I have a confession: until very recently, I was doing my freelance admin work the stupid way.
If you read my last post, "REBUILDING A CLIENT SITE IN 7 HOURS: THE POWER OF AI-ASSISTED DEV," you know I recently migrated a client from a bloated WordPress setup to a lightning-fast static site on Netlify. For the clients on my hosting plan, I take on the headache of keeping their site updated, secure, and running smoothly.
The site itself was optimized. But my business operations? Completely stuck in the slow lane.
The "Aha" Moment
I didn't wake up one morning with a perfect automation script in my head. In fact, I should be clear: I didn't do this. I just thought to ask the right question of my dear AI assistant.
Initially, my AI assistant and I were trying to solve this within the Google Analytics 4 (GA4) interface. But as I started explaining my actual pain points—the disjointed reports and the manual PDF exports—the conversation shifted.
My assistant redirected me: "If you want a unified, branded experience, we need to graduate from GA4 to Looker Studio." That was the moment the scales fell from my eyes.
The Importance of Asking the "Smart" Question
The funny thing about AI is that the more you use it, the more your brain rewires to see opportunities for it everywhere. But AI isn't going to proactively look at your life and make suggestions. It won't tap you on the shoulder and say, "Hey, you're wasting three hours a month on a $50 task."
The real skill of the modern designer isn't just having access to AI; it's learning to ask the smart questions. Once I stopped just asking "How do I use GA4?" and started asking "How can I automate this entire PDF billing and reporting workflow for free?", the solution was right there.
The "Zero-Touch" Architecture
Here is the system we built together using entirely free tools:
1. The Agency-Grade Analytics Report (Looker Studio)
Instead of the clunky, single-page snapshots from GA4, we connected the data to Google Looker Studio. We built a 5-page report that automatically bundles everything into one PDF:
- Page 1: The Cover — A custom, branded cover page exported from Figma to give it a premium agency feel.
- Page 2: The Snapshot — High-level scorecards for Total Users, Sessions, Views, and Engagement Rate.
- Page 3: Audiences — A Geo Map of user locations, a Donut Chart for device categories, and a Bar Chart for traffic sources.
- Page 4: Landing Pages — A table showing exactly where users enter the site, tracking Sessions, New Users, and Engagement Time.
- Page 5: Referrers — A breakdown of specific "Session sources" to see exactly which websites are sending traffic.
2. The Dual-PDF Billing Robot (Google Apps Script)
I set up two Google Docs for the Invoice and Receipt. We used specific variable tags that the script could find and replace:
- {{Receipt_Month}} & {{Receipt_Year}}: To dynamically label the billing period.
- {{Receipt_Invoice_Number}}: To auto-increment based on the contract start date.
- {{Receipt_Date}}: To mathematically calculate the "Paid On" date from the previous month.
- {{Invoice_Number}}: To generate the upcoming bill's unique ID.
3. The Automated Delivery
I prefer to bill on the last Wednesday of every month — it's the "sweet spot" of the work week where clients are at their desks and most responsive.
However, Google Apps Script's built-in triggers are surprisingly limited; you can't simply tell it to run on "the last Wednesday." This is where my AI assistant got clever and suggested a "Bouncer Script." Instead of trying to find a complex trigger, we set the script to run every Wednesday. The "Bouncer" at the beginning of the code does a quick mathematical check: "Is the date seven days from now still in the same month?" If the answer is yes, the Bouncer stops the execution. If the answer is no, it means we've hit the final Wednesday of the month, and the robot proceeds to:
- Calculate the math: It auto-increments invoice numbers and dates based on the contract start date.
- Generate the PDFs: It replaces the {{Variables}} in my Google Doc templates and converts them to PDFs.
- Draft the Email: It generates a perfectly formatted HTML email draft in my Gmail, with my signature and both PDFs already attached.
The Result
What used to be a frustrating hour of data entry is now a 30-second drag-and-drop.
On the 1st, Looker Studio hands me the analytics PDF. On the last Wednesday of the month, my Apps Script hands me the invoice and receipt. I bundle them into the pre-written draft and hit "Send."
Taking the technical burden off my clients' plates is my job. Using AI to ask the right questions and remove the administrative burden off my own plate is how I protect my peace.
#UX #WebOps #FreelanceLife #Automation #GoogleWorkspace #LookerStudio #DesignEngineering #WorkSmarter