Education
Scattered subscriptions replaced by one system — a 20× cut in running costs
A single payment used to be typed into four places: the CRM, a cash book in Excel, a spreadsheet, and a subscription accounting service. Now it is entered once, and the school owns the system that holds it.
A private language school. Group and individual classes, student accounts, several payment channels, outsourced bookkeeping.
cut in running costs
systems of entry merged into one
of manual re-entry removed
the school owns the system, not a subscription
Problem 1
One payment, four systems
A student pays, and it begins: enter it in the CRM, write it in the cash book, duplicate it in a spreadsheet, categorise it in the cloud accounting service. Every payment, four times, by hand, each pass a chance to mistype. Moving data between systems cost about two hours every day — and none of that work produced anything a customer would pay for.
Solution 1
One bot collects all the school's money
Cash and card payments go in with a single command; online payments arrive on their own by webhook. The system credits the student's personal account, categorises the payment, and prepares the daily cash report overnight.
Problem 2
Paying a subscription for someone else's tool
A cloud accounting service is universal by design: half of what it does the school does not need, and the part it does need — an API integration — is sold separately and priced accordingly. The subscription is charged every month, the data sits with a third party, and the school lives inside someone else's roadmap.
Solution 2
The school's own system, on the school's own server
Management accounting moved off the subscription into a system built around how this school actually works: cash flow, categories, directions, plan versus actual. It covers accounting, HR and management reporting in one place, and it belongs to the business permanently. Running costs fell by a factor of twenty.
Solution 3
Handed over so it keeps evolving without me
I set up an AI-assisted working environment for the school's finance manager and trained her to extend the system herself. She now ships changes to it — new reports, new categories, adjustments to how a process works — without me in the loop. That was the point: a system only one person can change is a dependency, not an asset.
One payment typed into four systems
About two hours a day moving data between systems
Management accounting rented from a cloud subscription
Only the consultant can change anything
One command — everything else follows automatically
Minutes: enter expenses, check the report
The school's own system, on the school's own server
The finance manager extends it herself
What changed
cut in running costs
Scattered subscriptions and outsourced bookkeeping replaced by one owned system
instead of four points of entry
Payments collected through a bot and a customer portal in one place
instead of ~2 hours a day
Categorisation happens automatically as the payment lands
required to keep it moving
The finance manager was trained to extend the system herself
Under the hood
What this is built from
- Telegram bot + customer portal for payments
- Webhooks from the online payment provider
- Own ERP for management accounting, on the school's own server
- Python, systemd, nightly reporting jobs
- Handover: AI-assisted working environment for the school's finance manager
Let’s talkabout your bottleneck
Hiring, a project, or a second opinion on an agent design — Telegram is the fastest way to reach me. I read everything myself.
mail [at] artemborisov.ru
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