Turning an invoice into a management report shouldn’t take hours. But when the information you need is spread across individual orders, offers, refunds and campaigns, pulling it all together can become a time-consuming job.
We recently built a demo tool for a potential new client that makes that process much quicker. It processes their Just Eat invoice, extracts the information they need and produces a spreadsheet for management reporting.
What previously took hours now takes seconds.
The information was there. Getting it out was the problem.
An invoice serves a particular purpose. That doesn’t necessarily make it a convenient starting point for management reports.
For this client, the task involved pulling out order information alongside details of offers, refunds and campaigns, then getting that information into a spreadsheet they could use.
The source material already contained what they needed. The time went into extracting it and organising it for reporting.
It was a recurring task with a clear input and a clear outcome, making it a good candidate for automation.
A tool they can use themselves
We gave the client a tool that processes the invoice and provides the extracted information in a spreadsheet.
It brings together:
- Individual order information
- Offers
- Refunds
- Campaign information
The client can run the tool whenever they need to process an invoice, turning what had been hours of work into a task that takes seconds.
The output fits directly into their management reporting process, giving them the information in a familiar format.
Keeping the solution focused
The spreadsheet was an important part of the brief. It was how the client needed to work with the information, so it was what the tool needed to produce.
That kept the project focused on the part of the process that was taking the time: turning the invoice into usable data.
There’s a lot of value in solving a specific problem well. A tool doesn’t have to change every part of a business to make a noticeable difference to someone’s working day.
In this case, the improvement is straightforward. The client spends far less time preparing the information for their reports, leaving more time to review it and act on what it tells them.
Where automation earns its place
Tasks like this can become accepted as part of running a business. Someone needs the report, the information arrives in an awkward format, and a person spends hours getting it ready.
It’s worth questioning that routine.
When the same type of document needs to be turned into the same type of output repeatedly, there may be an opportunity to build a tool that handles the preparation.
For this client, that meant processing Just Eat invoices into a spreadsheet. For another business, it might be supplier statements, order exports or a recurring report assembled from several sources.
At Bollabo, we build practical tools around the way businesses work. If your team has a regular task that involves hours of extracting, copying or organising information, tell us about it.