The manual version
Every Monday, or every month-end, the same ritual. Export from three systems, paste into the spreadsheet, fix what the paste broke, chase the one number that lives in someone’s head, format, send. By the time it lands it is a day old, and the person who built it has done no billable work that morning.
What gets built
- Connections to the systems where the numbers actually live
- The firm’s report rebuilt as a template that fills itself
- Validation checks that flag numbers outside expected ranges instead of publishing them
- Scheduled delivery to the right people by email or shared folder
- The ability to regenerate any report on demand, not just on schedule
How it works
- The system pulls current data from the firm’s sources on schedule.
- Checks run first. Anything anomalous is flagged for a human before the report goes out.
- The finished report arrives in the inbox or the shared folder, in the firm’s format, on time, every time.
What changes
The person who built the report gets that morning back, every week. Reports arrive on time whether or not anyone is busy. Numbers stop varying with who assembled them.
The straight answer
If every number lives behind a standard connector, a dashboard tool is the right buy: Databox from about $64 a month, or Syft for accounting data. Custom earns its price when the numbers live where connectors do not reach, in practice tools, spreadsheets, and internal systems, and when what the firm needs delivered is a finished document in its own format rather than one more dashboard to remember to check.
Common questions
Where do the numbers come from?
From the firm’s own live systems, pulled at generation time. Each figure in the report traces to its source, which is more than most hand-built reports can say.
Can we change the report format later?
Yes. The template belongs to the firm and is built to be edited. Changing the layout does not require rebuilding the pipeline.
What if the source data is wrong?
Validation rules catch values outside expected ranges and hold the report for review instead of sending it. Garbage in, flag up.
Weekly, monthly, or something else?
Any schedule, and on demand. Reports can also trigger on events, like a period closing, rather than dates.
The engagement
Two weeks, $4,500 fixed. Week one maps how the work actually happens. Week two builds and tests against real cases. Handover includes source code, documentation, the accounts it runs on, and thirty days of fixes. No retainer, nothing locked in.