Webinar: When to automate with AI, and when not to

One business process, automated three ways and priced side by side, so you can see whether a workflow builder, custom code or an AI agent suits yours.

When: Tuesday 24 November 2026, 12:00pm NZT
How long: 40 minutes, including questions.
Where: Online on Google Meet. The link arrives by email.
Cost: Free.
You leave with: A four question checklist to run over any recurring process in your business.
Can’t make it? Register anyway and the recording is emailed to you.

Most automation advice starts with AI. In practice, most of what a team wants automated follows clear rules.

Take an order that arrives and has to touch five systems:

Order in
Check stock
Update the CRM
Raise the invoice
Notify the team

This session builds that same five step process three ways: a workflow builder, custom code, and an AI agent. Then it prices them against each other.

Who this is for

You run a business or a team, and people spend hours moving data between systems by hand.
Your Zapier, Make or Power Automate bill is climbing, or the workflows have become too fragile to touch.
You have been told you should be doing something with AI, and want to know what that means for a process you already run.
You ruled out custom code because of the time it takes.

No coding background required. Code examples are explained in plain language.

What we cover

What Zapier and Make actually cost at volume

Where the bill comes from, and what a five step workflow costs at 10,000 runs a month.
The limits you hit later: debugging, version control and clunky custom code steps.
Self hosting with n8n to cut the bill, and what that costs you in other ways.

The free option you already own

Google Apps Script is free, and already authenticated against your Google Workspace data.
The quotas and execution limits to plan around before you rely on it.

Automations that retry themselves

Automatic retries, a record of every run, and pauses of weeks or months between steps.
Demoed on Cloudflare Workflows, with equivalents in every other public cloud.

Letting AI write it, and what to check first

What to watch for when AI writes the code that runs your business.

The steps where AI earns its place

Interpreting unstructured enquiries, assessing priority, classifying open ended responses.
Where an AI agent was used and a workflow builder or custom code would have been better.

Four questions for your own processes

The checklist for deciding which approach suits a given process.

Who you are working with

I am Curtis Warner, a reporting and workflow automation consultant based in New Zealand.

I have built reporting and automation for teams at the University of Auckland and Are Media, across ad platforms, CRMs and spreadsheets, using tools like n8n, Google Apps Script and whatever your stack already runs on.

Register

Registration is free. The joining link arrives by email.

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