Automation
Documents that get retyped three times
A quote starts in the CRM, gets retyped into Word, then into the accounting system, and arrives by email as a PDF.
A 14-person accounting firm asked us to look at their invoicing process. The same data was being typed in three places, for years, with nobody complaining, because that's how it worked.
By the numbers
less manual re-typing
per week freed in the back office
error rate, down from 3.5%
months payback period
The situation
A quote left the CRM. An employee retyped it into a Word template (because that's where the brand template lived). Then the same data went into the accounting package for the invoice. Finally the PDF was emailed to the client, with a signature from Outlook.
Every step cost time, and at every step something could go wrong: a number mis-typed, a name that drifted, a reference that didn't match. Nobody had counted how many invoices got corrected afterwards, but everyone had had "that one".
What we did
We mapped the whole process together in one afternoon. At each step we noted: manual or automated, how often per week, how often it went wrong.
Then we built one pipeline: CRM → accounting package via API, with an intermediate step generating the branded PDF. Not one mega-system, but a chain of small steps we could monitor independently. We turned on before-and-after measurements, wrote a runbook, and ran a two-week pilot with one employee before rolling it out.
What it delivered
After the pilot and full rollout:
- 78% fewer manual steps, from five intermediate steps to one review moment. - Error rate measured at 0.3% (estimated previously at ~3% by the firm itself). - One day per week per full-time employee back to client work. - A runbook describing what is still manual and why, so the next step is never a surprise.
The founder put it plainly: "I didn't know it could be different."
What this wasn't
Not "AI will do it all for you". Not a six-figure platform you're locked into. Not a black box no one can read. We document what we build, your team can read along, if we leave tomorrow it keeps running.