Integrations
Automating the monthly report nobody wants to compile
Two days of spreadsheet work a month, replaced by a script that runs at 6am and emails a PDF. A short case note on scope and restraint.
Larkfield Surveys collected results in whatever format the site team used that month. Compiling them took two days, involved four people, and produced a spreadsheet that was out of date by the time it was finished.
Scope the job narrowly
The temptation is to build a data warehouse. We did not. The job was one clear thing: at 6am on the first working day, validate whatever arrived, combine it, flag anomalies, and email a PDF.
What the script does
- Pulls the previous month's files from the shared folder.
- Maps each source to a common schema, with a mapping file a non-developer can edit.
- Validates ranges and flags outliers rather than silently correcting them.
- Renders a PDF with the summary and a tab for anything flagged.
Restraint
No dashboard, no database, no interface. The output is a document the team already knew how to read. That is usually the difference between automation that gets adopted and automation that gets abandoned.