Case study / Mid-market · Accounting

Real-Time File Monitoring for a Westchester CPA Firm

The team now starts their day knowing exactly what came in overnight. Instead of clicking through folders one at a time, they check one Slack message and move straight into billable work. The managing partner has become the automation's biggest fan. He brings it up on calls with vendors, clients, and anyone who will listen.

The result~1 hr

saved per person, per day

Each team member saves 15 minutes to an hour per day that was previously spent checking folders
New client documents are surfaced automatically without anyone opening Google Drive
The managing partner actively shows the system off to external contacts
Follow-up prioritization improved because the team always knows what's missing

01 / Before and after

The same work, two ways.

The manual wayWith Bell AI

Open Google Drive every morning.

Open Slack at the start of the day.

Click into each active client folder one at a time.

Read one summary message listing every new upload by client.

Note which files arrived overnight and which are still missing.

Flag any clients still missing requested documents.

Repeat for every client during tax season.

Move straight into billable work.

Before60 min/day

Clicking through client folders

After2 min/day

Reading one Slack summary

02 / The work

Where it stuck. What we built.

The challenge

Staff at a CPA firm in Westchester, NY were spending 15 minutes to an hour every day clicking through client folders in Google Drive. They were checking one thing: did the client upload what we asked for? During tax season, with dozens of active clients, this turned into a daily time sink. Nobody had a reliable way to know what came in and what was still outstanding.

The solution

We wrote a custom Google Apps Script that scans every client folder in Google Drive and detects new file uploads. That script feeds into a Make.com automation that formats the results and delivers a Slack summary to the team twice a day. Each message breaks down which files arrived, which client they belong to, and when they were uploaded. Nobody has to open a single folder to stay current.

03 / How we built it

Step by step.

Each step was tested against the team's real work before the next one started. A person reviews anything that matters before it goes out.

01Step 1 of 6

Mapped every active client folder in Google Drive to define the monitoring scope

02Step 2 of 6

Built a custom Google Apps Script to scan folders and detect new file uploads

03Step 3 of 6

Connected the script to a Make.com scenario that formats and delivers the results to Slack twice per day

04Step 4 of 6

Organized notifications by client name so the team can scan in seconds

05Step 5 of 6

Tested across file types, folder depths, and edge cases like bulk uploads

06Step 6 of 6

Deployed to the full team and refined the format based on their feedback

Tools

Google Apps Script
Make.com
Google Drive
Slack

In their words

“I show this to everyone. Every call we're on, I pull it up. It's so easy to read, I look forward to reading it every day.”

Managing Partner · CPA Firm, Westchester, NY

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The outcome

~15 min saved per bank statement

A good place to start

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