Most of what fills a finance team's month isn't accounting judgment. It's saving a PDF out of an email, typing a receipt into a spreadsheet, totting up last week's sales for a Monday update, and rebuilding the same profit and loss view for every department when the month ends. None of it is hard. All of it takes hours, and every manual copy is another chance to get a figure wrong.
Here are the five workflows we'd hand a finance team first. Each one is a ready-made template in Lodol's library: add it to your workspace, connect the apps it uses (a one-time setup for each, with step-by-step instructions in Lodol), and it runs. And each was built around the same rule. When something can't be read, it says so instead of guessing, because in finance a wrong number costs far more than a missing one.
1. File every bill that lands in the inbox
The chore: bills arrive as PDFs attached to emails. Someone saves each one to a shared folder and logs it in a register, so it can be found again at month-end.
The workflow: File emailed documents and log what they say wakes when a new email arrives in Gmail. It copies each PDF attachment into a Box folder and adds a row to your register in Google Sheets: when it was filed, who sent it, the subject, the file name, a link to the filed copy, and what the document says, such as the supplier, the document number, the date and the total.
What it won't do: guess. A field the document doesn't carry is left empty. A PDF it can't read is still filed, with a row that says so. An email is marked as registered only once every document on it is filed and logged, so a failed upload waits for the next run instead of quietly going missing. And a logo in someone's email signature never becomes a row, because only PDFs count.
2. Turn a pile of receipts into expense rows
The chore: the month's receipts, typed into a spreadsheet one at a time.
The workflow: paste links to a batch of receipts and invoices into Turn receipts and invoices into expense rows and run it. Each file is read for its supplier, date, invoice number, total, tax and currency, and becomes a row on your Expenses tab, written exactly as it was read.
What it won't do: invent a figure. If the supplier, date or total can't be read with confidence, the receipt goes to a Needs review tab with a note saying what's wrong. A figure it can't find is left blank, never written as zero. Receipts already on the tab are skipped, so you can add more and run it again.
3. Code expenses to your own chart of accounts
The chore: going down the expense list deciding which account each line belongs to.
The workflow: once a day, Categorise expenses in a spreadsheet reads your Expenses tab and files each line under exactly one of the categories you've listed in plain words: your own chart of accounts, not a generic one. The results land on a separate Categorised tab with the date, description, amount, category and the row each one came from.
What it won't do: force a fit. An expense that matches none of your categories is left out rather than filed under the nearest one. Your original rows are never touched, so anything that looks wrong traces straight back to where it came from.
4. Send the Monday revenue number before anyone asks
The chore: every Monday, someone totals last week's sales, compares them with the week before, and writes a line about why.
The workflow: at 7:00 every Monday, Weekly revenue up-or-down email totals the last full Monday-to-Sunday week from your revenue sheet, compares it with the week before, and emails the change in dollars and as a percentage. The subject line alone tells you which way revenue went and by how much.
What it won't do: speculate. When revenue is up, a short note explains the rise from the rows behind it: which days and entries drove it, and whether it came from a few large sales or many small ones. When revenue is down or flat, it reports the numbers and doesn't guess at causes. And if neither week has any rows, it tells you so, because that usually means the sheet has stopped being filled in.
5. Close each month with a P&L for every cost center
The chore: after month-end, building the same profit and loss view for each department, then explaining it.
The workflow: on the 3rd of every month at 8:00, Monthly P&L report for each cost center reads your transactions sheet and emails each cost center its own P&L: revenue and expenses by category against the month before, the net result, the year to date, and the largest transactions. A short commentary on top covers the result, what drove it, and what's worth a closer look, quoting only figures that appear in the report.
What it won't do: send a report that looks fine when it isn't. A row it can't read is listed in the report, not counted as zero. Transactions with no cost center get a report of their own. And a month with no transactions at all stops with an error, instead of arriving as what looks like a very quiet month.
When you're ready, bring in QuickBooks and a sign-off
All five work from spreadsheets, which is where many teams start. When you want results in your books, QuickBooks Online is Lodol's deepest accounting connection: 79 actions, plus triggers that start a workflow when a bill, invoice, payment, estimate, vendor or customer is created, or when an invoice is paid. Xero and Zoho Books are in the catalog too. Connecting QuickBooks is a one-time setup on Intuit's developer site, and Intuit reviews a short questionnaire before it issues the keys for your live books, so start a few days before you need it; you can try everything against a QuickBooks sandbox in the meantime.
Anything that touches the ledger or moves money can wait for a person. Add an Await human input step and the run pauses to ask, for example, "Post the $12,480 bill from Harbor Supply to 5100 Packaging? Type approve, or the account it belongs in." It carries on with the answer. Payments can then go out through Mercury, using Mercury's own approval requests if you want two sets of eyes on every transfer. Every run is recorded step by step, and every change to a workflow goes into its version history, so you can roll it back.
What it costs
Lodol charges per run: one pass of a workflow, however many steps it takes. Nothing is charged per invoice, per receipt or per seat. Here's what the five use in a month for a team that receives 200 bills:
| Workflow | When it runs | Runs a month |
|---|---|---|
| File emailed bills | Once per email to your bills inbox | 200 |
| Receipts to expense rows | Once per batch, when you run it | 4 |
| Code expenses | Once a day | 30 |
| Monday revenue email | Once a week | 4 or 5 |
| Monthly P&L | Once a month | 1 |
| All five | About 240 |
That fits inside Builder's smallest tier, 2,500 runs for $18 a month ($15 if you pay annually), with room to receive ten times as many bills. Workflows are private to your workspace on every plan. Seats are unlimited on every plan, so the whole team, and your outside accountant, can work in the same place at no extra cost. One tip: point the filing workflow at the mailbox your bills arrive in, since it runs once for every email that lands there.
The AI steps, such as reading a receipt or writing the P&L commentary, run on your own AI account, such as Anthropic or OpenAI, and that provider bills you at its own rates; Lodol adds nothing. Everything around them, from the totals to the filing to the checks, runs the same way every time.
Start with the bills inbox.
Open the filing workflow, point it at the inbox your bills arrive in, and add the QuickBooks steps when you're ready. Or browse all of the finance workflows, and see how Lodol fits a finance stack on the finance page.
