Most small businesses now have at least one automation: something that copies new orders into a spreadsheet, sends a welcome email, updates stock overnight, or adds bookings to a calendar.

Often it was built in an afternoon with a tool like Zapier, Make or n8n. These tools connect your apps, so that something happening in one sets off an action in another, with no programming needed. Then it runs quietly in the background, and everyone forgets it's there.

Until the day it stops. And the first you hear of it is usually a customer.

This guide is a check you can do yourself in about ten minutes, without any technical knowledge. You don't change anything. You only look.

Why nobody told you

The tools do try. Zapier and Make both send an email when an automation runs and fails. n8n sends nothing unless someone has set up an alert for it.

But there are three common ways that warning never reaches you:

  • The email goes to someone else. Warnings go to the email address on the account. If a freelancer, a former member of staff or a friend set it up under their own login, the warnings go to them.
  • The email was turned off, or filed away. Someone switched the warnings off because there were too many, or an email filter puts them in a folder nobody opens.
  • Nothing failed, because nothing ran. This is the big one. A warning only goes out when a run starts and goes wrong. If the automation never starts at all, because it was switched off or the thing that starts it stopped happening, there is no failure to report. Silence looks exactly like everything being fine.

The 10-minute check

Do this for each automation your business relies on. Keep a note of what you find: it's useful whatever the answers are.

1. Find out where your automations live

Ask whoever set them up which tool they used and which account it's in. Write down the tool, the email address of the account, and who has the password.

If the honest answer is "I'm not sure", that's your first finding, and it's worth sorting out before anything else.

2. Look at when each one last ran

Every one of these tools keeps a history of its runs:

  • Zapier: open Zap history.
  • Make: open the scenario and look at its History tab.
  • n8n: open the Executions list.

Check the date of the last successful run. If your stock update runs every night, the last run should be last night. If it was three weeks ago, you've found your problem.

3. Check that each one is switched on

Look for anything marked off, paused, inactive or disabled. Make, for example, switches a scenario off by itself after it fails several times in a row.

If something is off and nobody remembers turning it off, write that down.

4. Check the connections

Automations reach your other apps (your shop, your email, your spreadsheet) through a saved login. Those logins can expire, especially after someone changes a password.

Each tool lists these in one place: Zapier and Make call them connections, and n8n calls them credentials. Look for any that ask to be signed in again.

5. Check where the warnings go

  • Zapier: in Settings, under Notifications, check how often error emails are sent. Make sure it isn't set to Never.
  • Make: in your profile's email preferences, check that emails about errors and switched-off scenarios are turned on.
  • n8n: it only warns you if someone set up an "error workflow". If you're not sure there is one, assume there isn't, and ask.

Then check that those emails go to an address somebody actually reads.

The habit that catches the silence

Steps 1 to 5 catch failures. They can't catch silence: the automation that simply stops running. For that, you need something that tells you when it did run, so you notice when it doesn't.

The simplest version needs no software at all. Put a ten-minute look at the run history in your diary once a week, for the automations that matter most.

A step up is a short "it ran" message. Ask whoever looks after the automation to add one last step that sends you a one-line note each time it finishes, like "Stock update done: 14 items". Have it arrive somewhere you look every morning.

After a week, you'll stop reading it, and that's fine. What you'll notice is the morning it isn't there.

If you'd rather not rely on noticing, there are small monitoring services, often with a free plan, that expect to hear from your automation every day and email you when they don't. Whoever looks after your software can set one up in a few minutes.

What to do with what you found

If everything checked out, well done. Keep your notes, and put the weekly look in your diary.

If you found something, like a run that stopped, a connection that expired, or warnings going to someone who left, you now know exactly what to ask about. Take your notes to whoever looks after your software.

And if there's nobody to ask, I can look at it for you, read-only. Here's an example of the findings note you'd get, written for a candle shop whose nightly stock update stopped without telling anyone.