Hey Reader,

Closing the books used to be a nightmare. Every month, I wasted hours manually merging sales CSVs from different platforms. Copy, paste, repeat.

Then it hit me: Why am I doing this when AI can do it for me?

I started experimenting with AI automation, and within days, I cut hours off my close process.

Now, I spend less time on manual work and more time on strategic tasks. In this newsletter, I am showing you how you can do the same.

That’s exactly what I’ll be diving into in my upcoming live workshop on March 20th.​
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Learn more about it below 👇

Advanced AI Workshop on Eliminating Manual Work

March 20, 2025 | ⏰ 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM EDT

I’m excited to invite you to an exclusive live session where I’ll be speaking alongside Dave Wieseneck, Ramp’s Expert in Residence.

We’ve walked, crawled, and run with AI - now it’s time to eliminate manual work for good.

In this live webinar, we’ll break down three advanced AI approaches that will help you streamline processes and free up valuable time:

• Traditional Automation (Rules-Based): Using Python scripts & Google Sheets to handle repetitive tasks
• AI Workflows (LLM-Based): How custom GPT models can automate document processing
• AI Agents (Autonomous): Trigger-based AI actions for full automation with minimal oversight

We’ll also share real-world use cases so you can see exactly how to apply these strategies to your workflow.

I’d love for you to join us!

​👉 Register now for free​

Last time we were more than 1,500 finance professionals who joined our webinar, make sure to be part of this one!

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My Top 3 AI for Finance Tips

TIP #1: Automating the Close with AI (Beginner & Advanced Methods)

Instead of spending hours manually cleaning, merging, and formatting data, let AI handle it.

Beginner: Use Google Apps Script to Clean and Format Data

If you work in Google Sheets, you can automate file cleanup without any coding experience.

• Google Apps Script (built into Google Sheets) can standardize dates, remove duplicates, and format column headers in seconds
• Once set up, it runs automatically, ensuring your data is clean before you even start working on it
• No need to build the script yourself, instead let AI do it for you
• Microsoft alternative: VBA

Try it using for example a simple request like "Remove all lines with empty cells" or "Create a column for year, a column for month and column for day based on column dates".

You might ask how?
Just use ChatGPT or your favorite LLM chatbot to give you the Google Script code (or VBA code if you are in Excel).

Advanced: Use Python to Merge and Format Multiple CSVs

If you regularly deal with multiple files, Python can merge them instantly.

• Instead of manually combining files, a simple script can pull all CSVs from a folder, merge them, clean the data, and output a ready-to-upload report.
• Works seamlessly with Excel and csv files (can even connect to accounting platform through API)
• Cuts out tedious copy-pasting and formatting, saving hours every month

This simple automation reduced my month-end close time from hours to minutes.

TIP #2: AI for Expense Categorization

A common time-waster? Manually categorizing expenses. AI can do it automatically.
Recently a member of the AI Finance Club explained to me how she saved 3 days of work per month by automating the categorization of their expenses using AI.

How to Set Up an AI-Powered Categorization System

1. Create a Custom GPT

• Go to OpenAI’s GPT builder and create a finance-specific assistant.
• Add clear instructions: “Role: you are an assistant categorizing our expenses.
  Categorize expenses based on Vendor Name and Transaction Description.
  Use the following expense categories: [add your categories with a short description].
  Format: your output should be a csv file with all the expenses categorized"

2. Upload Your Expense Report

• Drag and drop a CSV or Excel file into the Custom GPT.

3. Get AI-Generated Categories Instantly

• AI classifies expenses according to your instructions.
• Example: Amazon = Office Supplies, Uber = Travel

4. Download a Ready-to-Use Report

• Your ChatGPT outputs a categorized file that can be uploaded directly into your accounting system.

A finance pro in our AI Finance Club implemented this and eliminated 90% of manual expense categorization.

No more dragging transactions into folders or renaming line items.

TIP #3: AI for General Ledger Automation with n8n

In our last AI Finance Club Masterclass, our guest expert, Tobias Zwingmann demonstrated an end-to-end agent categorizing transations through AI using n8n, a no-code automation tool.

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How It Works

1. Trigger: you can trigger it manually or even better: you can set it up that n8n detects an incoming email with a CSV file containing credit card transactions and this will be the triggering event

2. Extract & Clean:

• n8n reads the file and if needed you can apply formatting rules to standardize columns, remove duplicates, and flag inconsistencies

3. AI Categorization:

• You send the file together with the mapping into OpenAI API and you prompt it to assign an expense category to each of the transaction based on the description contained on the transaction

4. Final output:

• The transactions are all mapped into a new file

What else could you do additionally to make this agent more complex?

• You could make a comparison of expense categorized month over month
• You could ask to identify outliers
• n8n could automatically drafts an email with the report attached—ready to send to stakeholders

This means zero manual data extraction, no back-and-forth corrections, and instant reporting.

This agent has been shared with all the members of the AI Finance Club, making them save a lot of time and money.​
If you want to join the 200 future AI CFOs that are part of the AI Finance Club, check my short video presenting the AI Finance Club.

How to Get Started with AI in Finance

If you want to stop wasting hours on repetitive finance tasks, start simple:

• Step 1: Identify a recurring manual task.
• Step 2: Choose an automation method (Google Apps Script for beginners, Python for advanced users).
• Step 3: Test and refine the process.

AI isn’t replacing finance professionals—it’s making us faster and more valuable.

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Your AI for Finance expert,

Nicolas

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P.S. The Advanced AI for Finance Live Course is starting very soon.
In this course we will teach you everything that I covered in this newsletter.
​Secure one of the last seats now!​