Most finance teams spend days closing the books because data lives in separate systems.
When your data lives in QuickBooks (accounting), Stripe (billing), Salesforce (deals), and BigQuery (warehouse), you can automate month-end close and see financial health in real-time.
The 3 financial operations that should be automated
1. Revenue Recognition
Automate revenue recognition to recognize revenue when it’s earned, not when it’s billed, ensuring accurate financial reporting. Handle deferred revenue correctly by tracking unearned revenue and recognizing it over time. Match revenue to the right period so financial statements reflect actual business performance.
2. Accounts Receivable
Track outstanding invoices automatically to see who owes you money and for how long. Identify payment issues early by flagging overdue invoices and payment failures before they become collection problems. Automate dunning and collections processes to follow up with customers systematically without manual effort.
3. Financial Reporting
Generate P&L statements by period including month, quarter, and year views to understand profitability trends. Track cash flow showing inflows, outflows, and balance to manage working capital effectively. Calculate unit economics including CAC, LTV, and payback period to validate your business model.
What to build first (week 1)
Start with a simple revenue recognition automation that pulls billing data from Stripe including subscriptions, invoices, and payments. Connect deal data from Salesforce showing closed deals and contract terms. Link accounting data from QuickBooks including your chart of accounts and journal entries. Finally, implement automated recognition that recognizes revenue when earned, not when billed, ensuring accurate financial reporting.
Once revenue recognition is working, add AR aging reports showing outstanding invoices by age to identify collection issues early. Add cash flow tracking showing inflows, outflows, and balance to manage working capital. Finally, build financial dashboards displaying P&L, cash flow, and unit economics so you can see financial health at a glance.
Why most financial operations are manual
Most financial operations are manual because data lives in separate systems like accounting software, billing platforms, and CRM tools, requiring constant manual data entry. Definitions differ across systems as revenue recognition rules vary between tools, leading to inconsistencies. Reconciliation is manual when you have to match invoices to payments across different systems. Reporting is manual requiring export, transform, and load processes that break whenever data structures change.
When you connect all the systems, you can automate revenue recognition based on consistent rules across all data sources. You can automate AR tracking by pulling invoice and payment data automatically. You can automate financial reporting by generating statements from connected data. Most importantly, you can close the books faster because everything is already reconciled and ready.
The hidden cost of manual financial operations
When financial operations are manual, month-end close takes days instead of hours as you manually reconcile data across systems. Errors are common because manual data entry introduces mistakes that require time-consuming corrections. Reporting is slow because you can’t see the current state until month-end when everything is reconciled. Decisions are delayed because you’re waiting for month-end reports to understand financial performance.
Automated financial operations mean month-end close takes hours instead of days because data is already reconciled automatically. Errors are rare because automated data flow eliminates manual entry mistakes. Reporting is real-time so you can see current financial state whenever you need it. Most importantly, decisions are faster because you don’t have to wait for month-end to understand how the business is performing.