Finance teams can assess document collection, comparisons, suggested matches and preparation of schedules for delegation. A suitable first process is frequent, clearly bounded and easy to check, with accessible sources and an owner for exceptions. Payments, changes to bank details and sensitive accounting decisions remain with authorised people.
Choose a work step with a specific result
“Automate finance” is too broad a brief to assess. “Prepare a daily list of invoices without a purchase order reference for Company Alpha” identifies the data, rules, recipient and expected result. Alpha is fictitious: the example describes a scope of work, not a customer engagement.
For businesses with several teams or legal entities, start by asking where work repeats and who spends time preparing it. Repetitive work is not always ready for delegation. If each document needs a different judgement, the source is unreliable or nobody can check the output, the process needs attention first.
The six areas on our Digital Employee for finance teams page are processes to assess against your actual setup. They are not operations already enabled in every accounting system.
Six areas, with a result you can check
Supplier invoices
Preparation may involve collecting documents, extracting agreed fields and comparing an invoice with a purchase order and evidence of receipt, where available. A useful output separates matches, possible duplicates and missing information, with references to the records. An amount difference needs review; it does not establish an error or fraud. Invoice approval follows the company's allocation of responsibilities.
Reconciliation support
Suggested matches can be assessed using references, amounts, dates and agreed rules. Companies, accounts and currencies need to remain distinct; a resemblance is not enough to confirm a match. Reviewers should also receive unmatched items and cases with several plausible matches, rather than just a summary of the successful ones.
Month-end collection
Checklists, document status, outstanding requests and allocation of blockers are candidates where responsibilities are clear. The result is an up-to-date view of preparation by entity and period. It is not sign-off of the close. Our guide to reducing manual work at month-end sets out a workflow and an example of the output.
Accounts receivable
A receivables schedule can be organised by owner, due date and available information. Reminder drafts should account for known disputes and follow the required approval process. Preparing a communication does not authorise sending it, changing terms or deciding how to treat the customer's position.
Reporting and cash visibility
For reporting, preparation may bring together data and comparisons with budgets or previous periods, showing sources, versions and available dimensions. Interpreting variances remains the team's responsibility. For cash visibility, a schedule can organise known due dates and expected receipts with explicit assumptions: an expected receipt is not assured cash. Treasury decisions and payments remain with authorised people.
A matrix for choosing your first process
Use this matrix as a practical discussion guide for Finance, IT and the process owner. It is neither an objective score nor an assessment of your department. Complete it for a single step, using real examples and including less tidy cases.
Scroll the table horizontally to read every column.
| Criterion | Practical question | Starting condition |
|---|---|---|
| Frequency | How often does the step recur, and when does work peak? | Observed volumes, including peaks, and enough recurring work to compare over time. |
| Data availability | Are the necessary sources accessible, current and separated by entity? | An identified source, authorised access and explicit flags for missing data. |
| Clarity of rules | Would two people prepare the same result from the same data? | Rules that can be described, with ambiguous cases assigned to an owner. |
| Checkable output | Can the reviewer trace the result back to its source? | Visible references, reporting period and comparison criteria. |
| Impact of an error | Could a wrong result trigger a sensitive action? | Bounded consequences and an approval step before the action. |
| Review required | Who checks the work, how long does it take and what do they need? | An available owner and a review that does not require repeating the entire task. |
Do not combine the criteria into a total that disguises a serious blocker. High volumes do not make up for missing permissions. If the output could trigger payments or changes to bank details, revisit the assignment's boundaries before proceeding.
Illustrative choice: document collection or matching?
Imagine a group with two entities. Its close checklist has known sources, named owners and agreed status definitions. Reconciliations, however, rely on exports without stable references and on different rules at each site. In this illustrative scenario, document collection is a more practical starting point: reviewers can check presence, version and period without interpreting each transaction.
That does not make reconciliations unsuitable in general. It means that this business first needs to improve its data and rules. The ERP integration checklist helps Finance and IT identify those prerequisites together.
Agree what a successful result looks like
Before extending the scope, agree a sample output, the cases that must stop and who signs off the result. Measure preparation time, review time, unflagged omissions and rework. Include the effort needed to maintain sources and rules: less preparation coupled with more manual checking is not automatically an improvement.
Across several entities, check access separation and local ownership. Collecting records in one place does not imply consolidation, intercompany eliminations or automatic currency conversion. The guide to permissions, approvals and errors helps make those conditions explicit.
An initial discussion can start with a description of the step, its sources and the output you need. You do not need to share confidential financial documents to identify which process merits a closer look.