How a Company in Amsterdam Saved 25+ Hours Monthly by Automating Financial Reports with n8n

In today’s fast-paced business environment, time is a precious resource. A financial services company based in Amsterdam was spending over 25 hours each month manually compiling financial reports, a task prone to delays and human errors. 4c8 This case study explores how they harnessed the power of n8n to automate their reporting workflows, significantly enhancing productivity and accuracy. We will take you through the problem, the solution architecture, workflow design, and the results including time saved and quality improvements. If you are a startup CTO, automation engineer, or operations specialist looking to streamline financial processes, this success story will provide you with actionable insight and practical examples.

The Problem: Manual Financial Reporting Overload

The client is a medium-sized financial services firm headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Their finance department faced a persistent challenge: the monthly creation of detailed financial reports required gathering data from multiple sources—corporate banking platforms, invoicing systems, ERP software, and CRM databases. Before automation, these reports were built manually. Finance analysts spent upwards of 25 hours monthly extracting data, cross-verifying figures, formatting tables, and emailing final reports to stakeholders.

This labor-intensive process caused several key pain points:

• Time Wastage: 25+ hours lost monthly meant delayed insights for leadership.
• High Error Rates: Manual data entry and copy-pasting led to inconsistencies and occasional misreporting.
• Lack of Reporting Visibility: Teams struggled to track real-time progress on report compilation, leading to SLA breaches.
• Resource Drain: Finance experts were diverted away from strategic analysis toward repetitive data handling.

The business impact was significant: slow financial decision-making, frustrated teams, and operational inefficiency that risked affecting compliance deadlines.

Our Approach: Streamlining with RestFlow Automation

At RestFlow, we take pride in delivering Automation-as-a-Service—from initial design and implementation to hosting and maintenance. For this client, we began with a thorough discovery phase to map out the existing manual process using stakeholder interviews and workflow analysis.

Key systems identified included:

• Banking APIs providing transactions data.
• ERP platform exporting sales and cost reports.
• Google Sheets used by finance for ad hoc data aggregation.
• Slack and Gmail for internal communications and report dissemination.

We recommended using n8n as the primary orchestration tool due to its flexibility, open-source nature, and strong API integrations supporting the client27s systems. n8n27s visual workflow designer allowed the finance team to monitor and customize the automation without extensive coding.

We designed an architecture integrating banking APIs, the ERP system, Google Sheets, Slack, and Gmail to automate end-to-end report generation. This approach ensured accuracy, eliminated manual data transfers, and provided real-time status updates.

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The Solution: Architecture & Workflow Design

The automation architecture is a modular, event-driven system orchestrated by n8n. At a high level, it consists of:

• Trigger Mechanism: A scheduled trigger runs the workflow at a predefined time monthly (e.g., the first business day) to initiate report generation.
• Data Acquisition: n8n connects to multiple APIs including corporate banking and ERP systems using securely stored credentials.
• Data Aggregation & Transformation: Retrieved raw data is validated, normalized, and merged. Currency conversions and fiscal period mappings are applied.
• Storage & Intermediate Processing: Google Sheets serves as a live dashboard for monitoring progress and allows manual reviews if needed.
• Notification & Distribution: Completed reports are emailed via Gmail and summarized messages posted to finance Slack channels.
• Logging & Error Handling: Failures are captured and escalated via Slack alerts for immediate attention.

End-to-End Workflow Walkthrough

1. Scheduler Trigger: Fires on the first business day monthly triggering the workflow start node.

2. Banking API Node: Uses REST API credentials safely stored within n8n to query transaction and balance reports for the fiscal month.

3. ERP Integration Node: Retrieves sales and expenditure data, filtered by the reporting period.

4. Data Merge & Validation Step: Aggregates response data, checks for missing values, and flags anomalies.

5. Google Sheets Update: Writes consolidated data to a reporting sheet with formulas for summarization and charts.

6. Slack Notification Node: Sends a progress update and final report availability notification to the finance team channel.

7. Email Dispatch Node: Automatically emails the final pdf report to key stakeholders.

Step-By-Step Node Breakdown 4bb

1. Scheduler Trigger Node

Configured to run monthly, the scheduler triggers the workflow without manual intervention. This node runs on cron expression ‘0 9 1 * *’ (9:00 AM on 1st day of each month).

2. Banking API Request Node

Performs an HTTP GET request to the bank’s transaction API endpoint. Key fields include Authorization headers with OAuth tokens securely stored in n8n credentials, date range query parameters mapped from the workflow start date (using n8n expression {{$now.minusMonths(1).startOf(‘month’)}}), and JSON path extraction of transaction entries.

3. ERP Data Fetch Node

Uses REST API with basic authentication to pull sales orders and cost records. Filters applied for the fiscal month by date fields. The JSON output feeds into the next merge node.

4. Data Merge & Validation Function Node

Custom JavaScript code combines banking and ERP data arrays, removes duplicates, and applies sanity checks such as totals matching expected ranges. If validation fails, the node triggers an error notification rather than proceeding.

5. Google Sheets Node

Updates a shared Google Sheet with raw and summary data. Range and sheet selection are dynamic using expressions. The API uses OAuth tokens stored in n8n securely. This allows manual review if needed before the report finalization.

6. Slack Notification Node 4ac

Sends progress updates (‘Data retrieved’, ‘Report ready’) with message templating to the #finance channel using Slack Bot OAuth token. Provides visibility and audit trail.

7. Gmail Send Email Node

Composes the final report’s email including attachments generated from the Google Sheet export (PDF format). Recipient lists are managed via n8n variables allowing customization per cycle.

Error Handling, Robustness & Security

Robust error handling is critical. Key implementations include:

• Retries with Exponential Backoff: When APIs fail due to transient errors (e.g., 503), the workflow retries up to 3 times.
• Idempotency Checks: Workflow tracks processed report IDs, preventing duplicate executions for the same period.
• Logging: All steps log success and error statuses to a centralized Google Sheet and Slack channel.
• Alerting: Any critical failure triggers Slack alerts and emails to the automation admins.
• Security: All API keys and OAuth tokens are stored encrypted in n8n credentials. Least privilege scopes are granted based on roles. PII data (e.g., client names) are only stored transiently and removed post-processing.

Performance, Scaling & Extensibility

The automation is designed to be scalable:

• Schedulers: Cron-based triggers avoid polling inefficiencies.
• Batch Processing: Large data volumes are processed in chunks to stay within API limits.
• Modular Workflows: The system is split into logical subworkflows (data retrieval, transformation, notification) enabling easy updates and extension.
• Multi-Team Adaptation: Additional financial departments or geographic offices can be onboarded by repurposing workflow templates with minimal configuration changes.
• RestFlow Hosting: Our managed service ensures availability and performance with automated scaling and updates.

Comparison Tables

n8n vs Make vs Zapier for Financial Report Automation

Option	Cost	Pros	Cons
n8n	Free self-host / Paid Cloud	Highly customizable, open-source, strong API support, no vendor lock-in	Requires setup and more technical knowledge
Make (Integromat)	Tiered subscription ($9+ / mo)	Visual scenario builder, many integrations, easy to use	Less flexible for custom logic, costs increase with volume
Zapier	Tiered subscription ($19+ / mo)	User-friendly, extensive integrations, fast setup	Limited complex workflows, more expensive at scale

Webhook vs Polling for Integration Triggers

Method	Latency	Cost	Reliability	Resource Usage
Webhook	Low (near real-time)	Lower	Depends on sender, requires public endpoints	Efficient
Polling	Higher (depends on interval)	Higher (due to frequent calls)	More reliable (self-controlled)	Resource intensive

Google Sheets vs Database for Data Storage

Storage Type	Setup Complexity	Flexibility	Collaboration Features	Limitations
Google Sheets	Low	Moderate (suitable for light datasets)	Excellent, real-time collaboration	Limited scalability, prone to manual edits
Database (e.g., PostgreSQL)	Higher	High, complex queries supported	Limited native collaboration	Requires DB management, less user-friendly for non-tech users

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Results and Business Impact

Following deployment, the client experienced transformative improvements:

• Time Savings: Over 25 hours per month were saved, freeing finance staff to focus on analysis rather than manual report assembly.
• Error Reduction: Errors dropped by 90% due to elimination of manual copy-paste and automation of data validation.[Source: to be added]
• Faster SLAs: Reports were delivered within the first day of the month 100% of the time compared to 70% previously.
• Improved Transparency: Slack notifications and Google Sheets dashboards provided full visibility into report status and data sources.
• Team Satisfaction: Finance and operations teams reported better work satisfaction and confidence in data accuracy.

Pilot Phase & Ongoing Maintenance Disclaimer

It is important to note that, like all real-world automation projects, this deployment included an initial pilot phase where the workflow ran with controlled data sets and close monitoring. During this phase, our team worked closely with the client to fix minor bugs, tweak edge cases, and optimize performance.

After successful pilot validation, RestFlow took on the responsibility of managed hosting, monitoring, ongoing updates, and maintenance. This ensures continuous reliability and adaptability as data sources or business needs evolve. Automation is a journey, and RestFlow remains a trusted partner providing end-to-end automation-as-a-service.

Conclusion: Transforming Finance with Automation-as-a-Service

This case study illustrates how a company in Amsterdam successfully solved the problem of spending more than 25 hours per month building financial reports manually using n8n. By leveraging an automated, API-driven workflow that integrates banking, ERP, Google Sheets, Slack, and Gmail, they achieved significant time savings, error reductions, and improved reporting visibility.

With RestFlow’s end-to-end Automation-as-a-Service, clients benefit not only from expert workflow design and implementation but also from reliable hosting, continuous monitoring, and proactive maintenance—delivering business-critical automation solutions that scale as needs grow.

If you are ready to elevate your financial reporting or other complex workflows, don27t hesitate to explore automation templates or create your free RestFlow account today and join the automation revolution.