Custom Solutions & Automation · Workflow design

The report is ready. The inputs are not.

A nonprofit combines program spreadsheets into a monthly funder update. The problem appears before the writing begins: the inputs disagree about what counts as a completed activity.

Illustrative work sample. Built on a synthetic organization with invented figures to show how we think and what a deliverable looks like. It is not client work and describes no achieved result.

The organizational challenge

Harbor Community Services (synthetic) sends a monthly update to its largest funder, assembled by a development coordinator from two program teams’ activity worksheets. Last quarter the funder questioned a completion figure. One team counted cancelled sessions as completed activity, the other did not, and nobody had written the rule down.

The coordinator now spends the first week of every month checking spreadsheets instead of writing, and leadership wants to automate the merge. The honest answer: automation only helps once the definitions are fixed and the checks are designed.

The decision to be made

Harbor needs a workflow design that says what happens when inputs conflict, duplicate or arrive incomplete, and draws the line between what gets automated and what stays with a person. The design has to remove the reconciliation week without letting a wrong number reach the funder.

The approach

Traced one report end to end, from the two worksheets to the submitted document, with the coordinator and both program leads. Logged every point where a human judgment was being made silently.
Fixed the definitions before designing any automation: a one-page definition set agreed by both teams and confirmed with the funder’s program officer.
Designed the checks and exception states first, then the assembly. The workflow’s job is to refuse to aggregate bad inputs, not to be fast.
Kept human review as the release gate and kept the manual process available, so a workflow failure is an inconvenience, not a missed submission.

Deliverable preview

Hold the report. Resolve the definition. Then assemble.

Textstone LabsWorkflow design · Example O-01

Exception record produced by the workflow when inputs fail a check.
Field	Record
Reporting period	Example month
Inputs	Program activity worksheets from two program teams
Required definition	Completed activity excludes cancellations
Validation finding	Team A includes cancellations; Team B does not state its definition
Release state	Held for review
Release owner	Designated reporting lead
Next action	Confirm definitions with both source owners before aggregation

How the workflow responds

Open a condition to see the next action. These are designed states, not live processing.

A source has no agreed definition

Held for review

Record the missing definition, assign a source owner and pause aggregation. Preserve the original input; never fill the gap with an assumption.

A second file repeats the same period and source

Duplicate flagged

Compare source identifiers and versions. Ask the source owner which input is authoritative. Never include both and inflate the total.

The inputs pass the agreed checks

Ready for human review

Assemble the draft with links to accepted sources. Passing input checks does not authorize publication: the designated reviewer approves the release record.

Workflow design

Stage	What happens	What is recorded
1. Collect	Source owners submit worksheets to one location with period and version in the filename.	Source register entry: owner, period, version, received time
2. Check	Definitions, duplicates, period coverage and required fields are checked automatically.	Pass or exception record for every input
3. Hold or assemble	Any exception holds the run. Clean inputs are assembled into a draft with links to accepted sources.	Run record: inputs used, checks passed, draft version
4. Review and release	The reporting lead reviews the draft, can reject to stage 1, and approves the release record.	Approved version, approver, time; the manual process remains available

Conflicting definitions block aggregation.
Duplicates are flagged for a person to resolve.
Every included figure traces to an accepted input.
An interrupted run cannot mark itself complete.
Logs record status and failure details without copying sensitive source contents.

The same design in a growing business

A 40-person services firm assembles a Monday management report from six team leads’ weekly updates. Two leads count a project as “delivered” at handoff, four count it at client sign-off, and the owner reconciles by phone. The workflow above transfers directly: one definition set agreed with the leads, updates collected in one place with a version, definition and duplicate checks before assembly, and the operations manager as the release gate. The audience and the permissions change; the collect, check, hold-or-assemble, review pattern does not.

How success would be evaluated

What we would measure.

Reconciliation time: hours the coordinator spends checking inputs each month, expected to fall to the time needed to resolve genuine exceptions.
Exceptions caught before submission: every held run is a number that did not reach the funder.
Traceability: every figure in the submitted report links to an accepted input and version.
Funder questions: count of figures questioned after submission, tracked across quarters.
Operability: the coordinator can restart a run, resolve an exception and fall back to the manual process without calling us.

The engagement output is the definition set, the workflow design with exception rules, the working implementation within agreed scope, test cases, and an operating guide with restart and fallback instructions. The longer reporting decision brief shows how the option to automate was chosen in the first place.

Practice area

Custom Solutions & Automation

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