Client case study · 4 months Illustrative

31→4

Hours of manual bookkeeping per week, over 4 months.

Elapsed: 4 months
How it was measured: Hours logged by the owner and one clerk, before and after.
Running alongside: No staffing changes during the period.
Published with permission: Anonymised at client request

The constraint

Paper rates, daily prices, and no single source of truth

Rates changed every morning and sometimes twice a day. Stock, purchase, sale and billing lived in four separate books.

A sale could be billed against a stale rate and nobody would know until the month closed.

Four books, none reconciled daily
Rates recorded on paper and copied by hand
Month-end close took three full days

What we found

The audit, including the unflattering parts

We shadowed a full week of trading.

31 hours a week across the owner and one clerk
Rate copied by hand into three places
9 billing corrections in the previous month

The plan

The 90-day roadmap as it was actually written

One rate table, entered once, used everywhere.

Daily rate entry with lot-quality variants
Stock in and out posted against that rate automatically
Billing generated from the same record, not re-keyed
A daily close that reconciles itself

Month by month

What shipped, and what it moved

The line extends as you scroll. Every step below is a real month, including the one where nothing happened.

01Month 1

Baseline

Four books, 31 hours a week, and nine billing corrections the previous month.

Baseline: 31h/wk

02Month 2

Rate and stock live

One rate entry a day, used everywhere. Hand copying stopped.

-29%

03Month 3

Billing connected

Bills generated from the same record rather than re-keyed.

-50%

04Month 4

Daily close

The reconciliation that took three days at month end now runs nightly.

-64%

What went wrong

The part most case studies leave out

The first version assumed one rate per commodity per day. In practice rates move intraday and vary by lot quality, so the first fortnight of billing had to be reconciled by hand.

The domain assumption was wrong and it cost us two weeks.

We modelled one rate per commodity per day. Real trading has intraday movement and lot-quality variance, so the first fortnight of bills needed manual reconciliation.

We should have sat through a full trading day before designing the schema rather than after.

The numbers

Where it landed, and how we know

Hours of manual bookkeeping per week: 31 → 4 over 4 months. Hours logged by the owner and one clerk, before and after.

Hours as logged by the two people doing the work. No staffing change in the period.

Manual bookkeeping: 31 to 4 hours a week
Billing corrections: 9 a month to under 1
Month-end close: 3 days to nightly

Results reflect this client's market, licence status and starting position. We publish the method alongside the number so you can judge whether it transfers to yours.

In hindsight

What we'd do differently next time

Sit through a full trading day before designing the data model
Build the rate variants in from the start, not as a patch
Train the clerk before go-live, not during

Before you ask us to do this for you

Does this actually apply to your situation?

This worked because of specific conditions. If yours don't match, say so on the first call and we'll tell you what would change.

Market: Any commodity or trading business where price moves faster than the paperwork.
Starting point: Willingness to enter the rate once, properly, every day.
Timeline: Three to five months including training.

Start with the audit. It's free and it's specific.

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