Most small businesses don't need a full time CFO. They need someone who actually looks at the numbers every month and tells them what to do about it. That's what you're building today.
BusinessAI Lunch & Learn · Wednesday 14 October 2026 · Microsoft Teams
What to expect
Watch first
A short preview of what we'll cover and how the live build runs.
Session recording
Replay publishes here after the session.
Watch the full session
The whole Lunch & Learn, including the live build, the prompts and the numbers it runs against.
Rhys Henderson
Chief Executive, BusinessAI
Brandon Burns
Head of Experience, BusinessAI
Drop in your P&L, bank export and outstanding invoices once, then ask plain questions like "what did we actually spend on subbies last quarter" and get answers off your own figures, not generic advice.
One repeatable prompt that reads the numbers, flags what moved, what's overdue and what's trending the wrong way, and hands you three things to action.
Same prompt, same format, every month, so you stop rebuilding it in a spreadsheet and start reading it.
Each step is small. Do one, tick it off, move to the next. Every prompt has a copy button, so there's nothing to retype.
In Claude, click Projects, then Create project. Name it "Virtual CFO". Paste this into the project instructions box.
You are my virtual CFO for a small Australian business. How you work: - Only use numbers that appear in the files in this project. Never estimate, round or fill a gap. - If you don't have the data to answer, say "I don't have that in the files" and tell me what to upload. - Every time you give me a figure, say which file and which line it came from. - Use plain Australian English. No jargon. Assume I am not an accountant. - All figures in AUD, GST noted separately where the file shows it. - Never give tax advice, BAS positions or anything that would be lodged. If I ask, tell me to take it to my accountant. When I ask a question, answer in this order: the number, where it came from, what changed since last month, and what I should do about it.
Upload to the project, as files, not pasted text. Export each from your accounting software:
Name each file the same way every month, for example PL-2026-10.csv. Consistent names make the monthly comparison work.
Open a new chat inside the project and paste this. It catches a bad export before it turns into a bad answer.
Read every file in this project. Then tell me: 1. What period each file covers and its date range. 2. Total revenue and total expenses for the most recent complete month, and the file each came from. 3. Anything that looks missing, duplicated or inconsistent across the files. 4. Any question you can't answer with what you have. Don't give me analysis yet. Just confirm what you're working with.
Swap [MONTH] for the month you're checking, then paste it into the project chat.
Run my monthly finance check for [MONTH]. Give me: 1. The headline. Revenue, expenses, net profit, and how each moved against the previous month and the same month last year. 2. The top five expense lines and whether any moved more than 10 percent. 3. Cash position and how many weeks of expenses it covers at the current run rate. 4. Everyone overdue more than 30 days, with the amount and how long. 5. Everything I owe that is due in the next 30 days. 6. Three things I should do this month, in priority order, with the number behind each one. Keep it under one page. Flag anything you had to leave out because the data wasn't there.
Paste this in the same chat to get a 13 week cash flow view built off your own patterns.
Based on the last 6 months in these files, give me a simple 13 week cash flow view. Use only the patterns visible in my data: typical monthly revenue, typical fixed costs, payroll, and anything on the aged payables with a due date. Show it as a weekly table: opening cash, cash in, cash out, closing cash. Then tell me which week looks tightest and the two biggest assumptions you had to make. If an assumption is shaky, say so.
Pick who it's for, swap the brackets, then paste it in.
Turn the monthly finance check into a one page summary I can send to [my business partner / my accountant / the board]. Structure: - Three sentence plain English overview of the month - A small table: revenue, expenses, net profit, cash, each with the change on last month - What went well, two points - What needs attention, two points - The three actions, with who and by when left blank for me to fill in No jargon. Write it so someone who hasn't seen the numbers can follow it.
Save steps 4, 5 and 6 as a Claude skill so next month you just say "run my monthly finance check" and it does the lot. We cover that live.
01
Same six files, same day each month.
02
The sanity check prompt. Catches a bad export before it becomes a bad answer.
03
The monthly finance check. Ten minutes.
04
The one page summary, three actions, into your next partner or accountant conversation.
The whole point is that it's the same four steps every month. Boring is the feature.
Landscaping and retaining wall supply
Question Asked
"Which jobs over the last six months actually made a profit once I take out materials and subbie costs?"
What It Did
Read the P&L by month against the bank export, grouped supplier payments by subbie, and showed that three large jobs carried the margin while four smaller ones broke even.
Action
Raise minimum job size, stop quoting the small ones at the same rate.
Labour hire and recruitment
Question Asked
"What is my true cost per placement once payroll, insurance and admin are in?"
What It Did
Took the payroll summary and fixed overheads, divided across placements in the period, and surfaced that the cost had crept up 14 percent over the quarter without anyone noticing.
Action
Repriced two client agreements.
Disability support provider
Question Asked
"Who is overdue and what's that doing to my cash?"
What It Did
Pulled aged receivables, flagged four accounts past 60 days, and modelled what the 13 week cash position looks like with and without them landing.
Action
A chase list in priority order, longest and largest first.
10 min
The monthly finance check, once it's set up
6 files
Everything the project needs to run
13 weeks
How far forward the cash view looks
1 page
What you send your partner or accountant
Ask a question anytime below and we'll respond ASAP.
Every Lunch & Learn leaves behind a page with the prompts, steps and examples from the session.
On security
Turn off delete permissions on connected tools and use Claude's approval workflow, so nothing happens without a review first.
On automation
Record a repetitive task once as a Claude skill, then just say "do the thing" and it runs the whole workflow from there.
On marketing
Use AI to query ad performance in plain language, so you're not relying purely on an agency for the insight.
We build this stuff with businesses every week, then leave the prompts here so you can take them straight back to your own.
Aaron Sansoni
Founder
Rhys Henderson
Chief Executive
John Mayers
Director of Consulting
Arsedian Ivan
Director of AI & Product
Fergus Lundy
Director of Sales
Brandon Burns
Head of Experience
Josh Telford
Senior AI Strategy Consultant
Marty Astbury
AI Strategy Consultant
Brayden Tayler
Technical Product Manager
Mariella Liezl Perez
AI Engineer
Charlotte Hall
VP People & Performance
Tim Ahern
AI Growth Partner
Brendan Coyne
AI Growth Partner
We do this with businesses every week. Book a strategy call and we'll map where AI saves you the most time and cash, starting with the work you're already doing.
