What Does an AI Assessment Actually Include? (And Is It Worth £499?)

HeyBRB Team·8 March 2026·8 min read

You've read the blog posts. You've watched the LinkedIn videos. You already know AI can save your business time and money. But £499 for an "assessment"? That's a legitimate question — and it deserves a straight answer.

This article is not a sales pitch. It's a complete, transparent breakdown of exactly what our AI assessment includes: every step, every deliverable, every outcome. If it's right for you, you'll know by the end. If it isn't, you'll know that too.

What Is an AI Assessment, and Why Does It Matter?

An AI assessment is a structured, business-specific analysis of where artificial intelligence could replace or reduce manual, repetitive work in your operations. Not a generic checklist. Not a score out of ten. A personalised review of your actual workflows, tools, and team habits — followed by specific, implementable recommendations.

The reason it matters: most UK small businesses are sitting on 10–20 hours per week of automatable admin work and don't know it. Chasing invoices, copying data between systems, manually booking appointments, sending the same email templates, pulling weekly reports by hand. These tasks feel normal because they've always been done that way. An AI readiness assessment makes them visible.

At HeyBRB, we've completed assessments across property management firms, accountancy practices, trades businesses, and professional services. The pattern is consistent: businesses with 5–15 staff are almost always underautomated, and the savings are almost always hiding in the same three or four places.

Before the Assessment: The Pre-Work

When you book through heybrb.ai/ai-assessment, we send you a short questionnaire before we speak. It takes about 10 minutes to complete. We ask:

How many people are in your team and what are their core roles
What software and tools you currently use (accounting, CRM, scheduling, comms)
Which tasks take the most time each week, even rough estimates
Where you feel most stretched or where things most often fall through the cracks
Whether you've tried any automation before, and what happened

This isn't busywork. It means we arrive at the discovery interview already familiar with your business model. We don't waste your 45 minutes asking basic questions Google could answer. We come in knowing that you're running a six-person letting agency using Fixflo, Xero, and a shared Gmail inbox — and we've already started thinking about where the gaps are likely to be.

The 45-Minute Discovery Interview

This is the core of the AI audit for business. It's a structured conversation, not a sales call.

We go through your working week in detail. Not theoretically — operationally. We ask things like:

"Walk me through what happens when a new tenant enquiry comes in."
"What does your invoicing process look like end to end?"
"Which member of your team spends the most time on admin, and what are they actually doing?"
"What's your biggest operational headache right now?"

We're listening for two things. First, the obvious: repetitive, rules-based tasks that follow a predictable pattern (these are prime automation candidates). Second, the less obvious: handoff points where work gets dropped, duplicated, or done twice because systems don't communicate.

We also ask what you're not doing because you don't have time. Opportunities hiding behind busyness are often worth more than the tasks you're already completing.

The interview is conducted via video call. We take notes throughout. You don't need to prepare anything beyond the questionnaire — just be ready to talk honestly about how the business actually runs day to day.

What the AI Assessment Report Includes

This is the deliverable. Within five working days of your interview, you receive a written report. Here's exactly what's in it.

5 to 7 Specific Automation Recommendations

Each recommendation is structured identically, so you can act on it without needing us to explain it. For each one, we include:

Task description — A plain-English description of the specific task we're recommending you automate. Not "improve your admin workflow." Something like: "Automatically create a Xero invoice draft when a job is marked complete in your CRM."

Recommended tool — The specific software we'd use. Usually Zapier, Make (formerly Integromat), or a native integration within your existing tools. We explain why we chose that tool over alternatives.

Estimated setup time — How long it would realistically take to build and test this automation. We distinguish between DIY setup time and what it would take a professional to implement.

Expected weekly time savings — A conservative estimate of how many hours per week this saves your team. We don't inflate these figures. We'd rather underestimate and overdeliver.

Priority ranking — We rank all recommendations from highest to lowest impact-to-effort ratio, so you know exactly where to start.

A Summary of Your AI Readiness

This section covers your overall position: which tools you already have that you're underusing, where your biggest integration gaps are, and what the realistic 90-day automation roadmap looks like for a business at your stage.

An Implementation Overview

We include a one-page summary designed to be shared with your team or a developer. It outlines what each automation does, what triggers it, and what it produces — without the jargon.

A Real Example: What a Bristol Letting Agency's Assessment Looked Like

To make this concrete, here's an anonymised summary from a recent assessment. The client: a Bristol letting agency, seven staff, managing around 200 properties, using Fixflo, Xero, and Microsoft 365.

Their assessment identified six recommendations. In priority order:

Automated maintenance request triage — When a new Fixflo job is raised, automatically categorise it by urgency and property type, and route it to the correct contractor group via email. Setup time: 3 hours. Weekly saving: 4 hours.
Invoice chasing automation — Trigger a sequence of payment reminder emails via Xero when invoices hit 7, 14, and 21 days overdue, with personalised copy for each stage. Setup time: 2 hours. Weekly saving: 2.5 hours.
Tenancy renewal tracking — Flag tenancies within 90 days of expiry automatically, create a task in the team's shared system, and send a templated opening email to the tenant. Setup time: 4 hours. Weekly saving: 3 hours.
New enquiry auto-response and CRM entry — When a Rightmove or Zoopla lead comes in by email, automatically log it in their CRM, send an acknowledgement to the applicant, and create a follow-up task for the lettings manager. Setup time: 2.5 hours. Weekly saving: 2 hours.
Weekly landlord report generation — Pull maintenance and payment data weekly and compile a templated email summary per landlord automatically. Setup time: 5 hours. Weekly saving: 3 hours.
Staff holiday and cover tracking — Integrate the team calendar with their task management tool so cover responsibilities auto-assign when someone marks leave. Setup time: 3 hours. Weekly saving: 1.5 hours.

Total estimated weekly time savings: 16 hours. Total setup time across all six: approximately 19 hours.

This is the level of specificity you get. Not "consider using AI to improve communications." Actual tasks, actual tools, actual numbers.

What Happens After the Report

The report lands in your inbox. Then what?

Within two weeks of delivery, we schedule a 30-minute review call. We walk through each recommendation, answer your questions, and help you decide which to tackle first. If you want to implement everything yourself, we give you the resources to do it. If you'd rather hand it off, we can do that too via our process optimisation service.

The review call is included in the £499. There are no hidden follow-up fees. We're not trying to upsell you into a £3,000 retainer on the back of a report you paid for in good faith.

If you want to know more about who we are and how we work, that context helps too.

The Money-Back Guarantee

If we cannot identify at least five hours of weekly time savings across your business, you get a full refund. No quibble. No conditions.

We're confident making that offer because in three years of doing this work, we have never failed to find five hours. The businesses coming to us have repetitive admin. That's almost always a given at five-plus staff. The question isn't whether the savings exist — it's where they're hiding.

The guarantee exists because we think it's the right commercial position. You're being asked to trust us with £499 before you've seen the work. The least we can do is remove the risk.

Book your assessment at heybrb.ai/ai-assessment.

Who the AI Assessment Is For — and Who It Isn't

We'd rather be honest about this than take your money and deliver something that doesn't fit.

The assessment is right for you if:

You have five or more staff
Your team spends five or more hours per week on repetitive admin (data entry, chasing, copying information between systems, sending templated communications)
You use multiple software tools that don't communicate well with each other
You feel like you're always firefighting rather than building
You've thought about AI or automation before but don't know where to start

The assessment is not right for you if:

Your business has no repetitive, predictable tasks (this is rare, but it exists — typically in highly bespoke creative or advisory work)
You've already invested significantly in automation and your systems are well-integrated
You're a sole trader doing fewer than two hours of admin per week
You're looking for a strategic AI transformation roadmap rather than practical, near-term workflow fixes

If you're unsure which category you fall into, the free AI audit is a sensible starting point. It's a 10-minute online tool that gives you a directional read on your automation potential before you commit to anything paid.

AI Assessment vs Free AI Audit: What's the Difference?

We offer both, and the difference matters.

The free AI audit at heybrb.ai/free-audit is a structured online questionnaire. You answer questions about your business, your tools, and your workflows. At the end, you get a score and a summary of your broad automation potential. It takes about 10 minutes. It's useful for getting oriented, but it doesn't tell you what to actually do.

The AI assessment is the paid service described throughout this article. It involves a human expert reviewing your specific business in detail, a 45-minute discovery interview, and a written report with five to seven actionable recommendations specific to your tools and workflows. It's the difference between a blood pressure reading and a GP consultation.

For businesses that are already confident they have automation potential and want to move quickly, the assessment is the right starting point. For businesses that want to test the water first, start with the free audit.

What Does an AI Assessment Include? Summary

To bring it all together: an AI assessment with HeyBRB includes a pre-work questionnaire, a 45-minute discovery interview, a written report with five to seven prioritised automation recommendations (each with tool, setup time, and weekly time savings), a 30-minute report review call, and a money-back guarantee if we can't find five-plus hours of weekly savings.

The cost is £499. The typical return on that investment — based on conservative time-saving estimates across our client base — is between 10 and 20 hours per week recovered. At minimum wage, that's worth over £100 per week. At senior staff rates, considerably more.

If that ratio makes commercial sense for your business, the next step is straightforward.

Book your AI assessment at heybrb.ai/ai-assessment

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does the assessment take from booking to report delivery?

From the moment you book, we typically complete the pre-work questionnaire review, conduct the discovery interview, and deliver the written report within two to three weeks. We prioritise a thorough report over a fast one, but we don't drag it out.

Do I need any technical knowledge to get value from the assessment?

No. The report is written in plain English, with no jargon. Every recommendation is explained in terms of the task it replaces, not the technology it uses. If you want to implement things yourself, we give you the resources to do so. If you'd rather hand it off, that's an option too.

What if my business is in a niche industry not listed on your site?

We've completed assessments across property management, accountancy, trades, legal services, healthcare administration, and retail. The methodology transfers across industries because we're looking at workflows, not sector-specific tools. If you're unsure whether your business is a fit, get in touch before booking.

Is the £499 fee inclusive of the implementation work?

No. The £499 covers the assessment, report, and review call. Implementation — actually building and deploying the automations — is separate. Some clients implement everything themselves using our report as a guide. Others engage us for implementation support through our process optimisation service. Either way, you're not locked into anything after the assessment.