The problem
Two people spent every morning reconciling inventory counts between the floor system and the accounting system. The two disagreed constantly, most disagreements were benign timing differences, and the real discrepancies — the ones that cost money — were buried in the noise.
The approach
Rather than automate the existing comparison, we started by classifying a month of historical disagreements. Most fell into four predictable patterns that could be resolved automatically with confidence. What remained was small enough to review by hand.
The system was built to explain itself: every automatic resolution states which rule it applied, so the team could audit it into trust rather than being asked to take it on faith.
The result
The nightly run completes before anyone arrives. The morning review is a short list of genuine exceptions instead of a spreadsheet diff, and both people went back to work the business actually needed them for.