The Case of the Accepted
Pain Point
How altering a “this is the way we’ve always done it” process transformed a department
Excavation department. Vendor invoices came in, got entered into QuickBooks by accounting, walked downstairs to the excavation director for approval, sat in his hands (or his inbox) until he got to them (or didn't), then landed in my inbox. I'd enter them into a second system and carry them back upstairs to copy and hand out to account coordinators. The exception list made this process map look like a bowl of spaghetti.
The entire process sometime took weeks. If an invoice was processed after a client project was billed, the company couldn’t recover that money.
This case study developed after two key events:
Project data was extracted from PDF files with Excel macros. These macros were so heavy and complex that the Business Intelligence Director would execute and then leave for lunch. This didn’t sit well with me. It felt off. So, I approached IT and asked if there was an easier way to get the data. After that question, we built a data warehouse.
The company was using Quickbooks on prem (locally on individuals’ computers). We needed that data in a tabular format. IT said it was impossible. I researched every SEO combination I could think of and found TWO vendors that could extract Quickboks data. (Before LLMs existed). This data was then added to the data warehouse.
Context
Invoices arrived late.
They got pinned to the wrong project.
Duplicates came through when two contractors both billed the same project phase.
And when they hit the director’s desk, some just... disappeared.
It seemed harder than it needed to be.
What was actually happening
With the project data and accounting data in the data warehouse, life was about to be a heck of a lot easier. I set off to marry the two datasets into a single pane of glass.
I interviewed the excavation department director, accounting, and the account managers. I needed to know what data points they considered, what they thought wasn’t important, their concerns and feedback.
First iteration, a very ugly PowerBI dashboard but the data was connected. For.the.first.time!
Second iteration produced more aesthetic dashboard and each stakeholder had the information they needed. Filters, charts, slicers, all at their fingertips.
Now, every invoice got checked against the correct job, correct contractor, correct project phase before it ever moved forward. Only the outliers were sent for approval.
What I did
“The most dangerous phrase in the English language is ‘we have always done it this way.’ ”
Impact
Processing time dropped by 14% in less than two months. The excavation director saved hours not having to confirm every detail. Missing and duplicated invoices dropped significantly.