Verify accuracy of financial or transactional 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 | 17 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Builders, Tools and auth |
| O*NET activity | Processing Information (4.A.2.a.2) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 17 occupations that perform it.
- Verify accuracy of billing data and revise any errors.
- Check figures, postings, and documents for correct entry, mathematical accuracy, and proper codes.
- Verify accuracy of reports, such as authorization forms, transaction reconciliations, or exchange summary reports.
- Review requisition orders to verify accuracy, terminology, and specifications.
- Cash checks and pay out money after verifying that signatures are correct, that written and numerical amounts agree, and that accounts have sufficient funds.
- Verify ownership and transaction information and dividend distribution instructions to ensure conformance with governmental regulations, using stock records and reports.
- Evaluate information on applications to verify completeness and accuracy and to determine whether applicants are qualified to obtain desired licenses.
- Compare disputed merchandise with original requisitions and information from invoices and prepare invoices for returned goods.
- Complete general financial activities, such as processing accounts payable, reviewing invoices, collecting cash payments, or issuing receipts.
- Verify customers' credit, and establish how the customer will pay for the accommodation.
- Ensure payment for services by verifying benefits with the person's insurance provider or working out financing options.
- Verify and examine information and accuracy of loan application and closing documents.
- Review orders for completeness according to reporting procedures and forward incomplete orders for further processing.
- Compare data with source documents, or re-enter data in verification format to detect errors.
- Compute and verify totals on report forms, requisitions, or bills, using adding machine or calculator.
- Review and verify data, such as age, name, address, and principal sum and value of property, on insurance applications and policies.
- Compare information or figures on one record against same data on other records, or with original copy, to detect errors.
- Verify signatures and required information on checks.
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
17 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
- Court, Municipal, and License Clerks
- Customer Service Representatives
- Data Entry Keyers
- File Clerks
- Gambling Cage Workers
- Hotel, Motel, and Resort Desk Clerks
- Insurance Claims and Policy Processing Clerks
- Interviewers, Except Eligibility and Loan
- Loan Interviewers and Clerks
- Order Clerks
- Procurement Clerks
- Proofreaders and Copy Markers
- Tellers
- Word Processors and Typists
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Evaluate the quality or accuracy of data”. 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.