In order to help our accounting team be as efficient as possible, we started by identifying bottlenecks in their workflow with the aim to introduce automation tools to help make remove as many issues as possible. Among the major bottleneck we identified was the need for accountants to repeat tasks like creating the same invoices every month or by processing incoming receipts. Tasks that, while important to the process, we don’t think should take the time of our skilled accountants.
We decided to automate the creation of recurring invoice first as this is a simple yet time consuming task. Instead of writing a new invoice very month to send to clients, we set up robots that can automatically generate the invoices and either send it to the client at a predetermined time, or, set a reminder for the accounting team to check it manually before sending it. In both cases the need for the invoice to be created again and again is no longer needed.
By adding the template type invoice our system, with variables in place of the date and client names, the robot can generate a new invoice automatically with the correct information included. When the robot is triggered is entirely customisable, but in our case we create the invoices on the last day of every month.
The elimination of this repeat task gives our accounting team much more capacity and time to complete other tasks. It also helps avoid any mistakes or human error by frontloading most of the effort.