Purpose-built for auditors: how PB&H automates government audit work with Excel Agents

Challenge: Volumes of disorganized data and tedious manual work 

The Government Assurance, Consulting & Advisory department at Pattillo, Brown & Hill (PB&H) works with local governments across Texas, including cities, counties, and school districts. They manage high volumes of client data that arrives disorganized, inconsistently formatted, and often in large, unwieldy PDFs. 

On top of that, procedures like formatting trial balances, footing financial statements, and preparing data uploads consumed hours of staff time that could have been spent on higher-level work.

"Once we got into Excel Agents, the possibilities started to open up. It performs a dual role, repeating monotonous tasks like a staff member would, but also executing whole workflows end-to-end, like building tests and checking compliance, which is something you expect at a more senior level."

Chelsey Rankin

Senior Audit Associate I

Solution: Automating the routine across a standardized client base 

PB&H started using DataSnipper in the summer of 2024. The Government Assurance, Consulting & Advisory department quickly became its biggest user, although other departments like Accounting and Business Consulting and Tax use the platform as well. When Excel Agents became available, the team saw an opportunity to go further and automate end-to-end workflows. 

TJ Stallo (Senior Auditor Associate I), Chelsey Rankin (Senior Audit Associate I), and Kent Willis (Partner), who work at the Government Assurance, Consulting & Advisory department at PB&H, shared their experience: 

Q: How are you using Excel Agents to solve your challenges? 

A: "Excel Agents processes documents that are formatted differently and gets the same information out of them. We've also been using it to save time with complicated formulas and formatting trial balances that clients give us. That would have taken multiple hours manually." 

Q: How would you describe the impact Excel Agents has had on your team? 

A: "Once we really got into Excel Agents, the possibilities started to open up. We are able to rebuild and complete testing very quickly, find, filter, and clean data very fast. It performs a dual role, repeating monotonous tasks like a staff member would, but also helping to build tests and check compliance, which is something you'd expect at a more senior level." 

Q: What use cases are you using Excel Agents for? 

A: "One of the biggest things is formatting trial balances. We have around 70 school district clients that all report in a consistent way. Before Excel Agents, that formatting had to be done manually 70 times. If we can build an agent to repeat that task across all of them, the time savings would be incredible. We're also using it for single audit testing. We took a test that covers multiple compliance levels for a grant and asked Excel Agents to test 63 items. We were able to complete that in about an hour. It would have taken a lot longer to do manually, and every result is traced and locked in so a reviewer can verify it. We're also using it for payroll register sampling, dropping a long payroll register into the file and asking the agent to randomly select a sample and pull the information we need. That's a huge time saver." 

Q: How does Excel Agents compare to other AI solutions? 

A: "Other tools like Copilot have started appearing in Excel, but they can't make snips. So you can't verify that what it's giving you is accurate. That's the main benefit of DataSnipper. It's purpose-built for auditors. Other tools would need to be modified or forced into how we work. With DataSnipper, we can click on a cell, and there's the support right there, the decision made by the staff, traceable without having to go searching for the document somewhere else."  

Looking ahead: building agents at scale 

Q: With Agent Builder, what agents are you planning to build in the future?

A: “We're currently building agents to format trial balances for our school district clients. We're developing two, each tailored to the specific software those districts use, so they'll be ready to share across the firm.” 

Q: What are you planning to accomplish with Excel Agents in the future?

A: "The data upload we prepare for state agencies has been a thorn in our side for years. It's tedious, it's critical, and if it's done incorrectly or late, there are serious consequences. If we can automate the creation of that document and have someone focus purely on review, that's huge. We're also excited about what Excel Agents can do for financial statement footing. It doesn't just check, it cross-foots and ties everything from tables to the face of the financials. It teaches staff at all levels how the financials connect. That's the kind of thing you'd normally expect from a senior reviewing the work." 

For PB&H, Excel Agents is not just a time-saving tool. When the repetitive work is handled, the team can focus on what their professionals actually demand: careful judgment, client relationships, and work that holds up to scrutiny.