(and Thousands in Bookkeeping Costs) 

Once upon a time, I manually entered every invoice, expense, and receipt. My hands hurt. My soul withered. Then I discovered automation, and suddenly, I was not crying on the first of every month.

Automation doesn’t mean robots with ties doing your taxes (though that’s a great mental image). It means:

• Automatically categorizing transactions with rules

• Scheduled invoice emails

• Receipt scanning that doesn’t make you want to scream

Tools that saved my brain:

• Zapier: Create workflows like “If payment received in Stripe → add to Google Sheet”

• Hubdoc & Dext: Snap a photo of a receipt and boom—into your accounting system it goes

• QuickBooks Rules: Auto-tagging categories so “Joe’s Coffee” stops going under “office supplies”

Benefits beyond your sanity:

• Less human error (no more “oops, I added a zero!”)

• More time for strategy, or naps

• Improved compliance (your accountant will love you)

✅ Funny Tip: If your current bookkeeping system has you printing things just to re-type them, automation might just change your life (or at least your Tuesday).