My year-end still goes to a professional. This is the setup for the other eleven months, written so the professional isn’t cleaning up after you in April.
Claude can connect straight into QuickBooks Online, through Intuit’s own sign-in, so Claude never sees or holds your QuickBooks password. Once it’s connected, Intuit says it can pull a profit and loss report, show your cash flow, tell you who owes you and which of your own bills are due, compare your numbers against others in the trade, pull in transactions, and create, update, and send invoices and estimates.
Here’s a real use for it. Say it’s the end of the month and something’s off: the bank balance in QuickBooks doesn’t match your real bank balance, but you don’t know why yet. The prompt at the bottom of this chapter tells it to start every session by pulling this month’s numbers against last month’s, listing everything still uncategorized, and comparing the QuickBooks balance to the real bank balance, and to show you the difference rather than fix it. You still decide what to do about it. The point is getting to the actual problem faster than clicking through screens yourself.
As of September 2026, connecting QuickBooks doesn’t cost anything beyond your Claude plan (the free plan includes connectors) and whatever you already pay Intuit for QuickBooks Online. The connector is US only as of September 2026.
Time cost: a few minutes to connect it the first time, and then whatever time you spend reviewing what it did, which is the real cost of any of this, not the connecting. Year-end tax work still goes to a professional. That’s my rule, not a suggestion.
Paste as the first message in a new Claude chat (or a new Claude Code session on a paid plan), with your shop name and today’s date filled in:
You are the bookkeeper for [SHOP NAME], a small appliance repair company that runs QuickBooks Online. I'm the owner, not an accountant. Work like a careful bookkeeper, not a salesman.
Rules:
1. Never invent a number. If you don't have it, say what you need and where I'd get it.
2. Read before you write. Start every session by pulling this month's P&L against last month, the A/R aging, the bank balance in QuickBooks against the real bank balance, and every uncategorized transaction.
3. Read-only until I say otherwise. Before you create, change, or delete anything in QuickBooks, show me exactly what you're about to do and wait for my yes.
4. Categorize by my rules, not your guess. If a transaction could go two places, ask me once and remember the answer.
5. Reconcile to the bank every month. If QuickBooks and the bank don't match, the bank is right until proven otherwise. Find the difference and show me.
6. Anything about taxes, payroll, sales tax, or what's deductible: give me your best read, then say "confirm with your CPA" every time. You are not my tax professional.
7. Plain English. No accounting words without a one-line explanation the first time.
8. End every session with three things: what changed, what you're not sure about, and what you need from me.
9. Keep a running list called OPEN QUESTIONS and read it back to me at the start of the next session.
10. Passwords and bank logins never go in this chat. If I paste one by mistake, tell me to change it.
Today's date is [DATE]. My fiscal year is the calendar year. Start by telling me what you can see and what you can't.
Most of this chapter works with no QuickBooks at all. The bookkeeper prompt doesn’t care where the numbers live; it cares that it can read them. Three ways in, in order of how much you already have.
A spreadsheet. Excel, Numbers, Google Sheets, or the one your bank exports. Log in to your bank’s website, find the statement or transactions page, and download the month as a CSV or Excel file (the button is usually called Export or Download). Open a new Claude chat, tap the paperclip or plus sign by the message box, attach the file, and paste the prompt above with two lines changed: in the first line, replace “runs QuickBooks Online” with “keeps its books in the spreadsheet I’ve attached,” and in rule 2 replace everything after “Start every session by” with “reading the attached file end to end and telling me what’s in it, what’s uncategorized, and what doesn’t add up.” Everything else stays. It will categorize, flag what it isn’t sure about, and give you back a clean sheet to keep. Google Sheets: use File, then Download, then Microsoft Excel, and attach that.
QuickBooks Desktop, or some other program. There’s no connector for it. Export the month to Excel or CSV from inside the program and do the spreadsheet path above. Nothing is lost except the Connect button.
A shoebox. Photograph the receipts, five or six per photo, flat, in good light, the same way you photograph a nameplate in chapter 1. Attach the photos with the same prompt and tell it “build me this month’s spreadsheet from these.” Read every line it produces against the paper before you trust it, the first few months.
Two things before you upload anything. Delete or black out the account-number column in a statement before it goes in; the prompt says passwords never go in the chat, and account numbers are the same rule. And make sure the privacy switch from chapter 1 is off, so the file isn’t kept longer than thirty days. I run QuickBooks, so this isn’t how my own books run; it’s what the tools do, and the receipt photos are the same trick as the nameplate.
Use the prompt above word for word the first few times, don’t shortcut it. Keep it read-only until you’ve watched it work through a full month and you trust what it’s finding. The moment anything touches taxes, payroll, or what’s deductible, treat its answer as a first draft and confirm with your CPA, every time, no exceptions.