Working notes, with real numbers
Most AI content is written to sell something. These are engineering notes from building and running production systems — including the parts that argue against buying from us.
ACCOUNTS PAYABLE
Accounts payable automation: buy the software, or build the invoice pipeline?
When AP software is enough, when a custom invoice pipeline pays back, and the Canadian-dollar arithmetic for both.
ACCOUNTING
AI in accounting: what a firm should automate first
The client document pile is where it pays first - and your practice software may already do part of it.
BUILD VS BUY
Zapier alternatives, honestly compared
When Make or n8n is enough, when Copilot Studio fits, and when no workflow tool will do the job.
Economics
What AI automation actually costs in Canadian dollars
The gap between "AI is cheap" and the invoice. Real per-token arithmetic on a 5,000-document-a-month workload, what the cloud line adds, and why the model API is almost never the expensive part.
Residency
Where your data actually goes when you use a US AI platform
A practical walk through the request path — your app, the vendor's servers, the model provider's region — and what Canadian privacy law, U.S. sectoral rules and a procurement reviewer will each want to know about it.
Evaluation
Why a self-graded accuracy score isn't accuracy
Several agent platforms will generate their own evaluation criteria from the prompt, then score themselves against it. Here's how to build a held-out labelled set instead, how big it needs to be, and how to freeze it.
Judgement
When not to automate a process
Four situations where automation loses money — low volume, unstable upstream process, exceptions that outnumber the happy path, and a task where being wrong is expensive. Written by someone who gets paid to build it.
No newsletter, no gate, no lead magnet. If you want to know when something's up, the sitemap is public and so is everything here.
Have a process worth measuring?
The readiness assessment applies this thinking to your operation — volume, cost per task, payback, and an honest read on whether automating it makes money.
See the assessment