Automation

OnGravy’s automation is built on one rule: routine work runs itself; consequential work waits for a human. Everything below — Autopilot, recurring billing, collections, the AI agents — follows that rule, and every automated action lands in an audit feed with its reason attached. This chapter explains each layer, how to turn it on, and exactly where the human checkpoints are.

How automation is layered

Compliance Autopilot

/dashboard/autopilot is the control room for hands-off compliance. It shows today-at-a-glance — how many decisions were made, the rupee value auto-approved, and what got flagged — plus a full audit feed of every auto-action with the reason it was taken.

1. Open /dashboard/autopilot and switch on the master toggle. Nothing runs while it is off.
2. Set per-kind thresholds — each kind of decision gets its own limit, so “auto-approve ITC matches under ₹5,000” and “never touch payroll” can coexist.
3. Optionally opt in to zero-touch filing for the return types you trust it with. This is explicitly opt-in, never a default.
4. Check back on the at-a-glance strip; anything Autopilot was unsure about is flagged for you rather than guessed at.

Recurring invoices, retainers & standing instructions

Anything you bill or book on a rhythm can run on a schedule. All three are cron-driven — they fire on time whether or not anyone is logged in:

• Recurring invoices — define the template, cadence and customer; invoices are generated and numbered automatically each cycle.
• Retainers — recurring client billing for professional work (CA practices bill retainers the same way; see For Chartered Accountants).
• Standing instructions — recurring journal postings (rent, subscriptions, amortisations) booked automatically each period.

Pair recurring invoices with UPI Autopay mandates (Integrations) and the collection happens by itself too.

Dunning & AI collections

Two tools chase your receivables:

• Dunning (/dashboard/dunning) — rule-based reminder ladders: define stages (gentle nudge at 7 days, firmer at 21, escalation at 45) and OnGravy sends them on schedule.
• AI collections (/dashboard/ai-chase) — the collection agent reads each debtor’s history and drafts a tailored chase sequence: tone, timing and channel per party. You review the drafts; nothing is sent behind your back.

AI agents & the approval queue

Around 30 AI agents run on schedules against your live books. A sample of what they do:

The approval rule: every high-stakes action — filing a GST return, posting a journal entry, approving a payroll run, creating a purchase from a bill — queues for human approval at /dashboard/agent. Agents propose; you dispose. Optionally, pending approvals are pinged to Slack so the queue never goes stale (see Integrations).

1. Open /dashboard/agent to see the pending queue — each item carries the agent’s proposed action and its reasoning.
2. Approve, edit-then-approve, or reject. Rejections teach nothing silently — the item is logged with your decision.
3. Optionally wire the queue to a Slack channel under Settings → Notifications so approvals reach you where you work.

Decision finders — Today & Decisions

About 60 finders continuously check your books for things worth acting on: unclaimed credits, expiring deadlines, anomalies, stuck items. They power two surfaces:

• /dashboard/today — the command center you land on: what needs your attention today, ranked.
• /dashboard/decisions — the full decision backlog with history.

A monthly decisions-auto-act run clears the routine end of this list — but it only acts on decision kinds you have pre-approved. Everything else waits for a click.

Weekly insights, scheduled reports & morning briefs

• Weekly Business Insights (/dashboard/weekly-insights) — a Monday digest of segments, trends and scope-to-improve, computed from your live ledger. It also arrives as a WhatsApp digest on Monday mornings.
• Scheduled reports (Settings → Scheduled reports) — pick any report, a cadence and recipients; it ships itself.
• Morning briefs — a short start-of-day summary of cash, dues and what changed overnight.

Month-end GST orchestration

At month end, OnGravy orchestrates the GST cycle end-to-end: it compiles the returns from your books, validates them against the reviewer checks, and queues them for CA review. It never auto-submits a return — filing is a human act, taken from the queue. The mechanics of the returns themselves are covered in GST & compliance (India).

One-click Monthly Close

/dashboard/monthly-close collapses the entire period-end routine into one guided action: it runs a readiness check, then computes and posts the period-end adjusting entries automatically — depreciation, accruals, prepayment amortization and a tax provision — and finally locks the month (Merkle-sealed) so nothing can be backdated into it. Preview writes nothing; only Commit posts and locks. A blocking check refuses the close unless you deliberately override. Full walkthrough in Month-end & advisory.

Gotchas & good to know

• Autopilot is off until you turn it on, and does nothing outside the per-kind thresholds you set. “It didn’t auto-approve” usually means the item exceeded its threshold — by design.
• Zero-touch filing is opt-in per return type. Enabling Autopilot alone does not enable it.
• The approval queue is the single choke point. If an agent seems “stuck”, check /dashboard/agent — odds are it is waiting for you.
• Every auto-action is auditable. The Autopilot feed records what was done and why; the broader audit trail is covered in Teams & permissions.
• Month-end GST never submits by itself. Compiled and validated returns sit in review until a person files them.
• AI collections drafts, dunning sends. If you want fully unattended reminders, use dunning ladders; use AI chase when you want tailored sequences you sign off on.
• Want to drive automation from your own systems? The events these flows emit are available as signed webhooks — see API & webhooks.