Finance Automation Checklist
The research, reporting, reconciliation, and onboarding work that quietly absorbs analyst and operations hours at investment and finance firms, and what automating each one looks like. Tick what your team still does by hand and price it up.
What manual work is costing your firm
Tick the jobs your analysts and operations team still do by hand, set the loaded hourly cost of the people doing them, and the panel on the right totals the hours and the annual price tag. Every figure is your inputs, nothing is sent or stored.
What it's costing you
Hours are typical weekly time per task; costs use one representative finance hourly rate. Adjust it to yours.
Highest payback first
Fix: auto-pull fundamentals, filings, and analyst data into a structured research brief per name, so analysts start from a compiled sheet, not a blank page
Fix: auto-aggregate news for your holdings and watchlist into a daily digest, with alerts on material events
Fix: generate the daily P&L, exposure, and market summary automatically each morning instead of building it by hand
Fix: connect custody, OMS, and accounting so positions and cash reconcile automatically and breaks get flagged
Fix: pull performance, holdings, and exposure into templated reports generated on a schedule
Fix: automate the request, collection, and follow-up into a tracked, auditable workflow
Fix: AI summarises calls, transcripts, and filings into key points, tone, and what changed since last quarter, so analysts read a brief, not eighty pages
Fix: AI generates a structured first draft from your compiled data and research for the analyst to refine and sign off
Steady gains next
Fix: move recurring NAV and fee calculations into a checked, repeatable system
Fix: monitor earnings and filings across your universe and surface them automatically
Fix: run screens on a schedule and flag names that newly meet your criteria
Fix: generate and send them from your data on schedule
Fix: feed live data into dashboards that update themselves
Fix: auto-tag and file with retention and expiry alerts
What you get back
LiveHours are typical weekly defaults; adjust the rate to your loaded cost. Each task is hours × rate × 52 weeks. Illustrative estimate.
Want the payback on fixing these? Run the ROI calculator
What this checklist does
At an investment or finance firm the manual hours hide inside the work that feels unavoidable: compiling research one name at a time, rebuilding the daily reporting pack, reconciling positions across custody and accounting, chasing onboarding documents. This checklist gathers the most common time sinks in one place and puts an annual cost against each, so the cumulative drag is finally visible. Tick the ones that match how your firm works today and watch the total build.
How the maths works
Each task carries a typical number of hours it eats every week. The cost of a single task is hours × your hourly rate × 52 weeks; the headline figures are the totals across every task you leave ticked. Change the rate or switch currency and every per-task cost and total recomputes instantly.
The fixes describe data and workflow automation, getting numbers out of spreadsheets and inboxes and into checked, repeatable systems, not regulatory advice. The hours are sensible defaults from finance teams we work with, so treat the result as an illustrative estimate and adjust the rate to your loaded cost. The point is the order of magnitude and which jobs are worth fixing first.
Who it is for
It is for hedge funds, family offices, asset managers, and the finance teams inside other businesses, where research, reporting, and reconciliation eat into time that should go to analysis and decisions. The tasks are ordered highest payback first, so you can see where automating would free the most time before you commit to anything.
Where to go next
Size it from another angle, or talk to us about fixing the jobs you have ticked:
- Savings Calculator, to total the busywork across your whole team
- ROI Calculator, to weigh the cost of the fix against the saving
- AI Business Automation, automating the repetitive work itself
- Custom Software, replacing the manual process with a tailored system
- Excel to Software, getting NAV, fees, and reporting out of spreadsheets and into software