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A nonprofit I studied had six different programs running out of one bank account, with no way to tell which one was actually profitable and which one was quietly draining the others.
That's not a nonprofit-only problem. I see the same thing with small teams: one account, everything mixed together, and nobody can say with confidence which part of the business is actually working.
The fix isn't complicated — it's just consistent. Separate the categories, close the books every month, and know your numbers before someone asks you for them, not after.
That's the whole job, really.
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
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Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
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Personal finance dashboard — from an hour of admin to two minutes
A weekly household finance workflow (manually pulling bank CSVs, splitting and categorising spends across two people, cross-checking shared expenses, reviewing totals against savings goals) was taking about an hour every week and still made it hard to tell at a glance whether spending was on track. Designed and built a dashboard that automates the pull, categorisation, and monthly view.
My role:
Research (mapped the existing manual workflow and pain points), UX design, and AI-assisted build of the dashboard.
Outcome:
Cut the weekly admin task from roughly an hour to about two minutes.
Note on scope:
Personal side project, not a client engagement. Included here as a live example of the kind of workflow-to-dashboard problem I take on for clients (repeat-purchase and admin-heavy flows, see Pet Circle and SafetyCulture project cards).
Project details up on my profile.
This sounds like a game-changer for weekly finances! How did you automate the CSV pulls?
AI is changing how small businesses create content, market their services and reach new customers.
Most AI advice for small businesses is written for companies that look nothing like a 20-person service firm. This episode builds the frame: the four workflows that leak money, and the test for which parts are safe to automate versus which must stay behind a person.
The distinction is reversibility, not importance. We go deep on two workflows rather than skimming all four.
#AIforBusiness #SmallBusiness #OperationsManagement #Podcast #WorkflowAutomation