Taking the data entry out of a monthly finance workflow

Retyping a statement, every cycle

Every statement cycle: open the PDF, retype each transaction into a formatted document, write a description for each, and assign a six-digit budget account from memory. The finance team needs that formatted document, not a spreadsheet or a CSV, so "just export it" was never an option.

From PDF to reviewable draft

1. The statement PDF drops into a watched Drive folder.
2. The model extracts date, payee and amount into a working sheet. No retyping.
3. I add descriptions, then the model proposes a budget account for each line, showing the account name next to the number so the suggestion is easy to check.
4. A script produces the official document and PDF, then archives the cycle.

One constraint shaped the whole design: the document is the deliverable. An automation that produced clean data but not the required document would have solved nothing.

Outcome

The data entry is gone. What's left is the part that needs judgment: writing descriptions and reviewing the suggested coding.