Recurring reports
The report someone still assembles by hand
The same report goes out on the same cycle. Someone gathers the numbers from wherever they live, reads through them, puts the parts that matter into your standard template, writes a short summary, and sends it. It goes out late whenever that person is busy, and it looks slightly different depending on who built it.
What happens today
- The inputs come from wherever they live: a system of record, a portal, another report, a shared folder, a mailbox.
- Someone reads through them and picks out the parts that belong in this report.
- Those go into the template your clients already recognise, in the layout somebody worked out a long time ago.
- They write a few lines at the top saying what changed since last time.
- It goes out, and they answer the replies.
Why it costs more than the hours
- The hours are the smallest part of it. A report that takes two hours on a regular cycle is real, but survivable.
- The expensive part is that it only exists while that person is available. When they are away it goes out late, in a different shape, or not at all.
- The second expensive part is that nobody audits a report that arrives reliably. When the rules live in one person's head, a rule that quietly stops being right can go unnoticed for a long time.
- Clients notice inconsistency faster than they notice lateness. A pack that looks different this time invites questions about the numbers rather than about the format.
What we build
The gathering, the formatting and the delivery written down as rules, so the report produces itself in the template your clients already recognise.
- The inputs gathered from the same places your person gathers them from now, on the same cycle.
- The selection, the grouping and the calculations written down as rules rather than as steps somebody repeats.
- The output rendered into your template, because a report that looks unfamiliar gets read differently even when the numbers are identical.
- Delivery to wherever it goes today: an inbox, a shared folder, a portal, a client.
- A flag when the figures look unlike last time, so an empty or doubled report announces itself instead of going out quietly.
What changes once it runs
- The report goes out whether or not the person who used to build it is at work.
- It looks the same every time, so a change in the numbers reads as a change in the business rather than a change in who formatted it.
- When a rule needs to change, it changes in one place.
What we need from you
- One person who can walk us through the last one they produced, including the parts they do without thinking.
- Access to the sources it draws on.
- A copy of the last few reports, so we match the output rather than invent one.
When this is the wrong build
If the report is genuinely different every time, or the person writing it is making judgement calls that are the actual product, automating it will produce something worse than what you have. What we can sometimes do instead is assemble the parts that never change and leave the judgement to them.
Other work we get asked about
- Preparing dataThe cleanup that happens before anything gets loaded
- Capturing valuesNumbers that only a person can fetch
- Finding the right recordWho is this, and which job is it?
- Exceptions, not every rowReview only what needs a person
- Moving informationThe same record, entered twice
- Follow-throughThe next step that lives in someone's head
Bring us last week's run of it.
Book a call. Thirty minutes on this one process, and a straight answer on whether it is worth automating.
Book a discovery call