Hey Jim,
Good to see you here! I totally understand your desire for automation here and we have been working towards this since our last discussion. You may have seen in the v8.1 release notes that we have announced a beta program for our API client library. The idea behind the client library is to make it very easy for customers to automate processes in a standard and supported way. This library will be the solution once we have built out the code for the reporting endpoints.
If you join the beta program you will be updated on early releases and have the opportunity to influence which endpoints we support first.
Either way I’ll keep you updated on our progress.
James