Automation audit report
Tregarth Price Accountants
This is a sample. Tregarth Price Accountants is a fictional firm and any resemblance to a real practice is coincidental. The numbers are invented but realistic, chosen to show how a real report works.
1. Summary
Thank you for the time you and the team gave us. In a session of just under two hours with Sarah (managing partner), Gareth (practice manager), a senior bookkeeper and your receptionist, we followed the work from the moment it arrives to the moment it’s done. This report sets out what we found and what we’d do about it.
What we’d do first: automate the chasing of client records, read bank statements and receipts into your bookkeeping workflow, and put an assistant on the shared inbox. Those three alone account for 16 hours a week. You told us the goal is to take on more clients next year without recruiting, and this is the most direct route to it.
What we’d leave alone for now: payroll queries, which are low in volume and highly personal, and anything involving professional judgement, such as tax advice or the decision on a client’s ID checks.
2. How we worked
- The session: 1 hour 50 minutes at your office. Sarah and Gareth for all of it, the senior bookkeeper and receptionist for about 40 minutes each.
- Systems we looked at: Microsoft 365 Business Premium (Outlook, Teams, SharePoint), your cloud practice management system and its deadline lists, the cloud accounting packages your bookkeeping clients use, your client upload portal, and your hosted phone system, which already records calls.
- How the hours were estimated: by the people who do each job, for the whole team, then sense-checked against a fortnight of shared-inbox volumes and your current deadline list.
- What we didn’t need: logins, admin access or copies of client data. You showed us how things work on screen.
3. Where the time goes
These are the repetitive jobs we found, with our estimate of how much of each could be automated reliably, with a person still checking where it matters. Values use 46 working weeks and £26 an hour (see section 9).
| Job | Who does it | Hours a week | Could be automated | Hours saved a week | Value a year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chasing clients for records and information | Accounts and tax, bookkeeping | 10 | 60% | 6.0 | £7,176 |
| Keying bank statements, receipts and invoices | Bookkeeping and payroll | 12 | 50% | 6.0 | £7,176 |
| Sorting the shared inbox and routine replies | Admin and reception | 8 | 50% | 4.0 | £4,784 |
| Writing up client meetings and calls | Partners, accounts and tax | 6 | 70% | 4.2 | £5,023 |
| Filing emails and attachments to client folders | Everyone | 4 | 75% | 3.0 | £3,588 |
| New-client onboarding and AML document collection | Admin, practice manager | 5 | 40% | 2.0 | £2,392 |
| Preparing monthly management accounts packs | Accounts and tax | 4 | 50% | 2.0 | £2,392 |
| Answering staff questions about procedures | Practice manager, seniors | 3 | 50% | 1.5 | £1,794 |
| Answering payroll queries by email | Bookkeeping and payroll | 3 | 20% | 0.6 | £718 |
| Total | 55 | 53% | 29.3 | £35,043 |
All 55 hours together cost the practice about £65,800 a year. Not all of it can or should be automated. The 29.3 hours in the table are the realistic share.
4. Recommendations, ranked by return
We recommend six automations now, worth 24.7 hours a week (about 1,136 hours, or £29,500, a year), two more once those are bedded in, and one we’d leave alone.
1. Chasing client records automatically
Today: staff check deadline lists, then write and resend reminder emails for missing bank statements, receipts and VAT records. Making Tax Digital for Income Tax has added to this: since April 2026, sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000 send quarterly updates, and each one needs records.
The automation: reads upcoming deadlines from your practice management system, emails each client a personal list of exactly what’s missing with a link to your upload portal, ticks items off as they arrive, sends a second reminder, and passes anyone still outstanding to the right manager with the history attached.
Stays with a person: difficult conversations, extensions, and anything the client replies to in their own words.
2. Reading bank statements and receipts
Today: for clients not on bank feeds, the bookkeeping team keys PDF statements, receipts and supplier invoices into the client’s accounting package.
The automation: documents dropped into a folder or uploaded through the portal are read, the transactions extracted and checked (balances must reconcile), and a ready-to-import file prepared for each client. Anything that doesn’t add up goes to a bookkeeper rather than being guessed.
Stays with a person: coding decisions that need judgement, and a final check before import. We’d test it on three months of real statements before it goes live.
3. An assistant on the shared inbox
Today: your receptionist reads every email to info@, forwards it to the right person and answers the routine ones (opening hours, “have you received my documents?”, requests for copies).
The automation: sorts each email by what it’s about and who it’s from, sends it to the right person or team, saves attachments to the client’s folder, and drafts routine replies for checking. New enquiries are logged so none slip. How inbox automation works
Stays with a person: every reply is checked before it’s sent, unless you later choose to let simple acknowledgements go automatically.
4. Meeting and call notes written for you
Today: partners and managers write up client meetings and phone calls from memory or scribbled notes, often at the end of the day.
The automation: Teams meetings and recorded phone calls are transcribed and turned into a note in your format, with actions and follow-ups, filed against the client. Meeting Minutes AI and call summaries
Needs first: Teams transcription switched on (your IT provider can do this; it’s included in your licences), and access to the phone system’s recordings.
5. Filing emails and attachments to client folders
Today: everyone drags emails and attachments into SharePoint client folders by hand, and plenty never get filed.
The automation: recognises which client an email or attachment belongs to and files it in the right folder, asking a person when it isn’t sure. Much of this runs on Power Automate, which is already included in your Microsoft 365 licences.
6. A knowledge assistant for the team
Today: Gareth and the seniors answer the same procedure questions every week: where a template lives, how to set up a new client, what the process is for a late filing.
The automation: staff ask in Teams and get an answer from your own staff handbook and procedures, with a link to the source. It only reads the procedures folder, not client files, and says when it doesn’t know. How the AI assistant works
Later: client onboarding, and management accounts packs
Onboarding (2 hours a week): engagement letters drafted from your templates, ID and AML documents requested and chased, and new client records set up. The ID check itself, and the decision on it, stay with your team and your ID verification provider. Management packs (2 hours a week): monthly packs assembled and formatted automatically once the bookkeeping data is flowing from recommendation 2.
Leave alone: payroll queries
At about three hours a week, with highly personal information and answers that usually need someone who knows the client, the saving doesn’t justify the risk yet. We’d look again in a year.
5. What you already own
- Microsoft 365 Copilot: you have four Copilot licences and two are used regularly. Before buying more, we’d move the two unused licences to the partners who spend most time in email and meetings, and give them five tested uses each. Your IT provider handles the licences; we’d help people get real work out of them. We haven’t counted any Copilot savings in this report.
- Power Automate comes with your Microsoft 365 plan and covers much of recommendation 5 without extra licences.
- Teams transcription is included in your licences and just needs switching on for recommendation 4.
6. Data protection points
- What’s involved: client financial records, ID documents and recorded calls are personal data, and some of it is confidential to your clients.
- Where it would be processed: we build with Anthropic’s Claude through its business service, which doesn’t train on your data and is covered by a data processing agreement. Anthropic is a US company, so your privacy notice should mention AI-assisted processing and the transfer. In-house AI on our own hardware in Cardiff is coming soon for anything that shouldn’t leave the building.
- Before recommendation 2 goes live: we recommend a short data protection impact assessment (DPIA), which we’ll help you draft.
- Records you must keep: AML records have their own retention rules under the Money Laundering Regulations, and any automation must keep to them.
- Calls: your phone message already tells callers that calls are recorded. Set a retention period for recordings and transcripts rather than keeping everything.
- Staff rules: an AI safe-use policy, so staff know which tools are approved and what must never be pasted into them. It’s part of the Monthly AI Support set-up.
7. Costs and payback
| Item | Covers | First-year cost (+ VAT) |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly AI Support, Essentials | The standard pack (inbox assistant, meeting and call notes, knowledge assistant, staff onboarding, AI policy, AI dashboard), new AI tools as they arrive, and 48 hours a year for recommendations 1 and 5 and the later work | £5,508 |
| Single project | Recommendation 2, bank statements and receipts, at a fixed quote | £2,900–£3,500 |
| AI usage | Document reading at your volumes, estimated | About £480 |
| Total | £8,900–£9,500 |
Payback: the six recommendations are worth about £29,500 a year in staff time. Even if the real savings came in at half our estimate, about £14,800, they would cover the first-year cost about one and a half times over. From year two the project cost falls away.
The savings are time freed up, not cash in the bank, unless your hiring plans change. You told us you want to grow without recruiting, which is where the freed time is worth most.
8. Suggested roadmap
- Month 1: AI safe-use policy agreed. Inbox assistant live. Teams transcription switched on and meeting and call notes running.
- Month 2: records chasing live, starting with VAT-quarter clients. Knowledge assistant loaded with your staff handbook and procedures.
- Month 3: bank statement and receipt reading tested on three months of real documents, then live. Email filing switched on.
- Months 4 to 6: onboarding and management packs. A review against the figures on your AI dashboard, and the next round of ideas.
9. How we worked the numbers out
- Value a year = hours a week × share that could be automated × 46 working weeks × £26 an hour.
- £26 an hour is your blended cost for the staff who do this work, including employer National Insurance and pension. It isn’t your charge-out rate.
- 46 working weeks allows for holidays and bank holidays.
- Automation shares are our estimates of what a machine can take on reliably, with a person checking where it matters. They’re deliberately cautious.
- Costs exclude VAT. AI usage costs are estimates at your current volumes and would be confirmed before anything is built.
- Change any assumption you disagree with, and the sums still work. You can also try your own figures in our AI savings calculator.
10. Next steps
There’s no obligation. You can act on this report yourselves, ask us for a fixed quote for recommendation 2 on its own, or start on Monthly AI Support and work through the roadmap together. Whatever you decide, the report is yours to keep.
Ross Owen, AlphaOps