10/22/2026
Schools are never going to send you clean data. So we stopped waiting for them to.
This week a school sent its underclass data for the third time. We'd asked them to fix it twice. First and last names were still crammed into one column. And instead of one file, they sent three: 6th through 8th grade, 9th through 12th, and faculty.
For years we fixed these by hand. In busy season, that cleanup ate 5 to 10 hours of our week.
That's donkey work. So we handed it to Dexter, our database fixer. He makes four fixes:
1. Matches your master template. Captura, GotPhoto, PhotoDay, whatever you use. Your layout is the rule.
2. Merges every file into one. Names split, columns lined up, three files in, one database out.
3. Asks for what the school left out. Seniors in the file? School name for the camera cards? Blank new student cards? He asks instead of guessing.
4. Flags the gaps before picture day. Missing emails and phones show up on a report while there's still time to fix them.
That school, all three files, took 2 minutes and 4 seconds.
You still stay in the loop. Do a 3 to 5 row test import before you load the whole file.
Give yourself twelve months. Every system you build this winter keeps working next fall.
The full breakdown is linked in the first comment.
Part of the Automate the Donkey Work series: one AI system a week to take back your hours.
