5 Make Scenarios Every Small Business Should Run

I've built dozens of Make.com scenarios for small businesses. Almost all of them fall into five categories. That's not a coincidence, it's because most of what eats a small business owner's week isn't complicated work, it's repetitive work: someone fills out a form and needs a fast reply, an invoice sits unpaid because nobody remembered to chase it, a review lands and nobody sees it for three days, the same post needs to go to five places, or the end of the day arrives and nobody has a clean picture of what happened.

None of these need a developer. They need five modules connected in a line, watching for one thing and doing another thing when it happens. That's the whole idea behind Make.com: a trigger module watches for an event, action modules do something with it, and you map the data between them.

Below are the five scenarios I build most, with the exact module names, the field mappings, the copy-paste templates, and the error handling that keeps a scenario from silently breaking the one week you're not watching it. Build one this week. Don't try to build all five at once.

Before you build anything: three Make.com concepts you need

If you've never opened Make.com, three concepts make everything below make sense. Skip this section if you've built a scenario before.

• Scenario · the whole automation. One trigger, then a chain of actions. Think of it as one recipe.
• Module · one step in that chain. Each module belongs to an app (Gmail, Google Sheets, Slack) and does one thing (Send an Email, Add a Row, Create a Message).
• Mapping · dragging a field from an earlier module into a later one, so data flows through the chain. This is 80% of what building a scenario actually is.

Scenario 1: New Lead to CRM to Instant Notification

This is the first scenario I build for almost every client, because it fixes the most expensive problem a small business has: a lead comes in and nobody responds for six hours. Speed to lead is the single biggest lever most businesses have and never pull.

What it does

A form submission (website, Facebook lead ad, or a Google Form) becomes a CRM contact automatically and pings you the second it happens, so you can call while the lead is still warm.

The build

1. Trigger: Webhooks > Custom webhook (if your form posts to a webhook URL) or Google Forms > Watch Responses (if you're using a Google Form). Copy the webhook URL into your form's submission settings before you do anything else.
2. Filter: add a filter after the trigger so the scenario only continues if the email field is not empty. This stops test submissions and bot spam from creating junk contacts.
3. Action 1: Your CRM's "Create or Update Contact" module (works the same way in HubSpot, Airtable, or a GoHighLevel-style CRM). Map: Name from the form's name field, Email, Phone, and a Source field set to a static value like "Website Form" so you can filter reporting later.
4. Action 2: Slack > Create a Message, or Gmail > Send an Email, to yourself or your sales inbox. Map the contact's name and the form's message field into the body.
5. Action 3 (optional): your CRM's "Add Tag" or "Create Task" module, so a follow-up task lands on someone's desk automatically with a due date of today.

New lead: {{1.name}}
Email: {{1.email}}
Phone: {{1.phone}}
Message: {{1.message}}

Source: Website form
Time: {{formatDate(now; "h:mm A")}}

Call within the hour. Speed to lead wins deals.

Scenario 2: The Invoice Chase

Unpaid invoices are a cash flow problem disguised as a memory problem. Nobody forgets to send the invoice. People forget to follow up on it, three times, on a schedule, without it feeling awkward. That's exactly what a scenario is good at.

What it does

Watches your invoicing tool for anything overdue and sends a graduated sequence of reminders automatically, so chasing money stops depending on someone remembering to do it.

The build

1. Trigger: a Scheduled trigger set to run once daily at 8am (Make's built-in scheduling on the trigger module, no separate app needed).
2. Action 1: your invoicing app's "Search/List Invoices" module (QuickBooks Online, Stripe, or Wave all have one). Filter for status = overdue.
3. Router: split the flow into three routes based on days overdue, using a Filter on each route: Route A = 1-3 days overdue, Route B = 7 days overdue, Route C = 14+ days overdue. Compare the invoice due date to today using a date-difference formula in each filter.
4. Action per route: Gmail > Send an Email, using a different template per route (friendly nudge, firmer reminder, final notice). Map the client name, invoice number, amount, and a payment link into each.
5. Action (Route C only): Slack > Create a Message to yourself, flagging any invoice that's hit 14+ days so a human makes the call, not another automated email.

Subject: Quick nudge on invoice #{{invoice.number}}

Hi {{invoice.customerName}},

Just a friendly heads up that invoice #{{invoice.number}} for {{invoice.amount}} came due a few days ago. No worries if it slipped through, here's the link to pay: {{invoice.paymentLink}}

Thanks for your business.

{{yourName}}

Subject: Invoice #{{invoice.number}} is now a week overdue

Hi {{invoice.customerName}},

Invoice #{{invoice.number}} for {{invoice.amount}} is now 7 days past due. If there's an issue with the invoice or you need a different arrangement, reply to this email and let's sort it out. Otherwise, here's the payment link: {{invoice.paymentLink}}

{{yourName}}

Subject: Final notice: invoice #{{invoice.number}}

Hi {{invoice.customerName}},

This is a final reminder that invoice #{{invoice.number}} for {{invoice.amount}} is now more than two weeks overdue. Please arrange payment within the next 3 business days: {{invoice.paymentLink}}

If there's a reason this hasn't been paid, reply to this email directly and I'll work with you on it.

{{yourName}}

Scenario 3: Review Monitor and Draft Responder

Reviews move fast and most business owners find out about a bad one from a customer mentioning it in person, days later. This scenario closes that gap and does something more useful than just alerting you, it drafts a response so you're editing instead of starting from a blank box.

What it does

Watches your Google Business Profile for new reviews, sends you an instant alert with the review text, and uses an AI module to draft a response in your voice that you approve before it posts.

The build

1. Trigger: Google My Business > Watch Reviews, connected to your business's Google Business Profile listing.
2. Router: split on star rating. Route A = 4-5 stars, Route B = 1-3 stars, so low ratings get more attention than high ones.
3. Action (both routes): an AI module (OpenAI, Anthropic, or Make's built-in AI app) > "Create a Completion," using a prompt that includes the review text and asks for a draft reply in your brand voice.
4. Action: Slack > Create a Message, posting the review text, the star rating, and the AI's draft reply together, so you can copy, edit, and paste the reply back into Google Business Profile yourself. Do not auto-post the reply. A human reviews every one before it goes live.

You are responding to a customer review on behalf of [BUSINESS NAME], a [BUSINESS TYPE].

Review ({{rating}} stars): "{{reviewText}}"

Write a reply that:
- Matches the tone: warm and direct for positive reviews, calm and solution-focused for negative ones
- Is 2-4 sentences
- Never sounds defensive or corporate
- For negative reviews, acknowledges the specific issue by name and offers a next step (call, email, or a way to make it right), it does not argue with the reviewer
- Signs off with the business name, not a generic "Management"

Scenario 4: One Post, Five Platforms

Content repost scenarios are the highest leverage-to-effort ratio I build. One piece of content becomes five, and the only manual step is writing the original post once.

What it does

You post to one place (a Google Sheet row, an Airtable record, or a single social platform), and the scenario reformats and reposts it to the others on a short delay, so you're not manually copy-pasting the same update into four different apps.

The build

1. Trigger: Google Sheets > Watch Rows, watching a simple sheet with columns for Post Text, Image URL, and Status. You (or your content system) add a new row when there's something to post.
2. Filter: only continue if Status = "Ready to post", so draft rows sitting in the sheet don't fire the scenario early.
3. Action 1: Facebook Pages > Create a Post, mapping the Post Text and Image URL columns.
4. Action 2: Instagram for Business > Create a Photo Post, same mapping.
5. Action 3: LinkedIn > Create a Share Update, using a slightly reformatted version of the text if your LinkedIn voice differs from Facebook's.
6. Action 4: Google Sheets > Update a Row, setting Status back to "Posted" with today's date, so you have a log and the row never fires twice.

Scenario 5: The Daily Ops Digest

This is the scenario that makes every other scenario feel worth having built. It pulls a summary from everything else you've automated and drops it in your inbox at the end of the day, so you're not logging into four different tools to find out what happened.

What it does

Once a day, it pulls new leads, overdue invoices, and new reviews from the same tools the other four scenarios already touch, and emails you one clean summary.

The build

1. Trigger: a Scheduled trigger set to run once daily at 6pm (or whenever your workday ends).
2. Action 1: your CRM's "Search Contacts" or "List Records" module, filtered to contacts created today, to count new leads.
3. Action 2: your invoicing app's "List Invoices" module, filtered to status = overdue, to count and total unpaid invoices.
4. Action 3: Google My Business > List Reviews (or reuse the count from Scenario 3's Data Store log), filtered to today.
5. Action 4: Gmail > Send an Email to yourself, using an Aggregator module beforehand if you need to combine multiple records into one list inside the email body.

Subject: Your day in numbers, {{formatDate(now; "MMM D")}}

New leads today: {{leads.count}}
{{#leads.list}}
- {{name}} ({{email}})
{{/leads.list}}

Overdue invoices: {{invoices.count}} totaling {{invoices.total}}
{{#invoices.list}}
- {{customerName}}: {{amount}}, {{daysOverdue}} days overdue
{{/invoices.list}}

New reviews today: {{reviews.count}}
{{#reviews.list}}
- {{rating}} stars: "{{text}}"
{{/reviews.list}}

That's the day. Tomorrow's another one.

The Ignore-handler pattern, explained once

Every scenario above mentions error handling, and it's worth explaining why in one place instead of repeating the theory five times.

By default, if any module in a Make scenario fails, the entire scenario stops. Not just that module, the whole run. If your Slack notification module fails because a channel got renamed, your CRM contact never gets created either, even though the CRM module would have worked fine.

The fix is an error handler on the module most likely to fail, not on the whole scenario. In Make, right-click any module, choose "Add error handler," and pick Ignore. That tells Make: if this specific module fails, log it and keep going with the rest of the scenario instead of stopping.

• Put Ignore handlers on: notification modules (Slack, Discord), social platform posts, and anything hitting a third-party API you don't control.
• Don't put Ignore handlers on: the module that actually creates the record you care about (the CRM contact, the invoice). If that fails, you want the scenario to stop and alert you, not silently skip the one thing the whole automation exists to do.
• Always pair an Ignore handler with a fallback route when the failing module was the point of contact (like Scenario 1's Slack alert). A silent failure with no fallback is worse than no automation at all, because you stop checking manually and assume it's working.

Which one to build first

If you're building your first Make scenario, build in this order. Each one is independently useful, and later ones get easier once earlier ones already exist.

1. Scenario 1 (Lead to CRM to Notification) · fastest to build, highest immediate payoff, and it's the one most likely to directly affect revenue this week.
2. Scenario 2 (Invoice Chase) · build once you have a few overdue invoices to test against. Don't build this against zero real invoices, you won't catch mapping errors.
3. Scenario 3 (Review Monitor) · build once you're getting at least a review or two a month. If you get one review a year, this isn't worth the build time yet.
4. Scenario 4 (Content Repost) · build once you're posting consistently enough that reformatting by hand actually costs you time.
5. Scenario 5 (Daily Digest) · build last, once at least two of the others are live and generating data worth summarizing.

One more thing before you open Make.com: none of these need to be perfect on the first build. Get the trigger and one action working, test it, then add the next action. Building all five modules at once and testing at the end is how a 45-minute build turns into a three-hour debugging session.