
Yes. Anything you start from a template is editable and is managed from the Workflow Dashboard like any other workflow. A template is a starting point, not a fixed configuration.
What kinds of templates are planned?
WorkGuru supports two primary categories of templates designed to streamline operational workflows and document generation: Project/Production Templates (operational workflows) and Document Templates (customer-facing or internal outputs)
Do we have to use templates?
No. They’re a convenience. You can build every workflow from scratch, and some businesses will prefer to because their rules are specific. The library is there to save you starting from an empty screen, not to constrain what you build.
Can we reuse a workflow across the business?
Yes — a workflow runs against the records it’s set up for rather than being tied to one person or one job, so a rule you configure once applies wherever its trigger fires.
Pick the admin task you want gone first.
We will show you the closest workflow starting point and how it can fit the way your team works.