Free resource · for bookkeeping & accounting firms

The 5-step admin automation checklist

The order of operations we use to free 10–20 admin hours a month at finance firms — without replacing anyone's judgment. Work it top to bottom; each step pays for the next.

Principle throughout: AI flags, your team decides, you sign.

1. 01

   Map where the hours actually go

   Before automating anything, track one full close. For each client, note every manual touch: document requests, follow-up emails, file renaming, re-keying figures, status check-ins. You can't automate what you haven't measured — and the biggest leak is almost never where you'd guess.

   Output: a per-client list of manual steps and rough minutes each.

2. 02

   Automate document collection + reminders first

   Chasing clients for statements, receipts, and signatures is the #1 time sink and the easiest to automate. Set up templated requests that fire on a schedule and re-send until the file is complete — so your team stops being a human reminder service.

   Typical recovery: 4–8 hours/month for a 5–15 person firm.

3. 03

   Kill the re-keying between systems

   Anywhere a number is typed from one screen into another (bank statement → spreadsheet → QuickBooks/Xero) is an error risk and a time tax. Extract once and push the data into your tools, with a human verifying flagged figures before anything posts.

   Removes the most error-prone manual step in the close.

4. 04

   Get a single view of who's behind

   Most firms have no live picture of which clients are blocking the close and on what. A stuck-client dashboard turns 'I think we're waiting on the Hendersons' into a glance — so the close never quietly waits on the slowest client.

   Output: one board of open items across every client.

5. 05

   Handle the seasonal spikes (1099/W-9) before they hit

   The January 1099 scramble is predictable — so prep it in the fall. Pull vendors paid $600+ with no W-9 on file from QuickBooks and chase the W-9s months early, with your approval on every send. Compliance risk drops and January stops being a fire drill.

   Surfaces every missing W-9 in seconds instead of a year-end panic.