What should you do with the AI tool you already pay for?

It's a quiet news week — no new tools worth signing up for, no price changes on the ones you already use. Which makes this the week to actually open the AI subscription you've been paying twenty quid a month for and forgot about.

What should you do with the AI tool you already pay for?

Most business owners we talk to bought ChatGPT, Copilot, or Gemini months ago, used it twice, and now feel a small wince every time the receipt comes through. Pick one repetitive task this week — quote follow-ups, rota-writing, replying to the same five customer questions, drafting a job ad — and run it through your tool three times. By the third go you'll have a draft prompt you can reuse forever, and you'll know whether it's earning its keep.

Next step: open the app today, paste in last week's quote follow-up email, and ask it to write three variations. Pick your favourite and save it as a template.

Should you ask your landlord about your service charges?

Yes — and this isn't an AI story, it's a money story. According to BBC Business, the government is taking a closer look at service charges on commercial and mixed-use buildings — the kind salons, cafes, and small shops in shared premises pay every quarter. If your managing agent has been adding round-number charges with no breakdown, now is the moment to ask for one.

Next step: dig out your last service charge demand, email your managing agent, and ask for a line-by-line breakdown of what's included. Takes ten minutes. If scrutiny tightens, the owners who asked first will be first in the queue for rebates.

Anything else worth knowing?

HMRC refreshed four customs guidance documents this week. If you import or export anything — product retailers, e-commerce sellers, manufacturers buying components from abroad — forward the update to whoever files your declarations and ask "are we affected by any of these changes?" If they say no, you've done your job. If yes, you've caught it before a shipment gets stuck at the border.

One worth filing rather than acting on: Anthropic ran an experiment letting its AI buy and negotiate on behalf of its own staff. Its own conclusion was that there are "plenty of rough edges" and the losers didn't notice they'd been outmanoeuvred. Translation: don't let any AI tool transact on your behalf yet — book suppliers, agree prices, sign things off. The legal and insurance side hasn't caught up, and your business cover almost certainly doesn't extend to decisions made by software. Wait six to twelve months and let someone else be the test case.

Bottom line

Quiet news week — perfect time to make the tools you already pay for actually earn their seat at the table.

That's today's briefing. Subscribe free to get this in your inbox every morning.