Calculate financial data
Most of the output can be produced by software today.
Software can pull the data, run the comparison and write up what it found. The accuracy depends almost entirely on whether it is wired into the real system of record rather than a stale copy, which is the problem the tools and auth layer exists to solve.
| How automatable | Mostly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Analysis and evaluation work |
| Jobs that do it | 13 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Builders, Tools and auth |
| O*NET activity | Estimating the Quantifiable Characteristics of Products, Events, or Information (4.A.1.b.3) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 13 occupations that perform it.
- Compute, withhold, and account for all payroll deductions.
- Compute figures such as balances, totals, or commissions.
- Return checks to customers or retrieve checks returned to customers in error, adjusting accounts and answering inquiries about errors as necessary.
- Debit, credit, and total accounts on computer spreadsheets and databases, using specialized accounting software.
- Compute wages and deductions, and enter data into computers.
- Balance currency, coin, and checks in cash drawers at ends of shifts and calculate daily transactions, using computers, calculators, or adding machines.
- Compute total holdings, dividends, interest, transfer taxes, brokerage fees, or commissions and allocate appropriate payments to customers.
- Compute and authorize amounts of assistance for programs, such as grants, monetary payments, and food stamps.
- Inspect returned books for condition and due-date status and compute any applicable fines.
- Calculate, review, and correct errors on interest, principal, payment, and closing costs, using computers or calculators.
- Calculate and compile order-related statistics, and prepare reports for management.
- Compute and verify totals on report forms, requisitions, or bills, using adding machine or calculator.
- Calculate premiums, refunds, commissions, adjustments, or new reserve requirements, using insurance rate standards.
- Perform financial calculations, such as amounts due, interest charges, balances, discounts, equity, and principal.
- Compute financial fees, interest, and service charges.
- Calculate, prepare, and issue bills, invoices, account statements, and other financial statements according to established procedures.
- Calculate and prepare checks for utilities, taxes, and other payments.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for analysis and evaluation work, and what it costs.
Start in the assistant with an export of the real data, because the accuracy problem here is a stale copy rather than a weak model. Make, at $9 a month, is the cheapest way to put the pull on a schedule once the analysis is worth repeating.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
13 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Billing and Posting Clerks
- Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks
- Brokerage Clerks
- Eligibility Interviewers, Government Programs
- First-Line Supervisors of Office and Administrative Support Workers
- Insurance Claims and Policy Processing Clerks
- Library Assistants, Clerical
- Loan Interviewers and Clerks
- Order Clerks
- Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks
- Tellers
- Treasurers and Controllers
- Word Processors and Typists
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Calculate financial data”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
| Activity | Jobs |
|---|---|
| Compute gaming wins and losses | 3 |
| Calculate tax information | 3 |
| Compute debt repayment schedules | 3 |
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.