# Claude Cowork for Brightmoor Finance

**Recommended session:** turn a monthly finance export into a checked Excel analysis, a readable dashboard, and an updated leadership presentation. Everyone works on the same reporting cycle, using **Cowork in Claude Desktop and Claude in Excel only**.

**Audience:** 20–30 colleagues, mostly accounting, payroll and bursar teams, plus strategic finance. Assume beginner knowledge. **Duration:** four hours, including a ten-minute break; approximately 140 minutes of participant practice. The call mentions both three and four hours; this schedule assumes four, with a three-hour version below.

The practical promise: leave with three draft deliverables and a process for refreshing them next month. Use three representative slides from the recurring reporting pack; reproducing all 15 slides precisely is follow-on work.

## Run of show

Times are elapsed from the session start. “Practice” includes participants reviewing and correcting their outputs.

| Time | Segment | Facilitator action | Participant action and finish line |
|---|---|---|---|
| 00:00–00:05 | Show the destination | Open the finished sample workbook, dashboard and three-slide monthly report. Explain that all three use the same numbers. | See exactly what they will make. |
| 00:05–00:25 | First win: make an Excel export usable | Give the two-minute Cowork introduction below. Show selecting the workshop folder and requesting a formatted workbook copy. Open that copy in Excel and demonstrate one question through Claude in Excel. **8 minutes demo / 12 practice.** | Format the export, freeze headers, add filters, and ask which campus has the largest revenue variance. Find the supporting cells. **Finish: a usable workbook and one traceable answer.** |
| 00:25–01:20 | Build 1: financial analysis and reconciliation | In Cowork, assemble monthly and YTD actuals against budget, with payroll, non-payroll and an EBITDA bridge. Show an export-to-control reconciliation and investigate a seeded mismatch. In Claude in Excel, inspect a formula and change one forecast assumption. **20 minutes demo / 35 practice.** | Produce the analysis, review exceptions, trace one variance to source rows and test a simple revenue/payroll scenario. **Finish: checked totals, an exception list and an assumption-driven forecast.** |
| 01:20–01:30 | Break | Leave the next prompt and checkpoint filenames on screen. | — |
| 01:30–02:15 | Build 2: executive dashboard | Ask Cowork to turn the checked workbook into one local HTML dashboard. Show how to open it in a browser. Demonstrate changing a chart to horizontal bars, then adding a campus filter. **15 minutes demo / 30 practice.** | Build and tune their dashboard: revenue, EBITDA, budget variances and monthly trends. Compare filtered results with Excel. **Finish: a readable dashboard with working campus and period filters.** |
| 02:15–03:10 | Build 3: refresh the PowerPoint | Give Cowork the checked workbook and an existing `.pptx` template. Update three slides: revenue against budget, EBITDA bridge, and campus performance with commentary. Demonstrate reusing the template’s chart style for another campus. **20 minutes demo / 35 practice.** | Update the template, correct one formatting issue and inspect the chart data. **Finish: a three-slide draft that matches the workbook and retains the supplied layout as closely as possible.** |
| 03:10–03:45 | Repeat the workflow with next month’s data | Supply the next-month export. Reuse the saved instructions. Show the internal sharing route using the prepared example. **10 minutes demo / 25 practice.** | Refresh the workbook, dashboard and one slide; catch a stale title or commentary sentence. Save a short refresh checklist. **Finish: evidence that the process can be repeated.** |
| 03:45–04:00 | Review and immediate next use | Take two brief walkthroughs and answer questions about the files people made. **10 minutes review / 5 practice.** | Record one recurring task, its input file, desired output and reviewer. Leave with saved files and prompts. |

## The introduction: two minutes, then do the task

“Today you’ll give Claude a folder, describe the finance task, and ask it to save the finished files. Cowork can work with files you grant it access to and run code behind the scenes to process data. You won’t write or read that code. Claude in Excel lets you work directly with the workbook—ask about cells, inspect calculations, and make changes.”

“If you normally use ChatGPT as a chat window, the useful change today is working through a task across files and producing deliverables. File analysis and code execution aren’t exclusive to Cowork; we’re learning this particular workflow.”

Keep the familiar **Talk → Jam → Make → Tune** sequence inside each exercise: describe the output, settle the calculation and layout rules, create the file, then request one specific improvement. Check the numbers before using them downstream. No separate theory block.

## Prepare before the session

- **Access:** verify every attendee can open Cowork in Claude Desktop, select the workshop folder and save a file. Verify Claude in Excel is installed, enabled and signed in. Send a five-minute preflight task beforehand; avoid spending workshop time provisioning accounts.
- **Materials:** prepare the synthetic workbook, three-slide PowerPoint template, next-month export and completed checkpoints described in [DEMO-PROMPTS.md](DEMO-PROMPTS.md). These are preparation requirements, not files supplied with this run sheet. Rehearse the actual template refresh, especially charts and fonts.
- **Delivery:** one lead facilitator and one organiser-provided helper for access issues. Do not rely on Brightmoor’s more experienced staff as teaching assistants; the call explicitly ruled that out. If an exercise stalls, use its prepared checkpoint and continue.
- **Data route:** explain **NetSuite → Snowflake → Excel export → Cowork → reviewed outputs**. Use synthetic exports for the workshop. If an approved Snowflake connection is already working, briefly show retrieving the same dataset through it; connector setup and SQL are outside this session.
- **Sharing:** rehearse the company-approved route for executives. Show sharing the reviewed deck/workbook through existing internal permissions. If internal HTML hosting is available, demonstrate it; otherwise use the local HTML and a PDF snapshot. A local HTML file is not an authenticated reporting service, and adding a password field does not secure its embedded data.

## Make the checks part of the work

Use a small number of visible checks: revenue and expense totals agree to the supplied control report; campus totals sum to the overall result; YTD includes the intended periods; the EBITDA bridge uses the supplied account map; and the dashboard and deck match the checked workbook. Show both a revenue shortfall and an expense overrun so participants see how favourable/unfavourable labels differ.

Have Claude identify the largest numerical contributors to a variance and separate those observations from possible business explanations. Keep unresolved reconciliation items visible. For slides, inspect both the displayed number and its period label; last month’s commentary can survive a successful chart update.

Use a fixed recovery prompt when stuck: **“Here is what I expected and what happened. Fix only this issue, preserve the checked numbers, and save a new version.”** If it still fails, return to the last working checkpoint and reduce the task to one sheet, chart or slide.

## If the session is three hours

Use: destination **5 min**; first win **15**; financial analysis/reconciliation **40**; break **10**; dashboard **35**; PowerPoint **45**; next-month refresh **20**; wrap **10**. Total: **180 minutes**. Keep all three core outputs. Move the forecast scenario and compliance-report extension to take-home prompts, and update two slides live instead of three.

## Basis and assumptions

Adapted from the [Brightmoor call notes](brightmoor-education-call-notes.md) and [previous workshop runs](run-of-show-nvalo.md). The workbook, template, reporting definitions, exact session length and internal hosting route were not supplied. Use the synthetic brief below until real examples are available. Current product documentation could not be reached during preparation, so account access, Excel features and PowerPoint template behaviour must be verified in the facilitator rehearsal; no live connector or exact template-fidelity guarantee is assumed.