> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://parabola.io/docs/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Introduction to Parabola > Parabola turns messy operational data into reliable, repeatable workflows. Built for finance and ops teams who need AI that shows its work. # What is Parabola? Parabola is a workflow automation platform for operations and finance teams. You describe the data process you need to automate, and Parabola builds a workflow with visible, inspectable steps that run on a schedule. It's built for the work that lives between systems: the vendor files that arrive in different formats, the PDFs that need to become spreadsheet rows, the reconciliation that someone does manually every Monday. The kind of work where general-purpose AI is impressive the first time and unreliable by the fifth. ## How it works 1. **Describe what you need.** Tell Prowork, Parabola's AI builder, what you want to automate in plain language. It asks follow-up questions to understand your data and your process. 2. **Prowork builds visible steps.** Each decision becomes a step on the canvas: pull data from Shopify, filter by date, match against the 3PL file, flag discrepancies. You can see the data at every stage. 3. **Connect to your systems.** Pull from and push to 50+ integrations: ERPs, spreadsheets, databases, ecommerce platforms, shipping, and more. Plus a general API step for anything else. 4. **Run it.** Manually, on a schedule, or triggered by an event (new email, new file, webhook). The workflow runs the same way every time, whether you're watching or not. Each step processes your data, shows the result, and lets you inspect what happened. You can jump in at any point to adjust, add, or remove steps — Prowork adapts around your changes. ## What Prowork can do * **Build workflows from a description.** Describe the process, connect your data sources, and Prowork constructs the steps. * **Extract structured data from unstructured inputs.** PDFs, emails, inconsistent spreadsheets. Prowork reads the document and pulls out the fields you define. * **Categorize and classify.** Sort transactions, label support tickets, tag products by type. * **Standardize messy values.** Normalize company names, addresses, product titles, date formats. * **Write custom logic.** Describe a calculation or transformation in plain language and Prowork writes the logic. * **Document what it built.** Each step includes a description of what it does and why, readable by anyone on the team. See [How Prowork Documents Your Flow](/product/overview/documents-your-flow). * **Convert existing flows.** Already have a manually-built flow? Prowork can enhance it with AI steps, add documentation, or rebuild sections. See [Convert an Existing Flow](/product/overview/convert-existing-flow). ## Who uses Parabola Parabola is used by operations, finance, and supply chain teams at mid-market companies, particularly in retail and e-commerce. Common roles: * **Finance:** VP Tax, CFO, Accounting leaders automating reconciliations, accruals, and close processes * **Operations:** Supply chain and logistics leaders automating inventory management, order routing, and vendor data processing * **Teams:** Workflows are shared across departments with role-based permissions, so accounting and logistics can work from the same data ## What you can automate Parabola handles data processes that involve messy inputs, multiple systems, and recurring execution: * **Reconciliations** — inventory, cash, revenue, 3-way PO matching * **Invoice and document processing** — extract data from PDFs, vendor emails, packing lists * **Financial operations** — month-end close, accruals, G/L mapping, landed cost calculations * **Order and inventory management** — allocation, routing, consolidation, returns * **Reporting** — dashboards, scorecards, exception alerts * **Vendor data normalization** — standardize formats across carriers, suppliers, retailers Browse the full [Use Case Library](/product/overview/use-cases) for templates you can start from. ## Parabola vs. general-purpose AI AI chat tools can generate one-off answers. Parabola generates workflows that run reliably, repeatedly, across a team. | | General-purpose AI | Parabola | | --------------- | ---------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Logic lives in | Chat history and prompts | Inspectable workflow steps | | Data connection | Manual uploads | Live connections to 50+ systems | | Repeatability | Re-run manually each time | Scheduled, automated, triggered | | Collaboration | Single-player | Shared with permissions and audit trail | | When it breaks | Start over | Edit the step that failed | | Documentation | None (the chat is the only record) | [Auto-generated for every step](/product/overview/documents-your-flow) | Each step in a Parabola workflow shows its work: the logic applied, the data before and after, and a description of why it's there. The workflow itself becomes the documentation. ## Getting started Sign up and build your first workflow. Your first Prowork-built workflow, start to finish. Free interactive course covering the fundamentals. Browse templates across operations, finance, and supply chain.