Another Needless Ballache Removed
Date: 19 November 2025
Coding Experience: 4 months
Annual Time Saved: ~12 hours
Cost: £0
Broker Morale: Allegedly improved
The Gym Realisation 🏋️♂️
I was at the physio gym, doing the usual ACL rehab routine, when it dawned on me that I was still manually doing Christmas and birthday messages to brokers. And with our new broker tools system, i thought “how can i automate credit allocation for these two key days like i do for monthly allocation?” Do I trawl through contract data and allocate bonuses. Birthdays were worse; if it was not in my calendar, it was forgotten.
Pointless. Avoidable. A perfect candidate for automation.
I got home and built the solution that evening.
The Plan 🎁
Two systems; both automated and both removing me entirely.
1. Christmas Credits 🎅
- Runs at 09:00 on 25 December.
- Uses each broker’s live calendar year contract total.
- Gives them 10 percent as credits; min 5, max 40.
- Sends a proper HTML email with a Santa GIF.
- Zero involvement from me; ideal.
2. Birthday Credits 🎉
- Checks birthdays daily at 10:00.
- Looks at the broker’s trailing 12 months of live contracts.
- Allocates 5 percent as credits; min 5, max 20.
- Sends a cake GIF email.
- Fully hands-off.
Only “Live” and “Pending Live” contracts qualify; no credit for “submitted and hoping for the best” efforts. Sorry rags
The $200 Flashback 💸
In 2016, I asked a developer to build a basic birthday message feature in Zoho. He quoted $200 and delivered a masterpiece of bland:
Dear {broker name},
Wishing you a happy birthday.
Thanks,
BOS
I refused to pay. It never launched. He couldnt get it to work anyway!
Nine years later, I have built two fully functioning bonus systems myself with HTML, GIFs, logic, caps, and admin summaries.
Cost: £0
Satisfaction: high. very high.
The Build 🧠
Both systems are written in Deluge. Clean, efficient logic.
Christmas Script
- Query all 2025 contracts.
- Filter to Live or Pending Live.
- Group by broker.
- Apply the 10 percent bonus; cap at 40.
- Update credits and send festive email.
- Issue admin summary.
Birthday Script
- Find brokers with today’s birthday.
- Query last year’s contracts for each.
- Apply 5 percent bonus; cap at 20.
- Add credits and send cake email.
- Send admin summary when applicable.
The runtime is trivial; it will scale to 100 brokers without breaking a sweat.
The Emails ✉️
Both emails are fully responsive with inline CSS and the usual polish.
Christmas:
Santa GIF; red and green palette; reference to their 2025 contract count. Looks professional without pretending I spent hours designing it.
Birthday:
Cake GIF; pink and purple palette; straight to the point. “We have not sent you cake, but here are some credits instead.”
Testing 🔧
I changed my birthday in the system to 20 November to test the workflow. Tomorrow at 10:00 I should receive:
- The birthday email 🎂
- Credits added
- Admin summary
Then my DOB goes back.
Christmas is queued for 25 December. Brokers will assume I am feeling festive; the server will be doing all the actual work.
Parallel Progress ♻️
My ACL rehab and the automation share the same structure; repetitive graft that compounds. No drama; just consistency.
Rehab strengthens the knee; automation strengthens the business. Both pay off.
What Has Been Automated Since July ⚙️
- Daily status sync for EDF, Scottish Power, BGB, and E.ON
- Monthly broker credits
- Pricebook distribution
- Commission processing
- Bank reconciliation
- WhatsApp notifications
- Broker self-service tools (60 to 80 percent ticket reduction)
- Performance dashboards
- Christmas bonuses (new)
- Birthday bonuses (new)
Annual time saved: over 200 hours.
Ballache reduced: substantial.
The Real ROI 📈
Learning to code has:
- Removed thousands in developer costs
- Cut a mountain of admin
- Reduced interruptions
- Made processes predictable
- Freed up mental space
It is not about “loving automation”; it is about refusing unnecessary work.
The Takeaway 🧹
If a task is predictable, boring, or relies on memory, automate it. The cost of doing it manually is far higher than you think.
If I can learn this in four months, anyone can. The only question is whether you want less admin or you enjoy suffering. I either live my life or spend my days! I’ll take A please bob!
Next 🔜
Tomorrow’s test email should confirm everything works. Then I will move on to automating contract rollovers.
Knee progress continues. Automation progress continues. One rep; one script.
P.S. If you are a BOS broker, yes you will now get birthday credits. And yes, the Christmas bonus is real. Enjoy. 🎂🎄