Give your business its hours back.
Somewhere in your week there's work nobody should still be doing by hand. Hourback finds it, then builds the AI tools and automation that hand those hours back to you and your team. No IT department required.
Plain English. Fixed scope. You own everything we build.
Illustrative. Your audit report shows the real numbers for your business.
Good people, stuck doing work a computer should do.
Small businesses run on a handful of capable people. The trouble is how much of their week goes on the same repetitive jobs, with no one whose job it is to fix that.
Orders into the accounts package, again into a spreadsheet, again into an email. Every copy is a chance for a mistake, and every mistake costs an afternoon.
Quotes, questions, chasing, booking. Most of it is routine, all of it needs a reply, and it's eating the hours you'd rather spend on customers or getting home.
Every tech decision, every "the printer's doing it again", every new tool someone wants to try lands on the owner's desk, because there's no one else to ask.
Find the hours. Build the fix. Keep it running.
Three stages, each one useful on its own. You can stop after any of them and still be better off.
The Hours Audit
We spend time with you and your team to see where the week actually goes: the repeat jobs, the workarounds, the things everybody hates doing.
- A short, plain-English report of what's eating the hours
- What to automate first, what to leave alone, and why
- An honest estimate of the hours and money each fix gives back
Build
We build the tool or automation to fix the biggest problem first, working with the software you already have rather than replacing it.
- Fixed scope and price agreed before we start
- Small, fast projects: weeks, not months
- Your team trained, and everything documented
Keep it running
Technology needs someone to own it. We can be that person: the CTO your business is too small to hire full time.
- Support for what we built, and what you already had
- Straight answers on any tech or AI decision that comes up
- A quarterly look at what's next worth automating
Thirty minutes, no pitch deck. Just tell us what your week looks like.
Practical tools for the jobs that eat your week.
Nothing here is science fiction. These are the kinds of fixes that come out of most audits, built to fit around how your business already works.
Email triage and reply drafting
Routine enquiries sorted, answered in your tone, and queued for a one-click approval. You stay in control; you just stop starting from a blank page.
Quotes, invoices and follow-ups
Generated from the details you already have, sent on time, and chased politely until they're paid. Without anyone remembering to do it.
Documents into systems
Orders, receipts, forms and PDFs read automatically and entered into your accounts, stock or CRM software, with a person checking anything uncertain.
Answers to the questions you get every day
An assistant trained on your own prices, policies and products, on your website or in your inbox, that knows when to hand over to a human.
The numbers, without the spreadsheet evening
Sales, cash, jobs, stock: pulled together automatically and sent to you each Monday in a form you'll actually read.
Fractional CTO
A senior technology person on call for the decisions that matter: which software to buy, what to do about security, whether that AI tool a supplier is pushing is worth it.
Every business is different, and the audit is what tells us which of these (or something we haven't listed) will give you the most hours back for the least money.
Rules we don't bend.
Plain English, always
If you can't explain it to your team in a sentence, we haven't finished explaining it to you.
You own everything
The tools, the accounts, the documentation. If we parted ways tomorrow, everything would keep working and stay yours.
We'll tell you when AI isn't the answer
Sometimes the fix is a checklist, a setting, or a £10 a month tool. We'll say so, because the goal is hours back, not AI for its own sake.
Your data stays your data
We're careful about what goes where, we use UK and EU-hosted services wherever possible, and we'll show you exactly what any tool can see.
Build on what you have
Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Xero, QuickBooks, whatever you already pay for. We don't rip and replace.
Small projects, fast
Weeks, not months. The first automation should be paying for itself before you've stopped noticing it's there.
Hi, I'm Ian.
I started Hourback because I kept watching good small businesses lose their evenings to jobs a computer should be doing.
I've spent my career in technology and the games industry, most recently leading AI pilots inside a UK games company: finding where a team's time went, building the tools to give it back, and reporting the results straight to the CEO. The same approach works just as well for a ten-person firm as it does for a studio, and frankly it's needed more.
I'm not a career consultant and I don't do jargon. I like sitting with the person who actually does the job, understanding it properly, and building something small that makes their Tuesday better. Then doing the next one.
Things people ask before the first call.
Do I need to be technical to work with you?
What does it cost?
Will this replace people on my team?
Which software do you work with?
Is my data safe with AI tools?
How long does it take?
What if it turns out AI isn't the right fix?
Tell us what eats your week.
Send a few lines about your business and the jobs you'd love to never do by hand again. We'll come back within one working day to arrange a free 30-minute call.
No pitch, no obligation. If we don't think we can give you hours back, we'll say so.