Mention of the office of the future might conjure up images of machines taking over repetitive and labor-intensive tasks. But that future is now. The development of technologies such as cloud-based applications, as well as software platforms and enterprise resource planning systems that help companies achieve peak operating efficiency, have made automated offices a reality.
According to the consulting firm McKinsey, corporate finance departments have reduced costs by almost 30% over the last decade by implementing automation solutions in areas like procurement, accounting, and payroll. These innovations have transformed finance functions and eliminated many inefficiencies.
As a financial analyst and software developer, I took full advantage of automation by setting up bots for finance tasks when I created and built my own consulting firm, Pylink. But many finance offices still haven’t, so they continue to spend an inordinate amount of time and resources performing basic tasks.
I’m not the only one to have noted the problem. The consulting firm PwC found that finance offices need to up their productivity and insight through automation and process improvement, which can reduce costs by double-digit percentages for many key functions. PwC’s research indicates that automation could cut 40% of time spent by people on management reporting, 27% of time spent on tax accounting, and 23% of hours devoted to credit management, general accounting, and billing.
Deloitte has reached comparable conclusions: Citing research published by Ayehu, it reports that intelligent automation decreases business process costs by 25 to 40%. And Gartner’s research reveals that a company with 40 full-time accounting staff members could eliminate over $870,000 in spending each year by automating tasks and eliminating extra work to fix human error.
In this article, I’d like to share some simple automation strategies that I’ve used for my company and my clients—easy fixes that can be useful for organizations of any size.
Off-the-shelf solutions like QuickBooks can be helpful for smaller organizations. However, to maximize efficiency, I advise using programming languages like Python to custom build your solutions, including bots for business. Python is very intuitive and provides a large standard library of tools, plus access to finance-specific libraries, making it more versatile than Excel.
In my previous article for Toptal, I showed how easy it is to use Python to develop bespoke cash flow models for corporations. I encourage you to read that if you’re interested in learning the language. In this article, however, I’ll give you an overview of practical applications—ranging from time tracking to payroll to email—that a developer can quickly and easily implement for you if you’re not interested in delving into the code yourself.
Let me demonstrate how useful custom automation can be by showing you an example from my company, which can serve as a case study. Despite being a small business, my team at Pylink and I face considerable complexity that presents challenges when it comes to payments, including the following:
To develop a payment system that would meet these challenges, I use (and recommend) the following technologies to create a Python bot running in the cloud infrastructure of Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Here’s how I used these tools to automate one multitask use case: paying staff, contractors, and myself. I’ll show you the whole process on a high level before diving into the most common automation practices.
Now let’s go through the steps:
Previously, all of these tasks were done manually, consuming valuable time and energy that can now be spent elsewhere. Best of all, we were able to set up this process without a large investment of time or money.
Now let’s look at some of the most practical applications for automation, using the tools I’ve already discussed. For your reference, I’ll include some coding examples as a resource for your in-house, contract, or freelance developers—or for yourself, should you choose to learn Python to assist with your company or client work.
At the end of every month, the bot (using Everhour) runs the “close_the_month” function that collects all of the hours that were spent on different assignments:
What follows is a simple function that returns a Pandas DataFrame, i.e., a table with rows and columns, including all of the hours and projects for a time period for a given user. Please note that, as mentioned earlier, this and all subsequent coding excerpts are just highlights of the entire codebase, not a step-by-step tutorial to build our bot.
With each worker’s project hours automatically tracked, the next task is to create timesheets and invoices. There are many Python packages that enable you to create PDF files. We use PyFPDF, a compact document generation library that offers simplicity as well as the flexibility to draw shapes and add images and text. As you can see from the following example, it yields a clean and professional invoice:
While there are more advanced methods for creating reports, PDF is a good choice because it’s a universal format used across all industries and it’s easy to generate. It also allows for sending files to anyone while ensuring that all fonts, images, tables, and formatting will transfer. Additionally, it works independently of your computer hardware and operating system, and can be used offline.
Amazon Simple Email Service is a cost-effective and scalable tool for creating and deploying nicely formatted HTML emails. Furthermore, SES’s data analytics track and share information about feedback loop results to notify you if any recipients report your message as spam, either by mistake or because the email was sent to the wrong address. The analytics also measure the effectiveness of each communication in terms of engagement, including open and click-through rates. This feature is particularly useful for marketing emails.
Here’s an example of the Python code used to generate an email with an attached invoice and send it to a client:
And here is the email that it produces:
We chose Wise for private and business bank accounts since we have income and costs in several currencies, and this financial technology company has favorable exchange fees, an intuitive user interface, and a flexible API with detailed documentation.
We use this API to accomplish the following tasks:
Below is the code we programmed to complete the first of these tasks (collecting statement information):
For regular fixed costs (salary, taxes, office costs, etc.), you don’t need to write code to make automatic transfers; Wise has a scheduled payment feature. However, if the amount is not fixed but based on a formula that an algorithm can calculate, the Wise API is useful. In my case, the business advisor’s salary is a notable example since it’s a function of the monthly revenue. By checking the tracked hours, the bot knows exactly how much revenue we have and therefore how much to pay the advisor.
It’s crucial to be aware of the bot’s activity, as there can be coding bugs that aren’t revealed during testing. We get real-time notifications on Slack, so we can fix any broken code promptly. Here are a couple of notification examples that let us know the bot is operating properly:
We also enabled the bot to send confirmation questions for the Pylink team before each bank transfer. This helps us avoid mistakes due to human error. Imagine a developer makes a typo and enters 825 hours instead of 8.25 hours for one ticket. An approval step in Slack ensures that we don’t transfer a hundred times more money than we owe. The process retains the element of human verification but delivers a seamless experience.
There’s a lot of other functionality that you can achieve with the Slack API, too.
Business automation can help organizations thrive. The tools I discussed can transform companies in need of greater efficiency and control, especially when it comes to transactional functions like accounts payable, accounts receivable, and other core accounting areas.
But this isn’t the end of the story. According to McKinsey, the challenge for corporate leaders is to cast an even wider net for new efficiencies. The firm supports reimagining the entire finance operation, going beyond just transactional tasks by leading in areas like data analytics—consolidating, simplifying, and controlling information across the corporation. I couldn’t agree more. I recommend that you explore coding solutions that help your organization own its answers and advance its results-oriented culture. In the meantime, adopting the tactics I’ve described here can help your company become more efficient today—while giving you a taste of tomorrow’s possibilities.
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