Books current, brief by 8 — for a 6-person Dubai install crew
A founder-run smart-home business in Dubai, ~120 active projects, books a month behind. Anonymized at the customer’s request — this is also our own dogfood.
The problem
Receipts piled up in WhatsApp threads. Bank reconciliation lived in the owner’s head. The morning brief was a feeling — was the JBR install crewed, was Carpenco overdue, did the Mashreq balance match what felt right? The accountant chased PDFs once a week. Books closed about a month behind. Cash moves were made on instinct.
What changed
Tia took over expense capture at the source — crew forwarded receipt photos to WhatsApp, Tia drafted the Zoho entry, the owner confirmed in three taps. Daily Mashreq statement parsing closed the bank gap by 8am. The morning brief got terse when normal, action-suggesting when not. The accountant stopped chasing.
"I don’t open the Zoho dashboard anymore. The brief tells me what to look at, and the books are just current. The first month I didn’t notice — second month I realized I’d stopped carrying the cash position in my head."