In a practice not all repetitive work is the same, and the difference shows the moment you try to explain it to somebody else. If a few sentences are enough to describe an operation, and whoever is listening can redo it identically, that thing can almost always become automatic
If instead you have to start with it depends, and then go into the client, the year, the choice made last time, it isn't mechanical work. It's a decision, and decisions stay with you
Below are the families of work that lend themselves best in practice, along with what's worth looking at before you say yes
Bookkeeping entries and data entry
This is the most common case. A document arrives, somebody reads it, opens the business software and retypes the same data into another screen. The document changes shape but the fields to fill in are always the same ones, and that's exactly the kind of work a program does without getting tired and without losing focus on the hundredth round
The delicate point comes a moment later, when the account has to be chosen. As long as the rule exists somewhere, even only in the head of the person doing the posting, it can be written into the system. When it changes case by case it's better to stop one step earlier, with the entry prepared and the final choice left to a person
Bank statements and bank movements
Reading a bank statement, working out what each movement refers to, hunting for the invoice that matches it and preparing the entry is long work, and for the most part it's mechanical searching. Automatic reconciliation works well on movements that carry a clear reference, an amount that matches, the document number in the description, a supplier you can recognize
On the rest, don't expect miracles. A single transfer that pays six invoices with a rounding in the middle stays a case to look at. The sensible thing is to split the work, the system closes the clean movements, the doubtful ones end up in a list, and that list is the only thing you open
Tax portals and downloading documents
Logging into a portal, downloading the receipts, renaming them, putting them in the right client's folder and marking that they came in is time spent only on moving files. A system can redo those same steps at set times and keep a log of what it downloaded and when
First, though, there's one very concrete thing to look at, how you get into the portal. If it needs a signature or a code that arrives on another device every time, the automation gets as far as the door and no further, and it's better to know that now than to find out once the work has started
Checks and reconciliations
Checks are where an automatic system pays off more than you expect. Comparing dates, amounts, codes and attachments is heavy for a person and instant for a program. And a check you only run on a sample by hand, because running it on everything would be unbearable, you run on everything automatically without giving it a thought
What you need back is the short list of the lines that don't add up, with a note beside each saying what doesn't add up. A stamp that says all fine earns you nothing
What is better not automated
The accounting and tax choices that call for interpretation stay yours, and not because of a technical limit. The value of your work sits exactly there. A system can bring you the file already prepared, with the numbers rechecked and the anomalies flagged, but the signature and the responsibility don't get handed to a program
The same goes for the processes that change shape every time, or that you run three times a year. Automating pays off on repetition, and if you do something rarely the time you save doesn't repay the work of building it, which is fair to say out loud
How to tell whether one of your processes fits
Take a task that weighs on you and answer four questions. How many times a month you repeat it, how long it takes each time, how often an odd case turns up, and how stable the screens you touch are. If the answers are many times, always the same way and with few exceptions, you're in the good zone
Then do a rough sum on the time, and take the numbers below only as a made-up example to show the method. Say two people, two hours a day each, twenty days a month, that makes eighty hours. Multiply it by the hourly cost you really have and you get the figure you are already spending every year. It doesn't have to be precise, it has to tell you whether you're talking about a few hours or a full month of work
There's a part almost everybody forgets to count, the hours you don't call work. The rechecks, the fixes for typing mistakes, the interruptions to ask for a clarification, the time spent explaining the procedure to somebody new, and the backlogs that pile up in the busy periods. You're paying for those hours all the same, you just never see them together in one number
The next step
To say whether a process really can be automated, the name of the task isn't enough. We need to see how you do it in the practice, from start to finish, on the real screens. With that in front of us the answer comes out almost every time, and sometimes it's no