I'm Shashikant Shah, a digital marketing expert in Kathmandu and a software engineer. AI automation on n8n is the building half of what I describe on my AI automation expert page (and the business case is in AI automation for business in Nepal): you bring one process, I scope it, build the workflow, test the awkward cases and hand it over. It's for businesses in Nepal with a repeated job that follows rules: lead handling, follow ups, reporting, moving data between tools. Most often it automates the leads and reports my SEO and ads work produces.

Short answer: AI automation with n8n in Nepal means one defined workflow at a time, running in your own n8n instance, connected to your CRM, WhatsApp, email and sheets, with an OpenAI step only where language is involved and a person approving anything before it reaches a customer. You get the workflow, the exports and the documentation, and you can run it without me.

When you need this

A college in Kathmandu gets enquiries from a website form, a Facebook lead form, WhatsApp and email. They sit in four places until someone checks, and by the time the call goes out the student has spoken to two other colleges. Reply speed decides it, and one person can't be that fast across four inboxes.

The other version is the report. Every Monday someone opens Google Ads, Meta, Analytics and the sales sheet, copies numbers into a slide and sends it by eleven. It takes three hours, it's wrong once a month, and nobody reads it until Wednesday.

Then there's publishing: the same offer posted to the Business Profile, Facebook, Instagram and a WhatsApp broadcast, by hand, every time. None of these jobs need judgement. They need someone who never forgets.

The problems I see most often:

  • Enquiries in four inboxes, answered in hours or days, when the first reply should go out in minutes.
  • Zapier or a no code tool that worked until volume grew and the monthly bill went past what the job is worth.
  • An automation someone built that failed silently in Falgun, and nobody knew until the leads stopped.
  • A model sending replies to customers with nobody checking, and one confidently wrong answer that cost a client.
  • Nothing documented, so the person who built it is the only one who can touch it, and they've left.

What I actually do

  • Lead intake to your CRM: website form, Facebook lead forms, WhatsApp and email land in one pipeline, deduplicated, labelled and routed to the right person, with a first reply inside minutes. It ties into the CRM work when you don't have one yet. You get one list, not four.
  • Follow ups on WhatsApp and email: reminders, quotes, and the second and third message most businesses never send, drafted for a person to approve where the message matters. You get fewer leads going cold.
  • Report generation: Google Ads, Meta, GA4 and your sales sheet pulled into one scheduled report, with the odd numbers flagged in plain words. The tracking underneath is the analytics work. You get Monday morning back.
  • Scraping and data to sheets: prices, listings, stock or enquiries collected on a schedule into Google Sheets, validated before they land. You get data that's current without anyone typing it.
  • OpenAI steps with human review: classifying enquiries, pulling fields out of invoices and CVs, drafting replies, each checked against a schema and queued for a person before anything with consequences happens. You get the speed without the embarrassment.
  • Reliability built in: retries, timeouts, duplicate protection, run logs and a failure alert to your phone, so if a workflow stops you know that day. Colleges can see how this fits on the education page.
  • Documentation and handover: workflow exports, the credentials used, schedules, recovery steps and a walkthrough, so another developer can run it without me. You keep everything.

How it works

First call and scoping. The first thirty minutes are free. You describe one process: what triggers it, which tools it touches, how many times a month it runs and the exceptions a person handles today. I tell you whether it's a good candidate, and some aren't. If you go ahead, you get a written scope: the boundary of the workflow, the approval points, the acceptance checks and what's not included.

The work. One narrow workflow first, built end to end over two to four weeks, in your n8n instance, self hosted or n8n cloud, on your own provider accounts. I test the normal cases, bad input, a provider outage and the human approval path before it goes live. Where a node can't do it, I write the code inside the workflow rather than leave the platform.

Reporting, and what you keep. After go live you get a run log you can read and a short monthly note on runs, failures and cost per run. You keep the n8n instance, the workflow exports, the custom code and its repository, the API keys and the hosting, all in your name. Ongoing maintenance is optional, and never a condition of handover.

Proof from AI automation work

Goenka Gold, Red Mud Coffee, Shree Ridhi Sidhi Jewellers and FoodMario are on my case studies page with automated publishing in the scope I delivered, alongside profile setup and offer campaigns. That is the same mechanism this page describes: a repeated job done by a workflow instead of a person.

The other proof is this website. Its build pipeline runs 15 automated checks on every deploy, and I built that pipeline myself. I haven't published an n8n case study with numbers yet, and I won't invent one. When I do, it will show the hours before, the hours after and the date, like every other figure on that page. How I decide what to automate first is in my article on how automation saves businesses 20 hours.

What AI automation costs

An n8n workflow is quoted per project after the first call, because the scope decides the price. Everything I build is created in your name, on accounts and hosting you control, so ending the engagement costs you nothing but my access. My published retainer for ongoing work is USD 1,800 a month, about NPR 245,000, and the audit and sprint prices are on the pricing page. The first thirty minute call is free, and if a Zapier template or a shared sheet does the job at your volume, I'll say so and you won't need me.

Questions about AI automation

What is n8n, and why use it instead of Zapier or Make?

n8n is a workflow tool you can host yourself, put your own code inside, and run at volume without paying per task. If your process is simple and runs a few dozen times a month, Zapier or Make is often the better answer, and I'll tell you that rather than build something heavier than the job.

What happens when the AI gets something wrong?

It will, sometimes. That's why every model output is checked against a schema before anything acts on it, and anything that touches money, customers or public posts waits for a person to approve. The workflow is built so a wrong answer gets caught, not sent.

Is my data sent to OpenAI?

Only the fields a given step needs, and only if that step uses a language model at all. Most of a workflow is plain rules with no model involved. Where your data can't leave your own servers, that step stays local or the model is dropped from it.

How long does one workflow take?

Scoping takes about a week, then two to four weeks to build and test the first workflow. Lead intake is the quickest because the tools are standard. Anything that reads documents or needs a new integration takes longer, and the written scope says how long before you pay.

How is this priced?

Per project, after the first call, because the boundary of the workflow decides the price. You pay your own n8n hosting, OpenAI usage and subscriptions directly, so there's no markup on tools. My published retainer for ongoing work is USD 1,800 a month (about NPR 245,000 a month), and the pricing page has the rest.

When are you not the right person?

If you want the whole business automated in one go, no. Those projects fail, and I'd rather build one workflow that saves a specific team a specific number of hours a week. If the process changes every week or needs judgement on every case, a person is cheaper than a workflow, and I'll say so.

All services · AI automation expert in Nepal · AI chatbot and agent development · CRM development · How automation saves 20 hours · Pricing.

Tell me about your workflow

Send me one process: the trigger, the tools it touches and how often it runs. I'll tell you whether it's worth automating and where the human approval belongs, whether or not you hire me. The first thirty minutes are free.

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