Claude can do most of what a part-time CFO does for a small business: read a set of transactions, spot a margin problem, stress-test your cash flow for the next quarter, and flag the kind of thing a proactive accountant would catch. It will even hand you back a formatted Excel workbook or a PDF at the end of it. It just needs your actual numbers, and a prompt that asks the right question.
Most business owners never get that far. They use Claude to write emails, summarize contracts, or clean up a LinkedIn post. That's fine, but it leaves the most valuable use case on the table, usually because getting clean financial data in front of an AI means exporting a CSV, reformatting it, and copy-pasting it into a chat window. By the time you're done, you've talked yourself out of it.
Below are five specific things you can ask Claude to do this week, with the exact prompt structure for each. Every one is written to end in an actual file: a formatted Excel workbook, a PDF report, something you'd genuinely forward to your accountant or drop into a board pack, not just a paragraph in a chat window.
They work with any numbers you paste in. You don't need Zenith for any of this. But if you use Zenith's bank sync, you can connect your account to Claude via our MCP connector and your bank data becomes available to Claude live, so you can skip the export-and-paste step entirely. We'll flag where that matters.
Before you start: how to actually feed Claude your numbers
There are two ways to do this, and the only real difference is how much manual work sits between you and the answer.
| Paste it manually | Connect it live via MCP | |
|---|---|---|
| Setup time | None | ~5 minutes, one time |
| Prep before each question | Export, clean, paste | None, just ask |
| Data freshness | As of your last export | Current bank feed |
| Categorization | Whatever your export has | Already done, consistent month to month |
| Realistic weekly habit? | Rarely lasts | Yes |
| Works for | Any accounting software | Zenith users |
If you're pasting manually, export a CSV or copy a table out of your accounting software, drop it into the chat, and ask your question. It works fine. It gets old fast if you're doing it every week.
If you're on Zenith, connect your bank data through our MCP integration and Claude can query your real, categorized transactions directly, read-only, no manual export. You ask in plain language, "What did I spend on software last quarter?", and Claude pulls the answer from your actual bank feed.
One more thing worth knowing before you start: Claude.ai can turn its answer into an actual file, a formatted Excel workbook, a PDF report, a slide, right there in the chat, no coding required. So instead of a wall of text you have to reformat yourself, you can ask for a document you'd actually hand to your accountant. Each prompt below includes a line to trigger that.
1. How much cash do I actually have, and how long will it last?
Cash position and runway check. The most basic CFO question, and most owners answer it by logging into three different bank tabs.
The prompt:
"Here are my current bank balances across all accounts, plus any credit lines available: [paste]. My average monthly burn is [X]. Tell me my total available cash today, flag anything that looks unusually low compared to a typical month, calculate how many months of runway this gives me, and put it all in a one-page PDF cash position summary I can save or forward."
With Zenith connected: skip the paste entirely. Ask Claude directly: "What's my current cash position across all accounts, including credit lines? Build me a one-page PDF summary." It answers, and formats it, from your live synced balances.
2. Which subscriptions and vendors are quietly bleeding money?
Spend and subscription leak detector. Every business is losing money on subscriptions nobody remembers signing up for, and on vendors whose invoices have crept up without anyone noticing.
The prompt:
"Here are my transactions for the last 3 months: [paste]. Identify: (1) recurring subscriptions that look like they could be cancelled or consolidated, (2) any vendor where spend increased more than 20% versus the prior period, (3) duplicate or near-duplicate charges, (4) any category where spend looks disproportionate for a business our size. Put the flagged items in an Excel workbook, one row per issue, with the amount at stake in its own column so I can sort by impact."
With Zenith connected: your transactions are already categorized by vendor, so this becomes a direct question instead of a manual audit: "What am I spending on SaaS, and has anything crept up in the last three months? Put anything worth cancelling or renegotiating into a spreadsheet."
3. What does my cash flow look like for the next 13 weeks, including the bad case?
Cash flow forecast with a downside stress test. A forecast that only shows the optimistic case isn't a forecast, it's a hope.
The prompt:
"Here's my cash flow history for the last 6 months, money in and out by week: [paste]. Project my cash balance for the next 13 weeks under three scenarios: base case, a 20% drop in revenue, and a 60-day payment delay from my top 3 customers. Tell me the specific week I'd hit a shortfall under each scenario. Build this as an Excel file with one tab per scenario, plus a chart showing all three cash balance lines over the 13 weeks."
With Zenith connected: the historical inflow and outflow data Claude needs is already sitting in your live bank feed, so there's no reconstructing six months of cash movement from statements before you even get to the forecast.
4. Am I dangerously dependent on one customer or one supplier?
Vendor and customer concentration risk scan. If one customer is 40% of your revenue, or one supplier is 30% of your costs, that's a fact you want to know before it becomes a crisis.
The prompt:
"Here's my revenue by customer and costs by vendor for the last 12 months: [paste]. Tell me what percentage of revenue comes from my top 3 customers, what percentage of costs go to my top 3 vendors, and whether I'm dangerously concentrated anywhere. Show it as a one-page PDF with a simple breakdown chart for revenue and one for costs."
With Zenith connected: partner-level data, who you're paying and who's paying you, is already organized and searchable. That's most of the manual work this prompt would otherwise require before Claude ever gets to building the chart.
5. What changed this month, and is it real or a categorization error?
Month-end variance and anomaly review. Run this the day after you close the books, before you file the numbers away and move on.
The prompt:
"Compare this month's expenses by category against last month, and against the same month last year: [paste both]. Flag anything that moved more than 15%, and anything that looks like it might be a coding or categorization error rather than a real change. Build this as an Excel variance report with the flagged rows highlighted, so I can scan it in under a minute."
With Zenith connected: categorization is already done and consistent month to month, so the comparison is actually like-for-like. The biggest source of false positives in this kind of review is inconsistent categorization, and live sync removes that problem.
One caveat worth stating plainly
Claude isn't a licensed accountant, and none of this replaces your books being properly kept. Treat these outputs as a fast first pass: something to catch a problem early, or to walk into your accountant's office already knowing what you want to ask about. Check anything you'd act on.
The part that actually matters: get Claude real numbers, fast
Every prompt above works with data you paste in by hand. It's just slower, and slower means you do it less often, which defeats the point of having a CFO on demand.
Zenith connects to 2,400+ EU banks with a single read-only PSD2 connection, set up in about 5 minutes. That data syncs to Google Sheets, to your own app via our REST API, or directly to Claude and other AI agents through MCP, so instead of exporting and reformatting, you just ask the question.
It's read-only: Claude can see your data, never move money. Your data stays in the EU, isn't used to train any AI models, and isn't shared with third parties.
Frequently asked questions
Can Claude read my bank transactions directly?
Yes, if you connect a data source. On its own Claude has no access to your accounts, so you'd paste in a CSV export. With a Zenith MCP connection, Claude can query your live, categorized bank data in the conversation without any manual export step.
Is it safe to connect bank data to an AI tool?
The connection Zenith uses is read-only under PSD2, so nothing connected to it can initiate a payment or move money. Your data is stored in the EU, isn't used to train any AI models, and isn't shared with third parties. You can revoke the connection at any time.
Do I need Zenith to use these prompts?
No. Every prompt in this post works with numbers you paste in by hand from any accounting software or bank export. Zenith removes the export-and-paste step so you can run these weekly instead of once and never again, but the prompts themselves are yours to copy.
Can Claude create an actual Excel file, or just text?
Claude.ai can produce real files in the chat: formatted .xlsx workbooks with multiple tabs and charts, PDF reports, and slides. That's why each prompt above ends with an instruction about the output format. Ask for the file explicitly or you'll get a wall of text instead.
Which banks does Zenith support?
Zenith connects to over 2,400 banks across the EU through a single PSD2 connection, covering most retail and business accounts in the region. Setup takes roughly five minutes. You can check your specific bank on the bank sync page.
Does Claude move money or only read it?
Only read. The MCP connection exposes your transaction and balance data for querying and nothing else. There is no payment initiation, no transfers, and no write access to your accounts through it.
P.S. None of the prompts above require Zenith. Copy them, paste your own numbers in, and go. If you get tired of the copy-pasting, that's the problem we built the MCP connection to solve.