Blog
Build logs and case studies — how real automations get made.
How I automated my year-end accounting prep
Pulling Northwind's year together for tax season — receipts, invoices, expenses, in one folder.
Updated Oct 24, 2025
How I built a customer-feedback loop with AI
Collecting, analysing, and acting on Northwind input — what used to take a quarter now takes a week.
Updated Oct 20, 2025
How I migrated 10,000 files into a sane folder structure
A one-time Northwind Drive cleanup that actually stuck — naming rules enforced by script.
Updated Oct 16, 2025
How I built a team OKR tracker that updates itself
Northwind's quarterly goals wired to live data — no quarterly OKR-update meeting needed.
Updated Oct 12, 2025
How I automated grant-application tracking for a nonprofit
Deadlines, reporting, and renewals for a charity Northwind helps — never miss a submission window again.
Updated Oct 8, 2025
How I track my rental properties in one spreadsheet
Rent, expenses, and reminders for Northwind's owner's property side gig — fully self-managed.
Updated Oct 4, 2025
How I built an AI assistant that triages my inbox overnight
Sorting and drafting Northwind replies while I sleep — I wake up to a queue, not a heap.
Updated Sep 30, 2025
How I automated my podcast publishing checklist
From Northwind's recording to release — chapters, show notes, transcript, in one chain.
Updated Sep 26, 2025
How I built a real-time inventory system for a small shop
Stock, reorders, and alerts for Northwind's side shop — Sheets does it well enough.
Updated Sep 22, 2025
How I generated 200 personalized certificates in minutes
A real Northwind event-day automation — 200 attendees, 200 PDFs, sent in under five minutes.
Updated Sep 18, 2025
How I built a lightweight help desk in Gmail and Sheets
Tickets, SLAs, and reporting for Northwind — no Zendesk, no monthly fee.
Updated Sep 14, 2025
How I automated social media for a small business
Northwind scheduling posts from a content calendar — write once, ship to 4 platforms.
Updated Sep 10, 2025
How I built a goal tracker that emails me every morning
Northwind accountability on autopilot — what I committed to, what I did, side by side.
Updated Sep 6, 2025
How I digitized a paper-based approval process
Moving Northwind's print-and-sign requests into email and Sheets — same governance, no paper.
Updated Sep 2, 2025
How I built an appointment-booking system for free
Calendar, forms, and email working together for Northwind — replaced Calendly with 80 lines of script.
Updated Aug 29, 2025
How I track competitors automatically every week
A Northwind monitoring system with AI summaries — knows when rivals ship, hires, raises.
Updated Aug 25, 2025
How I automated expense reports for a 20-person team
Northwind contractors: receipts to reimbursement, hands-off — built in a week, saved everyone hours per month.
Updated Aug 21, 2025
How I built a CRM my whole team actually uses
Keeping Northwind's pipeline simple and friction-free in Sheets — the boring tool that finally got adopted.
Updated Aug 17, 2025
How I run a newsletter entirely from a spreadsheet
Northwind newsletter: subscribers, sending, and analytics in one place — no Mailchimp.
Updated Aug 13, 2025
How I built a reading list that summarizes articles for me
Saving Northwind reading and digesting links with AI — a triage layer between the firehose and my brain.
Updated Aug 9, 2025
How I automated my Shopify order fulfillment
Northwind side shop: orders to packing slips to shipping labels — hands-off from cart to mailbox.
Updated Aug 5, 2025
How I monitor 40 websites for free
A scrappy Apps Script uptime monitor for Northwind clients' sites — every 10 minutes, alerts on first failure.
Updated Aug 1, 2025
How I built an AI content pipeline in Sheets
Idea to published Northwind post, semi-automated — keyword in column A, published draft in column F.
Updated Jul 28, 2025
How I cut weekly reporting from three hours to three minutes
Automating Northwind's recurring management report — the one nobody wanted to write.
Updated Jul 24, 2025
How I built a personal finance dashboard
Pulling every account into one live Northwind treasury view — a Sunday-afternoon build that pays itself back monthly.
Updated Jul 20, 2025
How I automated my freelance client onboarding
Northwind's folders, contracts, and welcome emails in one click — from sale to setup in 30 seconds.
Updated Jul 16, 2025
How I built a job-application tracker that chases follow-ups
Never losing a lead in the pipeline — Northwind's hiring funnel finally has memory.
Updated Jul 12, 2025
How I replaced a $50/month SaaS tool with Apps Script
Rebuilding a paid CRM inside a spreadsheet for Northwind — saved $600/year, got exactly the features I needed.
Updated Jul 8, 2025
How I automated my entire invoicing workflow
From Northwind's timesheet to a sent invoice with no manual steps — a six-week project I should have done years ago.
Updated Jul 4, 2025
How I built a credit-card transaction tracker with Claude
Parsing Northwind's alert emails into weekly spend summaries — a weekend project, real failures, real code.
Updated Jun 30, 2025