Automations: schedule and run tasks automatically

What are Automations?

With Automations, Arcarius takes over recurring work for you – automatically and on schedule. You describe a task once; from then on Arcarius handles it by itself and puts the result straight into your chat.

An example: Every Monday morning an up-to-date list of overdue receivables is waiting in your chat – checked, prioritised and ready to follow up. Without you having to remember or start anything.

This replaces the same manual requests in One-on-One and means you never forget a recurring check again. Typical tasks you can automate:

• identifying missing receipts and preparing them as an Excel list
• detecting incorrectly posted transactions and preparing rebooking suggestions
• monitoring overdue receivables and prioritising them
• calculating KPIs, explaining changes and creating a management update
• preparing weekly overviews with open receivables, due payables and liquidity
• preparing emails or follow-up questions for customers or clients
• creating recurring reports, Excel, Word or PDF files

You can find a large selection of templates directly in the module.

How do Automations work?

You can find Automations as a module in the left sidebar, directly below One-on-One.

• Schedule from hourly to yearly – or once. Choose “Every hour”, “Every day”, “Every week”, “Every month”, “Quarter”, “Half year”, “Year” or Once. For special cases there is a Custom recurrence, and an automation can have multiple schedules. All times run in Zurich time.
• Results directly in the chat. Each run starts in the background and streams live into the chat – answers, tables and files stay in one place, even when you’re not logged in.
• It learns. Under Learned context (Memory) Arcarius keeps important instructions – from your corrections and from successful runs – and takes them into account next time.

Create an Automation

Via New automation you have three ways:

1. Template – choose from the suggestions (accounting, clients, controlling …). The form is pre-filled; you only adjust it.
2. Create manually – fill in the fields yourself.
3. Create with Arcarius – describe in the chat what you need. Arcarius briefly explains how automations work, asks a few questions and proposes a ready-made automation that you confirm with one click.

Tip: You can also turn a chat result directly into an automation via Set up as automation.

The fields in the form:

• Automation name – enter a name.
• Prompt – explain the task to Arcarius (see tips).
• Trigger – when and how often it runs (down to hourly, once, or custom).
• Attachments (optional) – e.g. an Excel template for Arcarius to fill in.
• Memory (optional) – additional instructions for this automation.
• Notifications (optional) – see below.

Manage Automations

In the module you see all automations with status, rhythm and next execution, plus tiles such as Active automations, Next execution and Total runs.

• Run now – start a run immediately, without waiting for the schedule.
• Pause / Activate – via the switch (Active/Paused).
• Edit or Delete – when deleting, the existing run history is kept.
• Run History – a dedicated tab with status, duration and notification per run.

You can also change, pause, activate or delete an automation directly in the chat with Arcarius – it shows you a summary to confirm first.

Notifications

Enable Mail after completion so that selected members receive an email after each run. For the email content you choose between Completion info only and Completion info + agent answer + attachments.

Who can manage Automations?

Members with the Manage automations permission can create and manage automations. As an organization admin you control under Collaboration & permissions whether staff may do so. External clients can only create and see their own automations. More on roles: Organization, teams & roles.

Organization-wide automations

If you manage multiple companies in one organization, you can set up an automation once, centrally and roll it out to multiple companies automatically – so the same monthly check runs across all your mandates, for example, without setting it up in each company separately. As an organization admin, you manage these in the organization-wide automations area.

• Choose the scope: All companies (newly created companies are included automatically) or Selected companies.
• Managed centrally: In the individual companies, these automations appear as managed by the organization and are read-only there – definition, schedule, attachments and notifications are maintained centrally.
• Email summary: Optionally, each run sends a compact summary – with links to the corresponding chats – to the organization owner, administrators or mandate leads. Each person receives at most one email per execution wave.

Note: For organization-wide automations, the one-time run is currently not available.

More on roles and the organization: Organization, teams & roles.

Tips

• If you want documents in a specific format or with specific content, add an attachment and ask Arcarius to fill in that template.
• For a good prompt, imagine Arcarius is an expert in its field but new to your company: give clear instructions on what to do, what is “special” at your company, and what the result should look like. Narrow the task down, for example to specific accounts and time periods.
• Create a separate automation for each task and avoid mixing different topics.

Example of a good prompt:

“Review the usual operating expenses (accounts 6*) from the last month for invoices that may need to be capitalized. Consider transactions with an amount of CHF 1,000 or more and prepare the reclassification entries as of the transaction date for posting to the appropriate fixed asset account.”

Demo