Seminar Recap: You Can Automate That!

Fostering the Right Mindset for Change

Technology alone will not carry an automation project. Progress depends on people—their openness to change, their insight into how work really gets done, and their trust in the process. Many teams underestimate the cultural shift required to move from manual routines to automated systems. Without clear communication and early buy-in, projects stall or fall short of their goals.

AAFCPAs advises that clients approach automation as a phased, strategic effort, not a one-time overhaul. Focusing on high-value, repeatable tasks builds credibility and allows teams to gain experience and confidence. Early wins help reduce resistance and demonstrate that automation supports, rather than replaces, the work teams do.

Creating a culture that welcomes change also involves empowering staff. When leaders encourage transparency, education, and shared problem-solving, employees are more likely to suggest improvements and participate in shaping new solutions. This kind of engagement builds internal trust and reduces uncertainty. It reframes automation as a tool for productivity and mission-driven work, not as a threat to roles.

Cultivating the right mindset from the start lays the foundation for success—keeping your team aligned, informed, and open to future opportunities.

Building a Roadmap for Change

Before implementing automation, AAFCPAs advises that clients map out current processes thoroughly. This detailed understanding helps you identify which workflows are ripe for improvement and where automation may deliver the most value. Taking time to analyze existing procedures helps avoid costly missteps and ensures technology supports your organization’s specific needs rather than complicating them.

Openness to change is critical during this phase. Successful adoption depends on engaging stakeholders early and encouraging honest feedback about pain points and inefficiencies. By involving those who work directly with the processes, you build a foundation of trust and create a roadmap that reflects both operational realities and strategic goals. This roadmap serves as a guide for incremental progress, aligning automation efforts with broader organizational priorities.

Choosing and Piloting the Right Use Cases

Identifying where to start can be one of the hardest parts of automation. AAFCPAs advises clients to begin by targeting bottlenecks and repetitive tasks that slow the team down—those that are manual, time-consuming, error-prone, or tedious. These are ideal for a first pilot and often deliver meaningful, measurable results quickly.

Launching with a focused project allows you to test assumptions, identify challenges early, and build confidence internally. These early wins are critical for building support and justifying further investment. Over time, your team can expand automation efforts based on what works and lessons learned.

Scalability should be considered from the beginning. As projects succeed, organizations gain clarity on where to go next. This phased approach helps manage risk and ensures that automation aligns with business goals, operational priorities, and technical capacity.

To assist with this evaluation, AAFCPAs offers a downloadable rubric to help assess whether robotic process automation (RPA) aligns with your organizational needs and priorities.

Real Use Cases

In this session, Ryan and Vassilis demonstrated several RPA use cases that are providing AAFCPAs’ clients with real efficiency gains. These included:

1. Daily Donation Import from Salesforce to GL System.

A nonprofit client used Salesforce to track donations but lacked integration with their general ledger (GL) system. A staff member manually transferred data from Salesforce to a template for GL upload daily, creating risk for human error and consuming up to an hour each day.

Solution: AAFCPAs built an automation tool that pulls donation data and formats it into the upload template in less than two minutes, saving time and eliminating manual copying and pasting.

2. AI-Powered Extraction from Authorization PDFs.

A client serving the aging population receives insurance authorization PDFs by email for home-delivered services. These documents vary in format and must be reviewed to extract service dates and units authorized.

Solution: Using AI and RPA, AAFCPAs trained a model to extract key data from PDFs and write it into a structured database, feeding a Power BI dashboard. This provided real-time insight into service authorizations, improving compliance and reimbursement processes.

3. Uniform Financial Report (UFR) Automation.

Massachusetts nonprofits must file a Uniform Financial Report annually—a time-intensive task that requires detailed allocations and high-level oversight.

Solution: AAFCPAs developed a prep tool that helps clients map GL accounts to UFR categories, incorporating allocations and program-specific splits. Automation generates a clean, organized report output ready for client review and input into the UFR system. This approach reduces preparation time, saving weeks of manual work and reducing reliance on CFOs and controllers.

4. HR Data Entry to ADP.

A nonprofit tracked employee updates (e.g., address, salary changes) in a spreadsheet and manually entered changes line-by-line into ADP.

Solution: A bot was configured to read the SharePoint list containing change records and automatically update employee profiles in ADP, significantly reducing errors and freeing staff for more strategic work.

5. Expense Reimbursement Approvals.

Manual routing of reimbursement requests caused delays and inconsistency.

Solution: Automation routed requests to appropriate approvers based on rules, sent notifications, tracked status, and allowed for rejection alerts—all with full traceability and without human intervention.

6. Data Consolidation and Report Generation.

Clients with recurring reporting needs—especially where data is pulled from multiple systems and manipulated manually—struggled with delays and inefficiencies.

Solution: AAFCPAs built workflows to automatically consolidate data and push it into visual dashboards or formatted reports, improving speed, accuracy, and consistency.

7. Payroll and Compliance Safeguards.

Tasks such as dual signature verification on checks, salary calculation validation, and payroll processing contained manual steps prone to error or non-compliance.

Solution: Automation included checks for dual signatures using OCR, rule-based validations, and reportable audit trails, helping mitigate risk and increase oversight.

8. CRM and Donor Engagement Automation.

Organizations wanted to better track and respond to donor behavior.

Solution: Automated tools were used to track attendee engagement and CRM interactions, trigger campaigns, and personalize outreach using AI-generated content.

Recent feedback from nonprofit finance professionals reflects growing interest in automation. After AAFCPAs’ 2025 Nonprofit Educational Seminar, nearly 60 percent of attendees said they plan to automate repetitive financial and operational tasks.

For guidance tailored to your organization, AAFCPAs’ Business Process & IT Consulting practice is available to support your team.

These insights were contributed by Vassilis Kontoglis, Partner, Analytics, Automation & IT Security and Ryan K. Wolff, MBA, Supervisor, Strategic Innovation & Data Analytics. Questions? Reach out to our authors directly or your AAFCPAs partner. AAFCPAs offers a wealth of resources on business process optimization and smart automation. Subscribe to get alerts and insights in your inbox.