An automation that works today won’t necessarily work in six months. That’s not because it was built badly. It’s because the apps it connects keep changing, and so does your business.

The danger isn’t that automations break. It’s that they break quietly. A booking confirmation stops sending, nobody notices for three weeks, and the first sign is a customer who didn’t turn up because they never got the details.

Here’s why it happens, how to catch it, and what I include in ongoing care.

Why automations break

1. An app changes something. Software companies update their products all the time. A field gets renamed, a feature moves, a connection gets retired. Usually nothing happens. Occasionally the automation that relied on it stops.

2. A login expires or a password changes. Automations connect to your apps with saved access. Change a password, remove a user or let a token expire, and the connection drops.

3. Your business changes. You add a service, change your prices, hire someone, switch from one booking tool to another. The automation still follows the old rules.

4. Unusual input. A customer types their phone number with letters in it, attaches a huge file, or writes in another language. Every automation meets something it wasn’t built for eventually.

5. Limits and bills. You go over your automation platform’s monthly allowance, a card on file expires, or an AI service hits a usage limit.

6. AI drift. When AI models are updated, their answers can change slightly. A prompt that sorted inquiries perfectly might start putting a few in the wrong category.

How to catch problems early

Even without anyone’s help, you can do a lot:

  • Turn on error emails in your automation platform and make sure they go to an inbox someone reads.
  • Do a monthly test. Fill in your own form, book a test appointment and send yourself a test invoice. Check that everything that should happen does.
  • Watch the numbers. If you normally get ten inquiries a week and suddenly get zero, assume something is broken before assuming business is slow.
  • Keep a simple list of your automations, what each does, and which apps and logins it depends on.

What my care plan covers

The care plan on my services page is $450 CAD a month and covers:

  • Monitoring and fixes. I watch for errors and fix broken automations, usually before you notice.
  • Up to 5 hours of improvements each month. Adjusting to a new service, tweaking AI prompts, adding a step, or building a small new automation.
  • A reply within 1 business day.
  • Cancel any month.

You don’t need it for every automation. Every build already includes 30 days of fixes after hand-over, and simple automations often run happily for a long time with just the monthly self-check above.

A care plan makes sense when:

  • an automation is part of how you make money (bookings, inquiries, payments),
  • you have several automations depending on each other,
  • you’d rather not be the person who has to notice and fix things,
  • you expect to keep improving your setup month by month.

The cheapest fix is the one you don’t need

The best protection is building things simply in the first place: fewer steps, fewer tools, clear error alerts, and a written guide that says what each automation does. That’s how I hand over every build, care plan or not.

If you have automations that someone else built and nobody is looking after, or you’re not sure what you have running, book a free 20-minute discovery call and we’ll go through them. For more on choosing tools that are cheap to run and look after, see Zapier, Make, n8n or custom.