Case Study - The same accounting chores, done in about a third less time, across a group of firms.
A buyer assembling accounting firms needed the same manual work to stop being redone in every office. An automation engineer worked in the bookkeeping software, the tax software, and Microsoft Office. Repeated tasks dropped by about a third, and closer to two fifths where the tools already matched.
- Client
- Accounting group
- Year
- –
- Service
- Automation
Overview
A buyer was assembling small and mid-size accounting practices. Each acquisition brought a different mix of tools and a familiar pile of manual work: intake, reconciliation, preparing a filing, and the weekly report nobody enjoyed writing.
We embedded one automation engineer with the operations team. The job was to find the chores that repeated across the portfolio and build automations that could land in more than one firm.
Over about six months the work sat on the bookkeeping desk, the tax-prep desk, the office suite, and the internal tools the holding company already used. Intake, reconciliation, document prep, report generation, and keeping those systems in step. Each automation had to fit the existing day. Staff were not asked to learn a new product in order to get the hour back.
Where a firm was already on the same tools, the repeated tasks fell by closer to two-fifths. Where the process was messier, the cut was nearer a third.
What we did
- Workflow automation
- Bookkeeping software
- Tax software
- Office suite
- Fewer hours on the targeted chores
- ~1/3 to 2/5
- Embedded
- 6 months
- Desks touched
- 4+