This is the first edition of my ‘Bots and Agents’ series of newsletters where I will show you how to use the latest capability in tools like Claude, Copilot and ChatGPT to improve your work and get ahead of AI.
I waited 6 months for a dashboard
Every month, I had to send the cost center overview to each department.
In Excel, that took my team 3 to 4 days. Then a BI team arrived, and we were so happy. We thought a dashboard would save us time, and help the other departments too.
6 months later, we still didn't see any dashboard.
Now I do it very differently.
I built a dashboard for 7 countries. Every month, each one sends its P&L. The file names are all different. The layouts are different. France's is in French. They never translate.
Normally you consolidate everything and rebuild the dashboard for your board. That costs you 2 days. Then next month you do it again, and it doesn't even look the same.
Sound familiar?
This time, ChatGPT built the first version from 42 P&L files in a couple of minutes.
Now it refreshes itself.
Today I’ll show you how.
The Zero-Click Dashboard Method
Here's the idea. You put every country's P&L in one Google Drive folder. You give ChatGPT one prompt. Then you schedule it.
I call it the Zero-Click Dashboard Method
In this newsletter I’ll show it using a ChatGPT Work feature called ‘Sites’. Although you can do something similar in Claude using Artifacts, and by asking it to produce HTML.
Sites is a new feature inside ChatGPT Work. You describe a website or small app, and it builds it, shows you a private preview, and publishes it at a web link. Toy example: "Make a page that shows my team's weekly sales." Here, Sites turns your P&L files into a dashboard that stays online, so it can refresh later. A new Site starts private. Only you and your workspace admins can open it until you change who has access. Sites is in public beta.
Tip – Can't see Sites? It isn't on Free or Go. On Business it's on by default. On Enterprise, an admin has to switch it on.
The 6 steps
1. Connect
So ChatGPT can read your files, (but never delete them).
Open Plugins in the left menu, pick Google Drive (or OneDrive) and connect.
ChatGPT sends you to Google to sign in and confirm the permissions.
My top security tips:
- Back up your originals and work on copies. With access, AI might be able to delete files.
- Check that your company allows your data in your AI tool.
- Use a corporate license that is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, like ChatGPT Business or Enterprise. Confirm with your company that it's enough.
- No Drive or OneDrive connector? Take a business case to IT. This dashboard is a good one.
For this dashboard there is no risk of deleting anything. It only reads.
2. Build
Put every P&L in one main folder. Mine is called 2026 P&L. Inside it, one subfolder per month, January to June, and in each one a P&L file for every country. 7 countries, 6 months, 42 files.
I named every file differently on purpose. Someone always gets lazy and sends a weird file name. So the prompt can't depend on names.
Open a new ChatGPT Work task and paste this prompt.
@Sites I am a CFO of a software company. Create a dynamic HTML dashboard for monthly P&L reports. The dashboard must have a monthly progress chart over the year for each and all country's P&L and all the necessary KPI visuals. Include total numbers for each country + all together. I grant you access to all the existing subfolders inside the 2026 P&L folder on Google Drive. Make sure to use the data from the inside of the files and ignore their names. Files may have different structure, so use agnostic parsing for collecting the data.
@Sites keeps the dashboard online, so you can make it live later. "Ignore their names" makes it read the data inside. I made that mistake before. If ChatGPT focuses on file names, it makes errors.
A couple of minutes later you have filters by country and month, KPI filters for the charts, and a CFO signal that follows your filters. Done manually, that's hours or even days. Crazy, right?
3. Audit
Paste this prompt.
Create an audit of the dashboard. Show if each calculation makes sense and prove in plain english that the code makes the correct calculations for each one of them.
You get a document. For each calculation, you see what the code does, and right under it, a translation in plain English. It could catch something as simple as the wrong direction. Normally it's this month less last month. Sometimes AI does it the other way round.
Tip – Keep that audit document next to your dashboard. It is your proof if anyone asks.
4. Go live
First with a refresh button, to get up-to-date info instantly.
You need to do this, because if you add a new month to Google Drive now and the dashboard won't see it. The fix is a connection through the Google Drive API. It sounds harder than it is.
5 Step One Time Setup
- Create a project in the Google Cloud console, with the Google account you use for Drive. Mine is called PL Dashboard Reader.
- Enable the Google Drive API. Go to APIs and services, then Library, search for it, click Enable.
- Create a service account. Go to IAM and admin, then Service accounts. Mine is called pl-reader. Copy the email address Google gives you.
- Share the main 2026 P&L folder with that email, as Viewer. The box shows Editor by default, so change it. Share the main folder, so every new subfolder inherits the access.
- Download a JSON key. Open the service account, go to Keys, then Add key, Create new key, JSON. Store that file like a password. Google can't recover it if you lose it.
Now go back to your ChatGPT Work task, attach the JSON file and paste this prompt:
Use the attached Google service-account JSON key to give the deployed P&L dashboard read-only server-side access to the 2026 P&L Google Drive folder. Verify access before deployment. Add a refresh button and when clicked, scan any new subfolders for new data to add to the dashboard. If a month isn't filed by every country yet, keep flagging it as Pending instead of showing a half-finished total as if it were final.
Note – To see a version of this where you can follow along, you’ll find a link to my video at the end of this newsletter.
5. Test
My advice is that you now test that this is working 3 ways.
- Add a new month. Put the new files in the Drive folder and click refresh. 7 new files should take you from 42 to 49.
- Refresh again, with no changes. Your total should stay exactly the same. It should tell you that no new files were added.
- Delete a month. Move the July folder to the Bin and click refresh. July should disappear from every chart, and the numbers should go back to where they started.
6. Schedule (and stop clicking)
One click is good. Zero clicks is better.
You can now schedule recurring work on your Site. Ask ChatGPT to set up the schedule, then review it on the Scheduled page. There you see what runs and when.
Paste something like this.
On the 5th of every month at 8:00, refresh the P&L dashboard. Scan the 2026 P&L folder for new subfolders and files. If any country has not filed the latest month, flag that month as Pending and tell me which countries are missing.
A schedule runs in the background, so it can’t borrow your own login. That’s why the read-only key from Step 4 is important.
But, before you switch this on, make sure you never schedule what you haven’t tested three ways.
That's it! You have your reporting bot built for you, delivering consistent reporting every month!
The One Thing to Remember
Use AI for everything that doesn’t require your judgement and expertise.
Rebuilding the same dashboard every month is a low-value robotic task.
Checking it, and deciding what it means for your business, is a high-value a human one.
And don’t forget to keep an eye on your inbox on Thursday for the next edition of my ‘Bots and Agents’ series.
Best,
Your AI Finance Expert,
– Nicolas
P.S. – The best way to learn from me directly is to join my weekly masterclasses. 60 mins + Q&A where I'll get all your AI in Finance questions answered. Join me here.
P.P.S. – Want to watch me build this click by click? ChatGPT: How to Build INSANE Live Financial Dashboards With ChatGPT
