Utility usage and cost report generation

Purpose

1.1. Automate collection and aggregation of utility data (electricity, water, gas) for Icelandic restaurants.
1.2. Automate retrieval of bills and usage data from supplier or smart meter APIs.
1.3. Automate generation of detailed cost and usage reports for financial and sustainability audits.
1.4. Automate scheduled report delivery to accountants, operations, and management.
1.5. Automate alerts for abnormal consumption trends, enabling cost control and proactive maintenance.

Trigger Conditions

2.1. New bill or usage data available from supplier API (e.g., monthly).
2.2. Pre-scheduled time interval (e.g., automate every first day of month).
2.3. Significant deviation from baseline consumption detected by bot.
2.4. Upon accounting system triggering period-end report automation.
2.5. Manual trigger by finance/admin through chatbot or dashboard.

Platform Variants

3.1. Microsoft Power Automate
• Feature/Setting: Scheduled flow; automate pulling data from Azure SQL, exporting to PDF, emailing stakeholders.
3.2. Zapier
• Feature/Setting: Multi-step zap; automate utility API polling, Google Sheets update, automatic Gmail report dispatch.
3.3. Make (Integromat)
• Feature/Setting: HTTP and PDF modules; automate fetching invoices, compiling reports, Slack notification.
3.4. AWS Lambda
• Feature/Setting: Scheduled Lambda; automate API data pulls, S3 report storage, SES email automation.
3.5. Google Apps Script
• Feature/Setting: Time-driven trigger; automate parsing email invoices into Sheets, generating graphs, sending summaries.
3.6. Google Data Studio
• Feature/Setting: Scheduled data source refresh; automate visual reports, auto-share with finance group.
3.7. Tableau Cloud
• Feature/Setting: Automated extract refresh; mail dashboards on schedule to recipients.
3.8. Power BI
• Feature/Setting: Dataflow automation; attach scheduled report to email for cost center managers.
3.9. QuickBooks Online
• API: “Attach Bill” and “Expense Report” endpoints; automate report-attachment to monthly journals.
3.10. Xero
• API: “Get Invoices” and “Reports” endpoints; automate pulling utility expense lines into monthly summaries.
3.11. Slack
• Feature/Setting: Scheduled or event-based alerts; automate message to finance channel with cost report link.
3.12. Twilio SendGrid
• API: “Mail Send” endpoint; automate delivery of PDFs to auditor emails, confirming automated document delivery.
3.13. Dropbox
• API: “/files/upload”; automate historical report storage with structured bindings.
3.14. Google Drive
• API: “Files: create”; automate syncing generated reports for department access.
3.15. DocuSign
• API: “Envelopes:create”; automate report delivery with electronic acknowledgment.
3.16. Jira
• API: “Issue Create”; automate utility overage events as support tickets for investigation.
3.17. Notion
• API: “Pages: create”; automate monthly report records in finance workspace.
3.18. Monday.com
• API: “Create Item”; automate financial tracking pulse with attached usage and cost summary.
3.19. Oracle NetSuite
• API: “customRecord”; automate record of itemized utility expenses by location.
3.20. IBM Watson Assistant
• Feature/Setting: Conversational bot trigger; automate on-demand report generation via chat request.

Benefits

4.1. Automates repetitive administrative tasks, reducing manual error and labor.
4.2. Automated access to up-to-date reports boosts decision-making speed for Icelandic restaurants.
4.3. Automation enables early detection of anomalies, supporting sustainability and cost savings.
4.4. Automator configuration allows scale across multiple locations, onboarding new branches easily.
4.5. Automatedly centralizes all reports, ensuring regulatory and audit compliance efficiently.