Notes on working with AI
What finance teams actually do with Claude
The monthly close, the inherited workbook nobody understands, and the board pack: where Claude helps a finance team, and the one rule that keeps it safe.
What finance teams actually do with Claude
The monthly close is where you find out whether a finance team really works with Claude. Not the demo, and not the email someone tidied up once. The close workbook, with its reconciliation tabs, its pivot tables and the fixes that piled up over the years. When I teach a finance team, that workbook is the first thing on the table.
Start with the file everyone is afraid of
Every finance team has one. Seven linked tabs, a formula nobody remembers writing, and one person who understands it and is about to go on holiday. Claude can walk that chain and explain what each cell pulls and from where. It sounds small. In practice it is usually the moment the room stops treating Claude as a writing tool and starts treating it as a colleague who reads spreadsheets faster than they do.
The rule that makes it safe: no source, no number
What worries finance people is not speed. It is a number in the board pack that nobody can trace back to where it came from. So every exercise runs on one habit. Each answer Claude gives comes with the sheet, the cell and the movement it was taken from, and anything that arrives without that reference gets rejected.
You stay the one who signs. Claude just gets you to the open items on the first morning of the close instead of the last.
What comes out of it
Four things, each built on files the team already works with:
- A reconciliation pass where Claude finds gaps between the books and the bank and drafts the open-items list. You approve every line.
- Budget vs actuals variance notes, each one carrying its source, so "where did this come from" takes a minute instead of a hunt through three files.
- A draft board pack with an appendix that lists every figure, its source and the assumption behind it.
- A forecast model built with Claude in Excel, with formula checks and notes inside the file, so whoever inherits it can follow it without calling you.
For each one the group builds a small Skill the team keeps for the next close. The know-how stays with the team, not with whoever happened to be in the room.
Two ways to learn it
The quickest way in is the online workshop for finance teams, which is open now. It is self-paced and built from the same slides I teach from in the room. You learn the method on practice files, then run it on your own workbook when the close gives you an hour.
The in-person workshop is the other route. It is built around your own close files, with me in the room, and it fits best when the whole team needs to change how it works at the same time.
A sensible order is both: one person goes through the online workshop first, and then you decide whether the rest of the team needs a full day.
Where to start
Open the online workshop and start this week. If you would rather bring the whole team and your own close workbook, the workshop for finance teams is the place to look.