Before you buy another AI tool, check the ones you've got
Most of the small businesses I talk to are already paying for AI. It came bundled into Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, or someone signed up for Claude or ChatGPT on a card and never told anyone. What's missing is rarely another subscription. It's an hour spent setting up the ones they have.
This is the check I run first. You can do it yourself in about half an hour.
1. List what you pay for
Open your accounting software or your card statement and write down every software subscription, with who uses it and roughly what it costs a month. Don't stop at the obvious ones. Note-taking apps, meeting tools and phone systems often have AI features switched on by default.
2. Find out what each plan actually includes
Look up your exact plan on the vendor's own pricing page, not a blog post. Plans and what they include change often, so check current vendor docs. You're looking for three things: AI in email and documents, AI in meetings (notes and summaries), and a general chat assistant your team can use under the business account rather than a personal one.
3. Pick one recurring task
Choose something that happens every week and that you mildly dread: the Monday status email, tidying meeting notes, a first draft of a quote. Try the tool you already have on that task for two weeks. One task, done properly, tells you more than a month of trying everything.
4. Decide what to stop
If two tools now do the same job, keep the one that lives where the work already happens and cancel the other. Configure before you customise. Integrate before you replace.
When to get help
If you'd rather do this with someone who has set these tools up inside large organisations, that's what Set up for AI is for. We do it in your own accounts, and you keep a one-page guide to how it all works.