Month End Used to Be a Build. Now It’s a Review.
A restaurant group in Sydney — eight outlets
Month end: a review, not a rebuild
Every outlet kept its own Google Sheet, and the owner copied all eight into a ninth each month. That job is gone.
The challenge
The group ran its back office on eight Google Sheets — one per outlet, a tab per month, a row per day, a column per supplier, all typed by hand by eight different managers. Every month the owner copied all eight into a ninth to see the group as a whole. That was a day of somebody’s month, every month, and the numbers were already out of date by the time the ninth sheet was finished. Every copy created a second version of the truth, and no figure sitting in a cell could tell anyone where it had come from.
The solution
fiveagents.io replaced the whole thing with one system: a single database, a web app, and a Claude plugin the team runs the business through. Costs that arrive by email record themselves, and managers enter only what didn’t. The consolidated view is a screen that is always current, so month end became a review and a close instead of a build. Nobody had to learn a new app — the team asks questions the way they would ask a bookkeeper.
What we built
- Costs that arrive by email record themselves — the manager only enters what didn’t.
- The daily entry screen is phone-first, because the small daily items are the ones people actually touch.
- Every automatic figure opens the document behind it, so any number can be traced to its source.
- Managers reach their own outlet and nothing else; the owner sees all eight — enforced in the database, not hidden in the interface.
- The team asks questions in plain language and gets an answer in seconds off the live numbers, with no report to build.
- 1InboxAutomatedDaily
Costs record themselves
Supplier invoices arriving by email are read and recorded without anyone touching them
- 2EntryHumanDaily
Fill the gaps
The manager enters only what did not arrive by email, on a phone, in the outlet
- 3QueueAutomated + humanDaily
Nothing fails silently
Anything unreadable or unclassified waits in the queue with a reason, instead of disappearing
- 4ReconcileAutomatedMonth end
Match the month
Recorded costs are checked against what the outlets actually sold
- 5CloseHumanMonth end
Review and close
The consolidated view is already current, so the month is reviewed and closed, not rebuilt
One system, start to finish. The only manual step is the approval.
Look inside
Sample data — illustrative of the live system, not real client records.
Most of it records itself
Invoices that arrive by email are read and filed on their own. What is left over waits in a queue with a reason attached — nothing is silently dropped, and nothing needs chasing to find out what happened to it.
| Document | Outlet | Source | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Poultry supplier invoice | Outlet 3 | Recorded | |
| Packaging invoice | Outlet 1 | Recorded | |
| Produce delivery docket | Outlet 6 | Entered | Recorded |
| Scanned invoice — too dark to read | Outlet 2 | Needs review | |
| Supplier statement | Group | Waiting |
They ask, instead of building a report
The owner asks a question the way they would ask a bookkeeper, and the answer comes back in seconds off the live numbers. No filter to remember, no report to build, no new app to learn.
Asked in Claude
Answered“What did we spend on packaging last month, and which outlet was the worst?”
Asked in Claude
Answered“Which suppliers have put their prices up since last quarter?”
The consolidated view is already there
Nothing gets stitched together, because nothing was ever split apart. The month is reviewed and closed rather than assembled from eight files.
Spreadsheets
None
was eight, plus a ninth
Month end
Review
no longer a rebuild
Every figure
Traceable
opens its source document
New app to learn
None
they ask in plain language
What the owner keeps hold of
- Nothing consequential happens without a person approving it.
- A manager reaches their own outlet and nothing else — the other seven never come back to them at all.
- Every automatic figure opens the document behind it, so no number has to be taken on trust.
Results
- Month end became a review and a close, instead of a day spent rebuilding.
- One database, instead of eight Google Sheets and a ninth stitched together by hand.
- One version of the truth — no figure is copied out of one file and into another.
- Any number traces back to the document it came from.
- Nobody had to learn a new app; the team asks questions the way they always did.
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