data_entry_ops · services · workflow
Lido reduces Smoker CPA's data-entry time from 6–7 hours to 2 hours per return
Smoker CPA's clients — many of them Amish and Old Order Mennonite — delivered financial records as thick stacks of handwritten pages with no totals or structure, forcing interns to spend six to seven hours per return on manual data entry and pushing returns past the April 15 deadline.
How it works
Common implementation structure
How this type of workflow is generally built, generalized across documented cases — not tied to any one vendor's stack. Click any stage to read what happens there. Specific products that implement these stages appear in “Tools commonly seen” below.
Stage 1 · Handwritten documents arrive
Clients' handwritten financial records arrive as thick stacks of pages with no totals, no structure, and often barely legible penmanship.
Tools used
LidoAdobe
Outcome
Within the first two weeks of tax season, intern data-entry time fell from six to seven hours per return to two, at least tripling their speed. The firm filed significantly fewer extensions than the prior year, and Andrew estimates 99.9% extraction accuracy even on the worst handwriting.
What failed first
The firm went digital but the core manual burden remained — staff scanned documents into Adobe and still stamped totals onto pages by hand.
Results
Time savedsix to seven hours per return
Volumetwo hours per return
Grounding & classification
Source type: vendor customer story
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data extractiondocument aidocument classificationidpsummarizationtax formfailure mode describedmetric backednamed customerproduction runtime claimedsource backedtools describedworkflow describedprofessional servicesaccuracy improvementcycle time reductionemployee productivitytime savedvendor customer storydata entry opsfinance opsdocument to recordextract classify route