Closing 13 hotels by hand. Every month. For 3 years.
Last week I was on a call with a finance leader who closes the books for 13 hotels manually every month.
He pulls the numbers out of Microsoft Dynamics, rebuilds the same report, updates the same broken formulas, and writes the same summary.
Then he does it again 30 days later. This is not because he is slow (he is really good at it). He does it because nobody ever told him it could stop.
When I showed him he could hand the repetitive parts to Claude, he went quiet for a second.
You could see him doing the math on three years of lost weekends.
Ford cut 400 AP clerks to 5
The method? Business Process Re-Engineering (BPR).
In 1990, a professor called Michael Hammer wrote the most famous line in process design:
"It is time to stop paving the cow paths."
The saying goes back to Sam Walter Foss's 1895 poem, ‘The Calf-Path’, about a calf making a trail that was not straight that then became a crowded city street.
Most companies take a process that is not straight, and just speed it up with technology – They just automate the mess.
With Hammer, Ford looked at accounts payable, and rebuilt how the work flowed, and went from 400 clerks to 5 (they built AP automation software before AP automation went mainstream). [Source – Hammer's HBR paper here]
This is a big problem I see with finance right now. They use AI with the same badly designed month-end task and ask it to do it faster. So they get a faster mess.
Give a bad process to Claude, and you'll get a bad output.
But re-engineering a process with Claude Cowork, and you'll be building your street straight 😉
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Anna Tiomina, one of our AI Finance Club instructors, did this with a 1,500-line invoice dispute. She redesigned it once into a Cowork skill. You can read the full newsletter where I cover this here.
Now a task that used to take her weekends runs in the background while she does the advisory work she is actually paid for.
The 5-Step Cowork workflow you can build using BPR
This step-by-step shows a month-end consolidation example from one of our recent AI Finance Club workshops.
But each step is also a re-engineering step, so read the principle, and apply to any finance task that repeats.
1. Give Cowork App Access (but restrict where needed)
Principle: Connect at the source
Open Cowork, go to Connectors, link Gmail or Outlook, and read the scope (what Claude can/can’t do) before you approve.
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Claude only needs to read your emails to get the data, not send or delete.
Re-Engineering Step:
Speeding up just makes you a faster file processor. Connecting the source removes the file transfer step, so the data step stops needing a human at all.
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Other examples:
- The bank feeds for reconciliation.
- The invoice inbox for AP.
- The read-only ERP link for FP&A actuals.
2. Make it read your inbox, so you don't have to.
Principle: Find and verify (build in your checks)
Start a task and tell it exactly what to find:
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For consolidation, just something like this:
Re-Engineering Step:
Speeding up just helps review the output faster after it is built. Here the reconciliation tab is produced with the output, so your review starts from a list of flagged exceptions, not a blank page.
Other Examples:
- Variance commentary with a tab of every line over 5%,
- Payroll run with a changes-since-last-month flag.
3. Point it at last year's file and let it rebuild this year's.
Principle: Capture once and re-use.
Set your consolidation folder as the project, with last year's file inside as the template. Then:
Spot-check one number against one country tab before you trust the rest.
Re-Engineering Step:
Capture information once and at the source. A speed-up copies last year's template faster. This removes the re-keying altogether.
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Other examples:
- Budget consolidation from department inputs.
- A board pack that reuses last quarter's structure.
- Inter-company eliminations where only the new balances are used.
4. Type four words: "Please make this a skill."
Principle: Turn a one-off into an SOP
A prompt you run once gives one result.
A prompt that changes gives a different result every month.
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Saving it as a skill saves the logic, the structure, and the audit step in place, so every future use is the same.
Re-Engineering Step:
Speed-up saves your prompt in a doc to paste next time. A skill makes the process a fixed asset that runs the same way no matter who triggers it. You standardized the work, not your typing.
Other examples:
- A month-end close checklist,
- An audit Prepared By Client pack
- A brand guide for generating docs and powerpoint
5. Schedule it once, then stop running it.
Principle: Move from operator to reviewer
Type /schedule, or click "Scheduled" in the sidebar.
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Make sure to name it, point it at the skill, set it to monthly, and run it once to confirm.
One catch: it only runs while your computer is awake and the app is open, so pick a time your machine is on (and turn on "Keep computer awake" in settings to be safe).
Re-Engineering Step:
Scheduling (delegation) means the task runs without you, and your role changes from running the close to signing it off.
Other examples:
- A daily cash-position report waiting each morning.
- A weekly flash you approve and send.
- A quarterly covenant check you only review.
The One Thing To Remember
You do not need to become a developer or win some AI race.
You need to do the one thing you are already better at than any model. Decide what is worth doing, then re-engineer it so it runs without you.
This is the most impactful job in finance right now.
If you’re the one designing the straight path when others are being trained to go around in circles.
Instead of being the one that’s invisible. You’ll be the one with the insight.
So don't wait for next month's close to come round again. Open Cowork this afternoon and re-design one simple task.
Then do the math on the 3 years you can earn back 😉
Best,
Your AI Finance Expert,
– Nicolas
P.S – Have you got a process you’re really struggling with that you want automated? Hit reply and let me know (I read all replies)
P.P.S – Ready to go deeper on Cowork? Here's more Claude Cowork walkthrough → How to Use Claude Cowork like a PRO
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