Execute sales or other financial transactions
Most of the output can be produced by software today.
This is the most automatable shape of work there is, and also the shape that most needs a live connection to the system the record lives in. Without that connection an agent can prepare the entry but cannot file it.
| How automatable | Mostly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Recording, documentation and administration |
| Jobs that do it | 21 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Tools and auth, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Performing Administrative Activities (4.A.4.c.1) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 21 occupations that perform it.
- Arrange for processing or resale of purchased products.
- Prepare purchase orders, solicit bid proposals, and review requisitions for goods and services.
- Arrange for sale or lease of excess storage or transport capacity to minimize losses or inefficiencies associated with empty space.
- Deliver e-mail confirmation of completed transactions and shipment.
- Perform administrative tasks, such as accepting orders, scheduling appointments or meeting rooms, or sending and receiving faxes.
- Encode and cancel checks, using bank machines.
- Prepare and process payroll information.
- Convert gaming checks, coupons, tokens, or coins to currency for gaming patrons.
- Process and issue employee paychecks and statements of earnings and deductions.
- Approve and pay bills.
- Cash checks and pay out money after verifying that signatures are correct, that written and numerical amounts agree, and that accounts have sufficient funds.
- Prepare credit cards or charge account plates.
- Resolve customers' service or billing complaints by performing activities such as exchanging merchandise, refunding money, or adjusting bills.
- Compute bills, collect payments, and make change for guests.
- Perform teller duties as required.
- Pay or arrange for payment of freight or insurance fees or other charges.
- Cash money orders.
- Process payroll information.
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 recording, documentation and administration, and what it costs.
The work is not writing the record, it is filing it where the record lives. Make reaches most of those systems from $9 a month, which is the cheapest honest start; Composio is for when you are writing the agent yourself.
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
Step-by-step workflows that name this activity, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Others for recording, documentation and administration
Who does this work
21 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
- Buyers and Purchasing Agents, Farm Products
- Credit Authorizers, Checkers, and Clerks
- Customer Service Representatives
- Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative Assistants
- Freight Forwarders
- Gambling Cage Workers
- Hotel, Motel, and Resort Desk Clerks
- Insurance Claims and Policy Processing Clerks
- Logistics Analysts
- New Accounts Clerks
- Office Clerks, General
- Online Merchants
- Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks
- Postal Service Clerks
- Procurement Clerks
- Purchasing Agents, Except Wholesale, Retail, and Farm Products
- Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive
- Switchboard Operators, Including Answering Service
- Tellers
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Execute financial transactions”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
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.