For our project at IRIFM we built a live cash-flow view for a division, reading straight from the accounts data. The DRM asked for it to stay on after we left. Small, but it is the first thing I built that a railway actually used.
Every probationer at IRIFM does a divisional attachment project. Ours was Secunderabad division and the brief was open: find something the division's finance branch spends time on and make it faster.
What they spent time on was answering one question — how much cash do we have this week — and answering it by hand, from three different registers. We spent the first fortnight understanding those registers and the second fortnight writing a small script that read the daily accounts extract and put the answer on one screen: receipts, payments, committed liabilities, and the balance against the fortnight's allotment.
It was not sophisticated. But when we demonstrated it, the Sr. DFM opened it on his phone and the DRM asked whether it could stay running after we left. It has. The division has since added a view for works expenditure.
I am sharing it here because I think every division could have one, and because I would like to hear from anyone who has built something similar. The code and the data mapping are with the IRIFM faculty.
Reviewed and approved by the association on 02 Sept 2026