How One Accountant Saved 12 Hours a Week with AI

Rob Lewis runs Lewis & Co Accountancy, a 15-person firm in Birmingham. When we first spoke to him, he described his working life in three words: "constantly playing catch-up."

His team was spending over three hours every day on tasks that added zero value to their clients — data entry, chasing missing receipts, reformatting reports, and sending the same follow-up emails over and over again. They were good accountants buried under bad admin.

Sound familiar? It should. We hear this from nearly every accounting firm we work with. The tools exist to fix it. Most firms just do not know where to start.

Rob's firm started working with TimeProfit in January 2026. Within six weeks, they had saved 12 hours per week — without hiring anyone new, without learning to code, and without ripping out their existing systems. Here is exactly how they did it.

The Challenge: Death by a Thousand Admin Tasks

Before we recommended any tools, we spent a week auditing how Rob's team actually spent their time. The results were eye-opening — but not surprising.

Here is what a typical day looked like for a senior accountant at Lewis & Co:

• 8:30 - 9:30: Opening emails, manually sorting client queries, forwarding messages to the right team member
• 9:30 - 11:00: Keying receipt data into Xero from photos, PDFs, and scanned documents clients had emailed over
• 11:00 - 12:00: Chasing three clients for missing bank statements and overdue paperwork
• 1:00 - 2:30: Actual accounting work — the stuff they were trained to do
• 2:30 - 3:30: Formatting and generating monthly management reports
• 3:30 - 5:00: Drafting client emails, sending invoices, following up on unpaid bills

Out of an eight-hour day, only about 90 minutes was spent on genuine, skilled accounting work. The rest was admin. As Rob put it:

"I did not spend three years getting qualified just to copy and paste receipt data into spreadsheets. But that is what half my week looks like."

This is the reality for most small and mid-sized accounting firms. The work that generates value — advisory, tax planning, client relationships — gets squeezed into the margins by repetitive tasks that could (and should) be automated.

The Solution: Three Tools, Six Weeks, No Coding

We did not overhaul everything at once. We identified the three highest-impact changes and implemented them one at a time over six weeks. Here is what we recommended:

Tool 1: Dext for Receipt and Expense Capture

The single biggest time drain was manual data entry from receipts and invoices. Rob's team was spending 8-10 hours per week across the firm just keying in numbers from client documents.

We set up Dext (formerly Receipt Bank) with a dedicated email address for each client. Now clients simply forward or photograph their receipts, and Dext's AI extracts the supplier name, date, amount, and VAT automatically. The data flows straight into Xero with the correct categories applied.

The setup took half a day. The impact was immediate.

Tool 2: A Custom ChatGPT for Client Communications

Rob's team was drafting and sending roughly 40-50 client emails per day — chasing documents, answering common questions, providing status updates, and following up on outstanding items. Many of these emails were nearly identical, just with different names and numbers.

We built a Custom GPT trained on Lewis & Co's tone of voice, their standard responses to common queries, and templates for their most frequent email types. The team now generates draft emails in seconds, reviews them quickly, and sends. What used to take 5-10 minutes per email now takes under 2 minutes.

Tool 3: Xero Automation Rules for Invoicing

Invoicing was another bottleneck. Rob's team was manually creating invoices, setting payment terms, and sending reminders for overdue bills. We configured Xero's built-in automation features — repeating invoices for retainer clients, automatic payment reminders at 7, 14, and 30 days overdue, and bank rule matching to auto-reconcile common transactions.

This was not even AI — it was just smart use of features already built into their accounting software that nobody had set up properly.

The Results: 12 Hours Saved Every Week

After six weeks, we measured the impact. The numbers speak for themselves:

• Data entry and admin: 4 hours saved per week — Dext eliminated almost all manual receipt processing
• Client communications: 3 hours saved per week — the Custom GPT cut email drafting time by more than half
• Reporting and formatting: 3 hours saved per week — standardised templates and better data flow meant reports practically generated themselves
• Invoicing and payment chasing: 2 hours saved per week — automated reminders and repeating invoices removed the manual work entirely

Total: 12 hours per week. That is more than a full working day, every single week, given back to the team.

But the real impact was not just about time. Rob noticed something else: his team was happier. They were spending more of their day on work that actually required their expertise — tax planning, client advisory, complex problem-solving. The boring stuff was handled.

"We have not just saved time — we have changed what our working day feels like. My team actually enjoys coming to work again because they are doing accounting, not admin. That is worth more than the 12 hours."

The firm also reported fewer errors in their data entry, faster client response times, and a noticeable improvement in client satisfaction. Two clients specifically mentioned how much quicker Lewis & Co had become at responding to queries.

What You Can Do Today: 3 Quick Wins for Any Accountant

You do not need a consultant to get started. Here are three things any accounting firm can do this week to start saving time with AI for accountants:

1. Set up Dext with one client. Pick your most disorganised client — the one who sends receipts as blurry phone photos. Create a Dext account, give them a submission email address, and ask them to forward everything there for one month. You will see the difference within days.
2. Build a basic email GPT. Go to ChatGPT, create a Custom GPT, and paste in five examples of common emails you send (document requests, status updates, meeting confirmations). Add a line saying "Write in a professional, friendly tone using UK English." Use it for your next ten emails and see how much time it saves.
3. Turn on Xero's payment reminders. If you are using Xero, go to Settings, then Invoice Reminders. Set up automatic reminders at 7 and 14 days overdue. This takes five minutes and means you will never manually chase a late payment again.

These three steps alone could save you 3-5 hours per week. Not bad for a couple of hours of setup.

The key insight from Rob's story — and from every firm we work with — is that AI for accountants does not have to be complicated. You do not need to understand machine learning or build custom software. You just need someone to show you which tools to use and how to set them up properly.

That is what we do at TimeProfit. If you want the same results Rob got, we would love to chat. Book a free 30-minute call and we will walk through your specific workflow to find your biggest time savings.