How to automate data entry between the systems you already use

You automate data entry between systems by letting the information travel on its own. Once a customer’s details, a job, a reading or an address exists in one place, software can carry it into the next place, check it on the way, and flag anything that does not add up. You keep the systems you already use: the diary, the quoting tool, the accounts package, the spreadsheet, the trade software you have run for years. What changes is that a person types each fact once instead of six times. In our experience that single change removes most of the typing an office does, and most of its typing errors with it.

Where does double entry actually happen?

Wherever one system ends and another begins. A customer rings, and their name and address go into the diary. The job is quoted, so they go into the quoting tool. The job is done, so they go onto the job sheet, then the invoice, then the accounts package, then the letter that goes out with the certificate. Same customer, six times, by hand. Firms rarely notice, because each retype takes a minute and belongs to a different person. Try the retyping test: pick one customer from last month and count how many times their name was typed between the first call and the paid invoice. The number surprises most people. Each one of those retypes is a place where software can take over.

What does it look like when it works?

We built this for an international shipping company whose staff retyped customer names and addresses into shipping paperwork by hand, for hundreds of parcels a day. Every typo risked a delayed parcel, a customs query or a return. Now the paperwork fills itself in from the records the company already holds, and each address is checked against the formats both countries expect before anything ships. Processing the address details for one parcel went from 3 minutes to under 40 seconds. Across more than 50,000 shipments, that has saved the company thousands of hours. Nothing about the paperwork changed, and the staff kept the systems they knew. What changed was who did the typing and who did the checking. The same shape applies to a job sheet becoming an invoice, or a meter reading becoming a certificate.

Why is checking as important as copying?

Because the moment a fact moves between systems is the best moment to check it. When software carries an address from one place to another, it can confirm that the postcode exists, that the invoice total matches the quote, that the certificate number follows the right pattern, that a required field is not blank. A person retyping at the end of a long day does none of that reliably, and the errors that slip through are the expensive kind: the ones nobody notices until the customer rings, the payment bounces or the inspector asks. With the check built into the transfer, the mistake is caught before the document goes out rather than after.

Do you have to replace your systems to do this?

No, and you usually should not. Most of the tools a firm already runs can be connected: the accounts package, the diary, the spreadsheet, the trade-specific software. There are a handful of ways to make a connection, and the right one depends on what you run and what each system allows. Choosing and building that connection is the work we do. Deciding that the retyping should stop is the part you do. What you should not do is buy a large new platform in the hope that it covers everything, because then you will find yourself retyping into that as well.

How do you start?

With the retyping test above, and with the one pair of systems where the same fact travels most often. Write down what gets typed, from where, into what, and what ought to be checked on the way. That is enough for us to tell you whether the two can be connected and how long it would take.

Frequently asked questions

Does this work with our accounts package?

Almost always. The widely used packages are built to be connected to, and older ones can usually export and import. The answer for your particular package takes us minutes to give.

What if one of the systems is a spreadsheet?

A spreadsheet can be read from and written to like any other system. Whether it should stay a spreadsheet is a different question, which we covered in turning your spreadsheet into an app.

If your office types the same details into more than one system, tell us which systems on our contact page. We will tell you which retypes can go and what it would take.