Overview

Google Apps Script is a powerful tool that brings the strength of Google's G Suite to you. As a lightweight application development platform, it allows you to streamline operations, automate repetitive tasks, and integrate with external systems, significantly enhancing productivity and efficiency in your accounting workflow.

Google Sheets allows numerous people to be working on the same file at once and with the ease of use connecting to other applications online, I wanted to showcase the power of a native online spreadsheet.

Use Cases

  1. Create Menus: Custom menus can be designed within Google Sheets that offer a tailored user experience. For accountants, this can mean developing custom add-ons to quickly navigate large datasets or executing specific tasks at the click of a button [send to QBO, re-format, etc]
  2. Data Manipulation: Google Apps Script can be used to automate data processing tasks such as sorting, cleaning, and formatting, which are common in accounting work. Additionally, you can develop scripts to pull data from multiple Sheets, or even from different G Suite applications, to consolidate information.
  3. Integrate with External Platforms (e.g., Zapier / Make): For instance, data from Google Sheets can be sent to Zapier to trigger other actions across different apps. This could be used to automatically create invoices in a separate accounting software when new entries are added to a Google Sheet.

Use AI to Create Scripts

The reality is most of us aren’t coders, and we never will be, but it doesn't mean that we can't harness the power of AI to create the scripts for us and give it a try.

When are you boil this down to its most simple elements, here are the steps to creating your own google app script: