CPA Practice Advisor - 22

THE 21ST CENTURY ACCOUNTANT

HOW

Robotic Process
Automation Tools Work

THE EARLY STAGES of robotic process automation (RPA) are usually centered around
automating routine tasks, such as copying data from an Excel sheet into a web form and
pressing submit. This column will discuss some of the tools which are available to help
users create these scripts, also called "bots" using low-code/no-code bot creation tools,
which are designed for use by non-programmers (like accounting professionals) to automate
simple tasks. These simple tasks can be combined into more complex routines, and over
time, assembled into automated workflow routines. The completed bots can often perform
repetitive tasks more quickly and more accurately than onshore or offshore human labor.

Many RPA solutions are designed
to be used by business users like
accounting professionals, and while
some tasks will still require the
assistance of an IT professional,
with some training, these "low-code/
no-code" tools can bring the power
of programmed process automation
to end users. In a low-code/no-code
development environment, the goal
of the platform is to provide enough
structure so that non-programmers
have enough wizards, structure, and
help that they can use the application effectively while not crippling
the productivity of expert programmers. Some of the tools used to help
bridge the gap between business
users and programmers include:
■ Action recorders, which monitor
and record the inputs while a
human performs a task and are
then used to replay those same

22

JULY 2019 ■

actions (mouse movement and
typing) repeatedly.
■ Screen scrapers and OCR tools,
which allow users to extract data
from web pages, applications, and
PDF files
■ Spreadsheet interfaces, which allow
users to record, store, retrieve, copy,
and paste data from spreadsheet
applications
■ Action triggers, which automatically initiate a task when an event
occurs (e.g. an e-mail message
arrives, a file is placed in a specific
folder)
These tools are combined with
a structured development interface (like Automation Anywhere's
workbench) which uses menus and
wizards to create, edit, and append
the small routines created with
the other tools into a larger, more
complex solution. For example, I cre-

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ated a bot which logs into a website,
retrieves a column of data from
Excel, records each row of retrieved
data into a form, and presses the
"submit" button on the web page.
This routine was created using the
following steps:
■ The action recorder was used to
launch the web browser, log into
the website, navigate to the web
page with the form.
■ The action recorder watched the
inputs when I manually entered a
sample record into the form, and
then pressed submit to record it in
the web application.
■ A wizard-like structured development interface (workbench) was
utilized to create a routine that
opens an Excel workbook, selects
a specific tab (sheet), and then
extracts the data into the computers
memory.
■ The workbench was then used to
create a bot which combined the
instructions (code) and data from
previous steps into a "loop" that
entered the data from each row of
the spreadsheet into the web form
and pressed submit.
The total time investment
required to create, troubleshoot, and
test this bot was about 30 minutes
(compared to approximately 10 minutes to manually key the fifty lines
of data into the form), meaning that
this routine will save time for the
user after it is used 180 times. While

BRIAN F. TANKERSLEY

CPA.CITP, CGMA (@BFTCPA, CPATechBlog.com
K2 Enterprises
brian.tankersley@cpapracticeadvisor.com

this simple bot does not analytically
review the data for reasonableness
like a human could, the bot has
a number of other advantages,
including:
■ The bot will work 24 hours a day, 7
days a week, and doesn't require a
lunch break or employee benefits
■ Where humans can make an error
keying data into a form, the bot
will simply copy the data from
the spreadsheet into the form,
meaning that, assuming the data
is accurate in the spreadsheet, the
data recorded will be more accurate
than the input from a human
■ As long as the format of the website
and the layout of the Excel spreadsheet do not change, the bot should
not require any maintenance.
It is my belief that RPA represents a significant opportunity for
the profession to allow our professional staff to perform more meaningful work, and the monitoring and
troubleshooting of these bots will
require your team to develop new
skills. By automating the busy work
associated with routine tasks like
taking data from one application and
entering it into another one, we can
make our practices more efficient
and help our teams have work which
is both challenging and rewarding.
While it will take months or years for
your firm to develop and implement
automation, your firm cannot realize
the benefits of RPA until you make
the required investments in your
technology, people, and processes
to effectively integrate it into your
daily work routines. ■
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