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Case · Around the Cycle

No finance team. Books closed Monday.

Around the Cycle moved its books onto AI. Now a person checks only what doesn’t match.

Start the conversation See what was built
  • Multi-channel bike shop
  • About 11 full-time people
  • Hundreds of vendors

The booksReal

Before

Months behind, and growing

Now

Closed the next day, every Monday

Finance over 90% automated. A person reviews about 3 hours a week.

Jan–Sep 2026 vs 2025

Same team. Far more business.

revenue per person
+25%
revenue
+29%
people, 10.6 to 11.1 full-time
+4%

Marketing drove much of the growth. Automation is how the same team carried it.

Before

A full-time job. Still behind.

An outside firm had the books for nine months and left them worse. A full-time hire still couldn’t catch up.

Accounts payableReal

Before · about 40 hours a week

  • Hundreds of vendors, each with its own terms
  • Every payment that didn’t match, dug out by hand
  • Bills still owed to companies that had closed

Now · exceptions only

  • Sales and payments reconciled every day
  • Each payment matched to its own invoice
  • Only a true mismatch reaches a person

What was built

Rules for the routine. AI for the judgment.

Built on the systems the shop already ran. Anything uncertain goes to a person.

1Every system

  • Point of sale
  • Online store
  • eBay
  • Vendor invoices
  • Purchase orders
  • Vendor portals
  • Bank

2Checked

Rules
What matches what, and which account it goes to.
AI
Knows every vendor’s terms and works out why a payment doesn’t match.

3Books closed

The ledger
Sales, payments and bills reconciled to the bank, every day.
A person
Signs off on anything uncertain, and files the sales tax.

One bill

Billed twice. Written off.

A supplier billed one order twice. Nobody caught it in time, the supplier closed, and the money was gone.

One order, today’s checkReal figures

  1. Purchase order$2,737.78On file
  2. Bill$2,737.78Matches order
  3. Same order, billed again$2,737.78To a person
  • Overcharges found
  • Every early-pay discount taken
  • Errors between systems caught

Nobody was replaced

The bookkeeper became the GM.

Hired for

Finance and admin

Full time, and the books still backlogged.

Since Sept 1, 2026

General manager

Runs the shop day to day.

Automation didn’t replace him. It promoted him and freed me up.

Ryan Weeks, owner, Around the Cycle
owner hours a week in operations, down from 40
10

The GM and AGM run the day to day. The owner’s time went to leadership, and to more AI at the shop.

What it took

Four months, while running the shop.

to build
~4 mo
hours, about 15 a week
~250
a month in software to run it
$100

  • What went wrong first

    It paid the oldest bill first.

    Nobody could tell which invoice a payment settled. It was rebuilt to match every payment to its own invoice.

  • What the owner would change

    Rank the work first.

    The first builds were whatever was loudest. Ranking by return and effort would have gotten there sooner.

Where the owner would start

Quick wins first, ranked by return.

What would you hand off first?

Tell us the work. A partner will reply.

Or email hello@drovegroup.com