Four questions, four answers. The full report covers the rigor in depth; this companion shows the shape of what was recommended and why.
Out of 30+ platforms evaluated, the recommended stack uses 13 tools. Most are already in use at Celestial Beerworks and stay where they are; the rest are additions that fit alongside what exists. Click any tool to see its role, what it replaces or augments, and what was considered for the same slot.
Each tool in the recommended stack has a defined role and a defined boundary. The interactive panel above carries the same source-of-truth language the full audit uses, including what was rejected for the same slot.
Today, books close six to seven weeks behind operations. The cadence tightens at each stage: about a week by Stage 3, and 3 to 5 days at Stage 4 steady state. Each step below names what happens, who touches it, and what is produced.
The workflow scheduler triggers and pulls Square sales by location, Brewww production and distribution, bank statements via Plaid, payroll exports, loan statements, vendor invoices from Gmail, and PayPal activity.
Each pull writes a structured success or failure row to the audit log and drops raw payloads to a dated Drive folder.
Square data is parsed into journal-shaped records with net sales, sales tax, tips, and processing fees split correctly. Brewww distribution invoices reconcile against payment ACH credits. Bank and card transactions categorize by rule, with low-confidence items routed to a single judgment-layer call for one-shot categorization plus a proposed rule for next month.
Loan payments split using amortization schedules on file. Payroll posts journals by department.
The bookkeeper receives a daily digest listing the entries posted by automation, items awaiting approval, and exceptions needing triage. Most entries are accepted by default; rejections trigger a one-click rollback and an exception row for diagnosis.
The bookkeeper's effective work is review-and-certify rather than enter-and-categorize. Books are clean by the end of week one.
Triggered by close certification, filing prep workflows release files in sync with their statutory due dates: TABC AIMS excise on the 15th, Comptroller sales tax on the 20th, Comptroller alcohol sales report on the 25th, and quarterly TTB Brewer's Report when applicable.
Every filing passes through a per-filing approval gate. Files release to a Drive folder; Celestial uploads to the regulator portal.
Bank-feed pulls, vendor invoice intake from Gmail, distribution invoice status checks, and vendor-aging refreshes run continuously between month-ends. Ad-hoc questions are answered conversationally through the judgment layer, with the dashboard always reflecting the current period.
n8n handles deterministic workflows on a structured execution graph. Claude Cowork handles judgment-required calls in a stateless judgment layer. Google Drive holds the durable audit trail. QuickBooks Online stays the source of truth.
flowchart LR
SRC["Source Systems
Brewww · Square · ANBTX
Auris · Gmail · PayPal
FinTech · Plaid"]:::src
N8N["n8n Cloud Starter
Pull · Normalize
Reconcile · Filing Prep
Reporting"]:::auto
COWORK["Claude Cowork
Categorization fallback
Anomaly investigation
Prose summaries
Ad-hoc Q and A"]:::judge
DRIVE["Google Drive
Durable audit log
Prepared filings
Raw data archives"]:::store
QBO["QuickBooks Online
Class plus location
Source of truth
Dashboard"]:::books
GATES["Approval Gates
Compliance Console
Telegram inline
Seven gates total"]:::human
REGS["Regulatory Portals
TABC AIMS · TTB Pay.gov
Comptroller Webfile
Comptroller eSystems"]:::regs
SRC -->|scheduled pulls| N8N
N8N <-->|judgment nodes| COWORK
N8N -->|every run| DRIVE
COWORK -->|read context, write artifacts| DRIVE
N8N -->|narrow tagged writes| QBO
QBO -->|read for dashboard| N8N
N8N -->|queue per-filing approval| GATES
GATES -->|approve and release| N8N
GATES -->|file hash and timestamp| DRIVE
GATES -.->|human uploads| REGS
REGS -.->|confirmation receipt| DRIVE
classDef src fill:#e6edf2,stroke:#4a6b80,stroke-width:1px,color:#1a2730;
classDef auto fill:#fbeec8,stroke:#9a7e2e,stroke-width:1.5px,color:#3a2e10;
classDef judge fill:#ede2f5,stroke:#6b3e9a,stroke-width:1px,color:#2e1a48;
classDef store fill:#e2efe4,stroke:#3e7a4e,stroke-width:1px,color:#1a3020;
classDef books fill:#fae0e0,stroke:#9a3e3e,stroke-width:1px,color:#3a1010;
classDef human fill:#fff5d6,stroke:#b87333,stroke-width:1.5px,color:#3a2410;
classDef regs fill:#f5d4d4,stroke:#7a2828,stroke-width:2px,color:#3a0808;
Every regulated output passes through an evidence-collectible human approval step before submission. Automation prepares; humans approve; humans upload. The automation layer never files.
The before-and-after below is operational, not financial. The full audit covers the cost model in depth; this section names what the system looks like when it is running, and how the daily work changes for the people inside the brewery.
| Dimension | Today | Recommended future state |
|---|---|---|
| Books visibility | Six to seven weeks behind operations; the books trail what is actually happening at the brewery. | Certified close in 3 to 5 days at Stage 4 steady state. Per-line-of-business margin readable on close certification. |
| Ad-hoc analytics turnaround | Days of spreadsheet work to answer "how are events doing this month" or "where is margin being compressed." | Seconds of natural-language query against the same clean data the dashboard reads. |
| Regulatory posture | Nine named data-integrity errors flow into TABC, TTB, and Comptroller filings; exposure on every cycle. | Clean books, per-filing reconciliation, evidence-collectible approval trail, structured audit log in Drive. |
| Dashboard availability | Month-old summaries assembled by hand; no per-channel margin view; the "selling more, doing less well" question is unanswerable. | Live per-line-of-business P&L on QBO Advanced Performance Center or Sheets fallback; refreshed continuously. |
| Bookkeeper role | Do the close: hours spent entering, reconciling, and categorizing transactions across systems. | Certify the close: review the day's automation-posted entries, approve the queue, triage exceptions. |
Three roles, three different shifts. Click each to see how the future state changes their daily work.
Stage 1 is independent of who implements it. The list below is the readiness gate the recommended architecture depends on, regardless of build path.
The nine documented issues in the current-state catalog are corrected. Square mapping, sales-tax coding, credit-card payment treatment, loan splits, and channel-level COGS allocation are all in scope.
Credentials and account access for the integrated platforms (QuickBooks, Square, Brewww, ANBTX, the credit card issuer, Auris Payroll, Gmail) are gathered and tested. Provided by Celestial as part of normal onboarding.
The pre-build verification block confirms the QB connector path, Brewww historical COGS spot-check, Brewww API rate-limit ceiling, and Plaid coverage for the bank and the credit-card issuer.