File subcontractor invoices into 30 job folders automatically with ChatGPT

Have Claude Cowork prepare late-invoice reminder drafts every Monday night, with a report of who owes what

Michel, in San Diego, works in a tight-margin business with basic back-office software, and sending late-invoice reminders was repetitive manual work. Claude Cowork walked them through setting up an agent that logs in every Monday night, checks overdue accounts receivable and matches customer names against a Google Sheet of contacts. Using Michel's email template, it adds the contact name, invoice number, amount and due date, puts the emails in the Drafts folder and sends Michel a report of which customers were included, what each owes and the totals. Michel reviews the drafts and sends them, saving about an hour every Monday night.

Sort a year of mixed Amazon business purchases into QuickBooks categories with Claude, including the fiddly split transactions

badlibrarian runs a business and sometimes buys things on Amazon. At tax time they used to search for the big business items and categorise them in QuickBooks Online until they gave up, using a janky browser plugin and two monitors full of Excel windows. Now Claude does it and doesn't give up, despite QuickBooks being slow. It will even click 19 times to split a transaction because they'd put a router and shampoo in the same Amazon cart one night in February 2025.

Do a small business's quarterly BAS books from bank, Stripe, PayPal and Wise statements with Claude Cowork

Sridhar Katakam used Claude Cowork to go through the statements and transactions from several bank accounts, Stripe, PayPal and Wise and prepare business expense and income spreadsheets. Their accountant reviewed them and said they were good enough that Katakam no longer needed the accountant's services for BAS and could file it themselves, a saving of about $530 AUD per quarter. The accountant also suggested having Claude do the same for the whole year, and said the fee for filing the income tax return would come down.

Recreate and resend an urgent client invoice from a phone in a roller coaster queue with Claude

A client called Alper Ortac on a family holiday at Europa Park needing an invoice urgently for their end-of-year accounts. With no laptop, Ortac opened Claude on their phone in a roller coaster queue, attached the last invoice and asked it to recreate it. Claude wrote and ran a Python script that produced a replica of the PDF, then changed the invoice number, billing period and costs as asked. Ortac drafted the email, attached the new invoice and sent it in roughly 20 minutes, right before boarding.

Turn a PTA's bank exports into year-end charity accounts in four minutes with Claude

Pete Hickerton, chair of their school's PTA, wanted to save the treasurer an evening on the year-end accounts. The job meant exporting bank transactions, categorising everything, reconciling and formatting it for the Charity Commission. They gave the bank exports to Claude, and four minutes later had a set of accounts ready to upload. Claude explained what it had done, flagged where it had checked the formulas and showed the reconciliation. Hickerton and the treasurer went through it looking for errors and found none.

Turn a box of 63 crumpled receipts into a QuickBooks batch-upload sheet with Claude Cowork

John Fong had a box of receipts that had sat on their desk for 1.5 years, some crumpled, some with faded ink, and some restaurant meals split across two receipts with the tip on its own. They started a Claude Cowork project called AP Agent, photographed 63 receipts into a folder and asked for an Excel sheet they could batch upload to QuickBooks. They took a shower and 8 minutes later came back to a completed file with every receipt allocated to an account and amount. It flagged 3 receipts it had only partly read, asking them to check those, and 3 that weren't valid expenses under CRA (Canada Revenue Agency) rules.

Scale catering recipes for 25–30 people up to hundreds with ChatGPT and Claude

Brian Reilly, co-owner of Arlington's Catering and Historic Venue in Springfield, took a six-week small-business AI workshop sponsored by Innovate Springfield. Reilly now uses ChatGPT and Claude to make routine checklists, such as cleaning procedures, and to scale recipes built for 25–30 people up to, say, 330. Reilly says accuracy depends on the input. When Reilly fed it information inaccurately, those mistakes were caught 'pretty quickly', and now Reilly screenshots the recipe into the tool instead to avoid user error. 'It might take a time or two, but it's been pretty accurate.'

Draft and submit a $20,000 arts grant proposal in 12 minutes with ChatGPT

Mary Catherine Brooks, board president of the Greenville Arts Council in Mississippi, learned at 4:48 PM that a $20,000 grant proposal was due by 5:00 PM. Brooks opened ChatGPT, uploaded the council's past successful proposals and had it use them to produce a new draft. The proposal was submitted before the deadline and won the $20,000, which will support arts and education programming for children and families across the Delta. '12 minutes of ChatGPT is making an impact on the lives of thousands of kids,' Brooks says.

Get a 0.75% to 12.75% unemployment insurance rate jump fixed retroactively with ChatGPT filing the missing wage report

mattmaroon runs a seasonal business and noticed their state unemployment insurance rate had jumped from 0.75% to 12.75%. Instead of hours on the state website and on hold, they asked ChatGPT what had happened. It worked out that they were being charged a penalty rate because their new payroll provider doesn't file wage reports for the one quarter with no wages, and without a report the business counted as delinquent. ChatGPT filed the correct wage report and went to the support site to request a retroactive rewrite, which was granted, saving many thousands of dollars without hitting the 5-hour usage limit.