Workflows

Recurring finance work, as it runs by hand and as it runs governed.

These are the processes finance and operations teams run every month, drawn from twenty years of engagements with the names taken off. Each one is written on the same seven-line card, and each one shows the split that makes it safe: what stays in code, what the AI drafts, and what a named person still approves.

The card

Seven lines that are both the instruction and the control.

Written out precisely enough for a colleague to follow, a process can be followed by an AI tool too. The same page tells an auditor who approved what, and it is the number the roadmap ranks on. Every workflow below is written this way.

Input: What comes in, and from where.
What I do to it: The steps, in order, in plain language. Where a rule applies, the rule.
Output: What goes out, in what layout, to whom.
Who checks: The named person who approves it, and what they look for.
How often: Monthly, weekly, on request, on a schedule.
How long: Hours per cycle by hand.
How long now: Hours after the first governed run. Measured, not estimated.

GL and close

Tier 1 · first automations · Monthly, three to six hours
AP sub-ledger to GL control-account reconciliation
The reconciliation every ERP shop has: open payables by company and offset, tied to the trial balance, with every difference explained as timing or error. The approval email already exists in the process.
The card
Tier 1 · first automations · Monthly, three to six hours
AR sub-ledger reconciliation with aging buckets
The receivables twin of the AP rec, with aging buckets, credit memos and unapplied cash as negative open amounts, and receipts posted after the as-of date backed out.
The card
Tier 1 · first automations · Monthly, eight to sixteen hours
Balance sheet lead-sheet pack with flux commentary
Thirty-plus account-group tabs, current versus prior month by company, each tied to a summary and initialled by a reviewer. The hours are large and the AI's job is bounded by the tie-outs.
The card
Tier 2 · the long tail · Daily during close, two to four hours a month
The close calendar as an eight a.m. status note
Tasks by month and quarter, owner, force-check flag, timing, responsibility, kept by hand. Vendors sell task managers; nobody sells the agent that reads yours and writes the morning note.
The card

FP&A

Tier 1 · first automations · Monthly, four to eight hours per organization
Monthly forecasting and analysis workbook, one tab per cost centre
The purest 'same structure repeated by period' process: a parameters tab, fund or department summaries, and one tab per cost centre with lookups to the chart of accounts and variance commentary.
The card
Tier 2 · the long tail · Annual plus forecast refreshes, about two person-weeks
Annual lease budget built from the lease sub-ledger
Lease master and amortization tables from the ERP, expiries in the horizon, business confirmations by email, FX and allocations, all rebuilt into the corporate budget strip. No vendor sells an agent for this.
The card
Tier 2 · the long tail · Quarterly or annual, eight to twenty hours
Capital carry-forward with exclusion rules
Prior-year carry-forward plus in-year forecast, recalculated per project with exclusions by account type: amendments, inter-project transfers, flagged postings. The story every capital analyst has lived: the report shows one number and the form shows another.
The card

Finance systems

Tier 1 · first automations · Weekly, one to two hours, usually skipped
The data-change audit log, summarized weekly
Thousands of rows a month of who changed what: date, form, action, user, old value, new value. The trail is captured and nobody reads it. Summarizing it is low risk and high credibility.
The card
Tier 1 · first automations · Monthly, one to two hours
Missing-mapping report with proposed mappings for approval
A scheduled report already lists accounts in actuals that are not in planning. The agent proposes the mapping from the descriptions; a person approves before the table changes.
The card
Tier 3 · demonstration only · Annual plus amendments, two to four hours
Budget write-back to the ERP, only after approval
Export by entity group, transform to the ERP layout, stage through the loader with logs and bad-row files, import. The purest illustration of the model: the approval is the trigger, the pipeline is deterministic, and no unattended agent touches the ledger.
The card

Operations

Tier 2 · the long tail · Annual per vendor, fifteen minutes each, hundreds of vendors
Vendor insurance and WCB clearance expiry tracking
Certificates of insurance, WCB clearance letters, and banking forms arrive as PDFs by email. Someone reads the expiry, updates a tracker, and sends the renewal request. Universally recognized, never automated.
The card

What to automate first

Three tiers, and the rule for picking.

Tier 1
High frequency, rule-bound, and the output is a check or a report. Nothing lands in a ledger. Reconciliations, lead sheets, load validation, the audit log. Start here.
Tier 2
The long tail no vendor ships software for, because it is specific to how your company works. Lease budgeting, capital carry-forward, vendor expiries, the close digest. Where a trained team earns its keep.
Tier 3
Touches the book of record or needs judgment. Journal preparation, reclass entries, budget write-back. Taught as the clearest picture of the rule, automated last if at all, and always with a named person as the trigger.

Rank hours per cycle times cycles per year times how rule-bound it is. Strike anything whose output lands in a ledger. The top two are your first automations. That is the last half hour of the flagship course.

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