Your money sidekick: Claude and Xero
It's Monday. Your banking app says $40,000 and you feel like the Beyoncé of small biz.
Then the BAS lands, super is due, and by Friday that $40,000 has packed its bags. You're not bad with money. Your bank balance is just a terrible liar. Here's how to catch it out, with Claude and Xero working as your very own biz consultant.
Your bank balance is wearing a disguise
Some of that money is just visiting. GST and PAYG belong to the taxman-ian devil (AKA the ATO), super belongs to your staff, and this year's tax is already spoken for. Take those out, plus a safety buffer, and what's left is your true free cash, the money you can actually spend. For example:
Amount | |
Cash in the bank | $40,000 |
GST owing | less $9,000 |
PAYG withholding owing | less $6,000 |
Super owing | less $3,000 |
Tax to set aside | less $8,000 |
Your safety buffer | less $10,000 |
True free cash | $4,000 |
Same bank account, very different mood. And a healthy profit doesn't guarantee healthy cash.
The good news? AI can do this maths for you every week.
Hire a money sidekick who never sleeps
Consider AI your intern who never sleeps. Set Claude up properly and it becomes your on call money sidekick. Tell it about your biz in your settings, then create a project (we call ours My Business Finance HQ) with simple rules: use my numbers, never make anything up, and tell me when I need my accountant.
Then just ask. Can I afford another staff member? Why am I always broke in January?
Plug in Xero
Xero now connects to Claude. Add it once under Connectors, sign in, and Claude can read your live invoices, bills, profit and loss and balance sheet. It's read only, so it can look but can't touch.
Ask who owes you the most, or what you owe the ATO next quarter, and get a plain English answer.
Not on Xero? Export a few reports and upload them instead.
PS. Before you connect anything, check your privacy settings in Claude, including whether your chats can be used to improve its models, so you're comfortable with where your data goes. 😉
Make a dash for the dashboard
We've built a superb, gloriously over the top weekly dashboard that puts all your numbers in one spot.
Right at the top sit the two that matter most: how much of your bank balance is actually yours, and what you need to sell each day to hit your target this month. Underneath, you get who to chase for payment, what's due to the taxman-ian devil, and how you're tracking against plan. On Xero and a paid Claude plan? Schedule it weekly and it's waiting for you every Monday before you've found your keys. So handy.
PS. The link to the prompt is at the bottom of this blog so read on our friends.
Ever heard of a three way... forecast?
The dashboard tells you where you stand today. A forecast tells you where you're heading tomorrow, and that's where the good stuff happens. A three way forecast is your profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow projected forward and actually talking to each other, so you can spot the cash crunch coming in March while it's still October, and do something about it.
Why not give it a whirl? We've built an out of this world prompt you can copy and paste straight into Claude. It asks about your plans, strips out the one offs, bakes in your GST, PAYG, super and tax timing, and checks it all balances.
Pop it into your project and your dashboard will track against it every week!
PS. One golden rule: rubbish in, rubbish out. If your books are behind, your forecast will be confidently wrong, so the prompt flags where your data needs a tidy up first.
Where your accountant and tax agent come in (that's us 😉)
If AI is the intern, your accountant is the professor who makes sense of the work. AI can pull the numbers together in minutes, but a good accountant or biz advisor helps you understand what they actually mean for you, spots what the numbers aren't saying, and talks through the big decisions with you, like hiring, pricing, borrowing or growing. They can also find the mistakes as we all know that AI can make them😉. You could also use them as your accountability partner. A forecast is easy to ignore, a quarterly catch up with someone who'll ask how you're tracking is not.
And for the official stuff, you still need the humans. Claude isn't a registered tax agent, can't lodge your BAS and can't take responsibility for advice. So bring in your accountant or tax agent for anything tax related, structure questions, and anything heading to the bank or taxman-ian devil.
PS. Treat AI as a smart first draft, keep tax file numbers and bank details out of it, and remember: humans first, numbers second.
Ready to meet your money?
Your bank balance has been keeping secrets long enough. Grab our free prompt library and you'll have everything you need to hire your own AI biz consultant: the setup questions, the project instructions, the three way forecast prompt and that gloriously over the top weekly dashboard, all ready to copy and paste. No accounting degree required, coffee optional.
Rather have a human in your corner too? That's exactly what we do. Whether you'd like a hand setting up Claude and Xero, a second set of eyes on your forecast, or someone to help turn your dashboard into decisions, the All In team would love a chat. All in or all out, there's no halfway.
This article is general information only and isn't financial, tax or legal advice. It doesn't take your personal circumstances into account. Talk to your accountant or registered tax agent before making decisions based on it.
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