An illustrative scenario
What taking 105 hours a week of routine work down to about 9 looks like
Picture a wholesale distributor where seven people spend most of their week retyping, matching and chasing. This page follows an engagement like that from start to finish. After setup, what's left for them is reviewing the exceptions.
Everything here is synthetic: the company, the customers and the numbers are invented. Each hour figure is shown as volume × minutes so you can check it. The steps and formats are the ones a real engagement uses; your own figures come from your audit.
Step 1 · free
The audit: where the hours go
Take Bayside Foodservice Supply, an invented distributor with 45 staff on QuickBooks Enterprise. About 90 restaurants and cafés send purchase orders by email every day, each in its own layout. An audit of a company like this would list each routine task, how often it happens and how long it takes:
| Task | Who does it | Volume a week | Time each | Hours a week | Automate? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer PO entry | 3 order-desk staff | 450 POs | 8 min | 60 | Yes, first |
| Vendor bills matched to POs and receipts | AP clerk, controller | 300 bills | 5 min | 25 | Yes |
| Overdue invoice follow-up | Office manager | 120 accounts | 6 min | 12 | Yes |
| Supplier price-list updates | Purchasing manager | 10 files | 48 min | 8 | Yes |
| New-customer credit applications | Owner | 3 | 40 min | 2 | Not worth it |
| Routine work worth automating | 105 | ||||
The recommendation would be: start with PO entry. It's more than half the hours, the rules are clear, and it runs inside the ERP the team already uses. Add bill matching, overdue follow-up and price lists in that order, each live before the next one starts. Leave credit applications alone: too few to pay back the setup.
Your audit ends with a written offer: what will be set up, in what order, a fixed price, a go-live date for each workflow, and what you need to provide (for a company like Bayside, a QuickBooks user account for us and the item, customer and vendor lists).
Step 2 · the setup
One purchase order, followed through
- A PO arrives. Bayside Café Group emails PO 55190 as a PDF to the orders inbox, in its own layout and with its own item codes.
- It's read. PO number, customer, ship-to address, requested delivery date and every line: their item code, description, quantity and price.
- It's matched. The customer to Bayside's customer list, each line to Bayside's item list and price list. Earlier orders from the same customer teach the matching their codes.
- A draft order is created in QuickBooks. Lines that match go straight in. Anything that doesn't is flagged with the reason, and the order waits for a person.
| Line | On the PO | Matched to | Qty | Check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CHK-BRST-4OZ | 10442 Chicken breast 4 oz | 12 cs | Matched |
| 2 | RICE JASM 25# | 20817 Jasmine rice 25 lb | 8 bags | Matched |
| 3 | OIL CANOLA 35LB @ $31.50 | 30155 Canola oil 35 lb (list $34.20) | 4 jugs | Price differs |
| 4 | NAPKIN DINNER WHT | No match in the item list | 2 cs | New item |
The other three workflows follow the same pattern:
- Vendor bills: each bill is matched to its PO and the receiving record. Price and quantity differences are flagged; clean bills are queued for payment approval.
- Overdue invoices: reminders go out by age, in Bayside's wording, and stop when the invoice is paid. Replies that need a person (a dispute, a promise to pay) are routed to the office manager.
- Supplier price lists: each supplier's spreadsheet is read, matched to Bayside's items, and the changes are listed for the purchasing manager to approve before the item list is updated.
Step 3 · every day
What the order desk sees
Instead of an inbox to work through, one list of today's orders with only the decisions left:
| PO | Customer | Lines | Status | Needs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 55188 | Harborview Grill | 14 | Ready to release | — |
| 55189 | Seaside Deli | 6 | Ready to release | — |
| 55190 | Bayside Café Group | 4 | 2 flags | Confirm canola oil price; add or map the napkins |
| 55191 | Palm Street Kitchen | 9 | New ship-to | Confirm the new delivery address |
| — | Unknown sender | ? | Unreadable scan | Key by hand or ask for a clearer copy |
A typical day's summary would read: 92 POs received. 78 drafted with no flags, 12 with one or two flags, 2 sent to a person as unreadable. Every order released by a member of the order desk.
Step 4 · the result
Where the 105 hours would go
| Workflow | Who | Before | After | What's left for a person |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer PO entry | 3 order-desk staff | 60 h | 4.5 h | 65 flagged POs × 3 min, 10 unreadable scans × 8 min |
| Vendor bill matching | AP clerk, controller | 25 h | 2 h | 30 bills with a price or quantity difference × 4 min |
| Overdue invoice follow-up | Office manager | 12 h | 1 h | 15 replies that need a person × 4 min |
| Supplier price lists | Purchasing manager | 8 h | 1 h | 10 lists of changes to approve × 6 min |
| Total a week | 105 h | 8.5 h | About 92% less routine work | |
- Who decides doesn't change. The order desk still releases every order, the controller still approves every payment, and the purchasing manager still approves every price change.
- The hours would go to work that needs people. The order desk would take calls and onboard new accounts, so the next order-entry hire isn't needed.
- Errors are caught earlier. Price and item mismatches are flagged before an order ships or a bill is paid, not found by the customer or the auditor.
Illustrative figures for an invented company. Real results depend on your volumes, your documents and your systems, and your own figures come from your audit.
After go-live, optional monthly support keeps it running: new customers, new suppliers, new layouts, changes to the item list.
The same pattern in other industries
Read what arrives, match it against your own records, then draft the entry or chase what's missing. Only the documents and the software change.
| Industry | What arrives | Matched against | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPA and tax firms | Client uploads: W-2s, 1099s, K-1s | Last year's return | Reminders ask only for what's missing; preparer told when complete |
| Wholesale distributors | Customer POs | Customer, item and price lists | Draft sales orders, flags for the order desk |
| Freight brokers | Rate cons, BOLs, PODs | The load in the TMS or sheet | Invoice and factoring packet; missing PODs chased |
| Insurance agencies | Certificate requests | The coverage on file | Certificate prepared for CSR approval, gaps flagged |
| Freight forwarders | Commercial invoices, packing lists | Each other, and the shipment | Shipment filled in, mismatches flagged |
Want to know where your team's hours go?
The conversation and the audit are free. You get the task list, the hours, and a written offer, and you decide.