Weekly Business Pulse with Claude

Connect Claude to your business data and generate a weekly pulse report.

Introduction

30 Second Summary

Running multiple business concepts means drowning in spreadsheets, exports, and invoices every week. You spend hours pulling numbers from different systems just to understand how your business is actually performing.

In this project, you will set up Claude for Small Business to automatically consolidate sales data, inventory counts, and vendor costs into a single weekly pulse report. You'll also build an employee performance tracker that synthesizes your existing data into structured ratings.

What You'll Build

A fully connected Claude for Small Business setup that reads your real business data from three sources (Toast exports, Google Sheets, vendor PDFs) and produces a consolidated weekly pulse showing profitability by concept, labor cost ratios, and inventory flags.

By the end of this project, you'll have:

Claude for Small Business enabled with your Google Workspace connector active and reading your business spreadsheets.
A weekly business pulse report covering revenue, costs, and profitability across your coffee shop, bakery, and flower shop.
An employee performance tracker with structured 1-5 ratings pulled directly from your Google Sheets data.
Secret Mission: A custom Skill that automates your entire weekly pulse workflow with one click.

Are there any prerequisites?

This project requires a paid Claude plan with the Claude Desktop app installed on macOS, a Google Workspace account with existing spreadsheets, a Toast POS account with export access, and vendor invoices saved as PDFs on your Mac.

You do not need any coding or technical experience. Claude Cowork handles tasks autonomously by working with your local files and connected applications.

Set Up Claude for Small Business and Connect Google Workspace

Your business data lives in three different places right now: Toast for sales, Google Sheets for inventory and labor, and PDF invoices from your vendors.

Before Claude can pull all of that together into a single report, it needs access to your data. In this step, you'll enable Claude for Small Business and connect your Google Workspace account so Claude can read your spreadsheets directly.

In this step, get ready to:

Enable Claude for Small Business in Claude Cowork.
Connect your Google Workspace account.
Verify that Claude can read your Google Sheets.

Enable Claude for Small Business in Claude Cowork

Claude Cowork is where Claude works autonomously on your computer, local files, and applications to return a finished deliverable. Claude for Small Business is a toggle inside Claude Cowork that unlocks business-specific workflows and connectors.

Press Cmd+Space to open Spotlight.
Type Claude and press Enter to open the Claude Desktop app.
Navigate to Claude Cowork inside the Claude Desktop app.
Find the Claude for Small Business option and toggle it on.
Confirm the feature is active. You should see the toggle switch in an enabled state.

What is Claude for Small Business?

Claude for Small Business is a set of 15 ready-to-run agentic workflows covering finance, operations, sales, marketing, HR, and customer service. It also includes 15 pre-built skills.

You toggle it on inside Claude Cowork, connect the tools you already use, and pick the job. Claude does the work. You approve before anything sends, posts, or pays.

Why Claude Cowork instead of regular chat?

Claude Cowork is built for outcome-oriented, non-technical workflows. It moves between files and applications autonomously, which is exactly what this multi-source business reporting task requires.

A simple chat AI would require you to copy-paste data manually from each source. Claude Cowork handles that navigation for you.

Don't see Claude Cowork or the Small Business toggle?

Claude Cowork is available on all paid plans through the Claude desktop app. Make sure you're signed into your paid plan, not a free account.

If the interface looks different from what you expect, check Anthropic's getting started guide for Claude Cowork for the latest navigation steps.

Help me find Claude Cowork in my Claude Desktop app

Connect your Google Workspace account

With Claude for Small Business active, you can now connect your Google Sheets data directly. Google Workspace is one of the supported native connectors, so Claude can read your spreadsheets without you needing to export anything.

In Claude Cowork, navigate to the connectors section.
Select Google Workspace from the list of available connectors.
A Google sign-in window will appear. Authenticate with the Google account that contains your business spreadsheets (inventory counts, labor costs, employee tracking data).
Grant Claude access to your Google Sheets when prompted.
Once authentication completes, you should see Google Workspace listed as a connected service in Claude Cowork.

What about permissions and data privacy?

Your existing permissions hold. If an employee can't see something in Google Drive today, they can't see it through Claude. Anthropic does not train on your data by default on Team and Enterprise plans.

Use the right Google account

If you have multiple Google accounts, make sure you select the one that contains your business spreadsheets. You can check which account you're signing in with at the top of the Google authentication window.

Google Workspace connector not appearing?

Make sure Claude for Small Business is toggled on first. The connectors section only shows business connectors when the feature is active.

If you're having trouble with the authentication flow, refer to Anthropic's Google Workspace connector guide for detailed steps.

Help me connect Google Workspace to Claude

Verify the connection

Before moving on, confirm that Claude can actually read your Google Sheets data. A quick test now saves you from debugging later.

In Claude Cowork, ask Claude to read one of your existing Google Sheets. For example, type something like: "Can you show me the contents of my inventory tracking spreadsheet?"
Claude should respond with data from your spreadsheet. Confirm you can see values from your inventory, labor, or employee tracking sheets.
If Claude returns data that matches what's in your Google Sheet, the connection is working.

What should I see?

Claude should display rows and columns from your spreadsheet in its response. The exact format may vary, but you should recognize the data as matching your actual Google Sheet content.

Claude can't find your spreadsheet?

Try being more specific with the sheet name. Use the exact title of your Google Sheet in your request to Claude.

If Claude says it doesn't have access, go back to the connectors section and re-authenticate. Make sure you granted access to Google Sheets during the authentication step.

Help me troubleshoot my Google Workspace connection in Claude

Claude can now read your Google Sheets directly. Next up, you'll organize your local files so Claude can also process your Toast exports and vendor invoices.

Organize Your Local Data Sources

Claude can now read your Google Sheets directly, but your Toast sales exports and vendor invoices live as files on your Mac. Without a consistent folder structure, Claude Cowork has no reliable place to look each week.

In this step, you'll create a dedicated folder structure and populate it with a sample week of real business data. This gives Claude Cowork a predictable location to find your Toast exports and vendor invoices every time you run a pulse report.

In this step, get ready to:

Create a dedicated folder structure on your Mac for all business pulse data.
Export a sample week of daily sales data from Toast into your new folder.
Gather vendor invoice PDFs from your suppliers and save them in the folder.

Create a folder structure for business data

Claude Cowork works best when your files live in a consistent location. You'll create one root folder with three subfolders that separate your data by type.

Press Cmd+Space to open Spotlight search.
Type Terminal and press Enter to open it.
Create your folder structure by running this command:

mkdir -p ~/Documents/Business-Pulse/Toast-Exports ~/Documents/Business-Pulse/Vendor-Invoices ~/Documents/Business-Pulse/Reports

Confirm the folders exist by running:

ls ~/Documents/Business-Pulse/

You should see Reports, Toast-Exports, and Vendor-Invoices listed in the output.

Why this folder structure?

Each subfolder has a specific purpose. Toast-Exports holds your weekly sales data from Toast. Vendor-Invoices holds PDF invoices from your suppliers. Reports is where Claude will save your finished pulse reports.

Keeping this structure consistent means you can point Claude Cowork at the same paths every week without re-explaining where your files live.

Seeing 'permission denied'?

Make sure you're running the command in your own user account. The ~/Documents/ path points to your personal Documents folder, so you should have full write access.

If Terminal is unfamiliar, you can also create the folders manually in Finder: open Documents, create a folder called Business-Pulse, then create the three subfolders inside it.

help me create folders on my Mac

Prepare a sample week of Toast data

Toast doesn't have a native connector with Claude, so you'll export your sales data manually and save it to your new folder. Claude Cowork can read CSV and Excel files directly from your Mac.

Open your web browser and log into Toast Web (your restaurant's back-end).
Navigate to your Sales Summary Report for the past week.
Click the download icon (down arrow) in the top right corner of the report.
Select CSV or XLS as your file type.
Save the downloaded file into ~/Documents/Business-Pulse/Toast-Exports/.

What should I include in the export?

Ideally, your export includes sales broken down by concept (coffee, bakery, flowers) or by individual item. If your Toast setup uses revenue centers or categories to separate your three concepts, make sure those filters are applied before you export.

If Toast exports everything as one combined report, that's fine too. Claude Cowork will parse the data and separate it by concept when generating your pulse report.

Export multiple days at once

Toast's Sales Summary Report lets you select a date range. Set the range to cover the past 7 days so you get a full week's data in a single download.

Verify your export landed in the right place by running:

ls ~/Documents/Business-Pulse/Toast-Exports/

You should see your downloaded sales file (a .csv or .xls file) listed in the output.

Don't see your file?

Your browser may have saved the download to your default Downloads folder instead. Check ~/Downloads/ and move the file to ~/Documents/Business-Pulse/Toast-Exports/ using Finder (drag and drop).

help me find and move my Toast export file

Gather sample vendor invoices

Your vendor invoices track the cost side of each concept. Claude Cowork reads unstructured PDFs and extracts the numbers that matter, so they don't need to be organized perfectly.

Collect 3-5 recent vendor invoices (PDFs) from your suppliers.
Look for invoices that cover your three concepts: coffee beans, flour or baking supplies, and flowers or stems.
Save or move each PDF into ~/Documents/Business-Pulse/Vendor-Invoices/.
Verify your invoices are in place by running:

ls ~/Documents/Business-Pulse/Vendor-Invoices/

You should see your PDF files listed (for example, coffee-beans-invoice.pdf, flour-supply-june.pdf).

Where do I find my invoices?

Check your email for PDF attachments from suppliers. Many vendors send invoices as email attachments, so search your inbox for recent orders.

If you have a shared Google Drive folder with invoices, download a handful from there. You only need 3-5 covering the same week as your Toast export.

Why can Claude read unstructured PDFs?

Claude Cowork reads through contracts, reports, and records and returns the information that matters in a clear, structured format. Your invoices don't need to follow a standard layout.

Your local data is organized and ready. Next up, you'll point Claude Cowork at all three sources (Toast export, Google Sheets, and vendor PDFs) and generate your first consolidated weekly business pulse.

Generate Your First Weekly Business Pulse

Your data is organized and ready to go. You have Toast exports, Google Sheets data, and vendor invoices all sitting in dedicated folders.

Now comes the payoff. In this step, you'll point Claude Cowork at all three sources and let it do what it does best: synthesize information across multiple sources into a single, structured deliverable.

In this step, get ready to:

Have Claude Cowork read and consolidate your Toast, Google Sheets, and vendor invoice data.
Refine the output into a structured weekly pulse report by concept.
Save the report as a repeatable template for future weeks.

Ask Claude Cowork to read and consolidate your data

Claude Cowork is designed to take a goal and work across your local files and connected applications to return a finished deliverable. You'll give it one prompt that describes your business and points it to all three data sources.

In the Claude Desktop app, start a new conversation with Claude Cowork.
Type the following prompt (customize it to match your actual business names if they differ):

I run a coffee shop, bakery, and flower shop in one space. Read my Toast sales export in ~/Documents/Business-Pulse/Toast-Exports/, my inventory and labor data in Google Sheets, and my vendor invoices in ~/Documents/Business-Pulse/Vendor-Invoices/. Give me a weekly business pulse report.

Press Enter to send the prompt.
Let Claude Cowork process across all three sources autonomously. This may take a minute or two as it reads each file.

What is Claude Cowork doing?

Claude Cowork moves between your local files and connected applications without you coordinating each step. It reads your Toast CSV or Excel export for sales numbers, pulls inventory and labor data from your connected Google Sheets, and extracts cost information from your vendor PDFs.

You'll see Claude working through each source. It handles the assembly and synthesis so the work left for you is refinement.

Once Claude finishes, you should see a consolidated report covering sales, costs, and key numbers from across your business.

Claude not finding your files?

Double-check that your Toast export is saved inside ~/Documents/Business-Pulse/Toast-Exports/ and your vendor PDFs are inside ~/Documents/Business-Pulse/Vendor-Invoices/. File paths are case-sensitive on macOS.

If Claude cannot access your Google Sheets, return to Claude Cowork settings and confirm the Google Workspace connector is still authenticated.

help me troubleshoot why Claude Cowork isn't reading my local files or Google Sheets data

Review and refine the output

Claude's first pass gives you raw consolidated data. Now you'll shape it into the exact format you want to see every week.

Review Claude's initial report for accuracy. Check that the sales numbers, inventory counts, and costs look reasonable based on what you know about your week.
Ask Claude to restructure the report by typing this prompt:

Break this into three sections: coffee shop, bakery, and flower shop. For each, show revenue, cost of goods, labor cost, and a gross margin estimate.

Why structure by concept?

When you run multiple businesses in one space, knowing overall revenue is not enough. Breaking the report into coffee, bakery, and flowers lets you spot which concept is pulling its weight and which needs attention.

Gross margin (revenue minus costs divided by revenue) tells you how much of each dollar you actually keep per concept.

Once Claude returns the restructured report, ask it to add an action items section by typing:

Add an action items section flagging anything unusual: high spoilage, a vendor price increase, overtime hours, or any metric that looks out of the ordinary this week.

Review the action items Claude flags. These are the things that would normally take hours of manual comparison to catch.

What should the refined report look like?

Your report should now have three main sections (one per concept), each with revenue, cost of goods, labor cost, and gross margin. At the bottom, you should see a list of flagged items that deserve your attention this week.

If something looks off, tell Claude. You can say things like "my flower costs seem too high, double-check the invoice from [supplier name]" and Claude will re-read the source.

Numbers look wrong?

If revenue or costs seem inaccurate, Claude may have misread a column header in your Toast export. Ask Claude to show you which cells or rows it pulled data from so you can verify the source.

For vendor invoices, PDFs with handwritten amounts or poor scan quality can cause extraction errors. Replace any unreadable PDFs with clearer copies and ask Claude to re-read.

help me figure out why Claude's numbers don't match my actual sales or costs

Save your report template

You have a report format that works. Now you'll lock it in so you can reuse the same structure every week without re-explaining what you want.

Ask Claude to save the finished report by typing:

Save this report to ~/Documents/Business-Pulse/Reports/. Name it with today's date.

Confirm Claude saved the file by checking your Reports folder. You should see the new report file inside ~/Documents/Business-Pulse/Reports/.
Tell Claude to remember this format for future use by typing:

Remember this format. Next week I want the same structure with updated numbers.

Claude will retain this report structure as your preferred format. Next week, you can drop in fresh Toast exports and vendor invoices, then ask for the same report with one prompt.

Check your Reports folder

Open Finder and navigate to Documents > Business-Pulse > Reports. You should see your newly saved report file. Open it to confirm the three-section structure and action items are all present.

Report not appearing in your folder?

Claude Cowork needs file system access to save files. If the report did not appear, check that Claude has permission to write to your Documents folder. On macOS, go to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Files and Folders and confirm Claude has access.

Alternatively, you can ask Claude to show the report in the chat and manually copy it into a document in your Reports folder.

help me save my Claude Cowork report to a local folder on my Mac

You now have a complete weekly business pulse covering all three concepts in one page. Next up, you'll build an employee performance tracker that pulls directly from your Google Sheets data.

Build Your Employee Performance Tracker

Your weekly business pulse already gives you a clear picture of how each concept is performing financially. The next piece of the puzzle is your team.

In this step, you'll build an employee performance tracker that pulls data directly from your Google Sheets. Claude will generate structured ratings for each team member, giving you a consistent and data-backed way to recognize strong performers and spot areas that need support.

In this step, get ready to:

Define your performance rating criteria with Claude.
Generate employee performance summaries from your Google Sheets data.
Set up a recurring report structure for regular check-ins.

Define your rating criteria with Claude

Before Claude can evaluate your employees, it needs to know what good performance looks like in your business. You'll define the categories that matter most to you and let Claude match them against the data in your existing employee tracking sheet.

In Claude Cowork, start a new conversation with Claude.
Tell Claude about your rating criteria and ask it to pull from your Google Sheets employee data by sending this prompt:

I track my employees in a Google Sheet. I want to rate them on:
- Attendance/punctuality
- Task completion
- Customer feedback
- Initiative

Give them a 1-5 rating in each category and an overall score.
Please start by reading my employee tracking sheet to see who my team members are and what data I already track.

What does this prompt do?

This prompt tells Claude two things: the four categories you care about and that it should look at your existing Google Sheets data to understand your team.

Because your Google Workspace connector is already active, Claude can read your employee tracking sheet directly without you needing to export or copy anything.

Claude will respond by listing the employees it found in your sheet and confirming what data is available for each one.

Claude can't find your employee sheet?

Make sure your employee tracking data is in a Google Sheets file, not a different format like Excel or PDF. The Google Workspace connector only reads files stored in Google's native formats.

If Claude still can't find it, try asking Claude to list all available Google Sheets. This helps you confirm the connector is working and identify the exact sheet name.

Need more help? Help me troubleshoot my Google Workspace connector in Claude Cowork

Generate performance summaries

Now that Claude knows your team and your rating criteria, it can generate a full performance summary for each employee.

Ask Claude to generate individual summaries by sending this prompt:

Based on the data in my employee tracking sheet, generate a performance summary for each employee this week.

For each person, include:
- A 1-5 rating in each category (attendance/punctuality, task completion, customer feedback, initiative)
- An overall score
- One specific thing they did well
- One area to improve

Why specific strengths and improvements?

Generic feedback like "good job" or "needs improvement" doesn't help anyone grow. By asking Claude to pull specific observations from your data, you get feedback that's tied to real actions your employees took this week.

Review the output Claude produces. Check that the ratings feel accurate based on what you know about each team member's week.
If any ratings feel off, tell Claude what seems wrong and ask it to adjust. For example, if you weight customer feedback more heavily for your coffee shop baristas, let Claude know.
Ask Claude to flag employees who need attention by sending this follow-up:

Flag anyone who is trending down compared to previous weeks, or trending up and deserving recognition.

Claude will add a flags section identifying team members whose performance has shifted noticeably in either direction.

Adjust criteria over time

Your rating categories aren't set in stone. If you find that "initiative" is hard to measure from your sheet data, swap it for something more concrete like "upsells completed" or "shift coverage volunteered."

Set up a recurring structure

A performance tracker only helps if you use it regularly. In this substep, you'll tell Claude to create a reusable template so you can run this same evaluation on a set schedule.

Tell Claude to create a recurring template by sending this prompt:

Create a performance report template I can run every week.
Evaluate the last 7 days of data each time.
Use the same format: 1-5 ratings in each category, overall score, one strength, one improvement, and flags for anyone trending up or down.

Weekly or monthly?

The outline uses weekly as a default, but adjust the cadence to match your management style. If you'd prefer monthly reviews, change "every week" to "every month" and "the last 7 days" to "the last 30 days" in your prompt.

Ask Claude to save the performance report to your Reports folder by sending this prompt:

Save this employee performance report to ~/Documents/Business-Pulse/Reports/. Remember this format for next time.

Confirm the report has been saved by checking your Reports folder. You should see your employee performance report alongside the weekly business pulse report you created earlier.

What does "remember this format" do?

Claude retains context within your conversation. By explicitly asking it to remember the format, you're setting up a pattern where next time you can simply say "run my employee performance report for this week" and Claude will know exactly what structure to produce.

Report didn't save to the right folder?

Double-check that you typed the exact folder path ~/Documents/Business-Pulse/Reports/ in your prompt. Claude Cowork uses the path you provide to determine where to write the file on your Mac.

If the folder doesn't exist, Claude may ask you to confirm creation. Since you created this folder in Step 2, it should already be there.

Still having trouble? Help me figure out why Claude Cowork isn't saving files to my specified folder

You now have a complete employee performance tracking workflow. Each week, your Google Sheets data feeds directly into structured ratings and actionable feedback for every team member, all saved alongside your business pulse report.

Secret mission

Create a Custom Skill for One-Click Pulse Reports

Right now, you run your weekly pulse by typing a detailed prompt every time. What if you could package the entire workflow into a single, repeatable Skill that runs with one click? In this secret mission, you'll create a custom Skill that automates everything you built in this project.

Clean Up Your Resources

This project runs entirely on your existing paid Claude plan with no additional costs. Your Google Workspace connector and local files don't incur charges either.

Decide whether to keep your resources running, pause them to come back later, or delete them entirely.

Resources you used:

Claude for Small Business (active on your existing paid plan).
Google Workspace connector (connected to your Google Sheets).
Custom Skill: Weekly Business Pulse (saved in Claude).
Local folder ~/Documents/Business-Pulse/ with Toast exports, vendor invoices, and reports.

Keep everything running

No action needed. Choose this if you're still actively using your weekly pulse workflow.

Your setup persists between sessions. Each week, drop new Toast exports and vendor PDFs into your folders and run your Skill.
Claude for Small Business stays active on your plan at no extra cost.
Your Google Workspace connector remains connected and ready.

Pause - I'll come back to this later

Disconnect Claude from your Google Sheets data while keeping your local files and Skill intact for later.

In the Claude Desktop app, go to Settings > Connectors.
Find your Google Workspace connector and disconnect it.
Your Google Sheets data remains untouched in Google Drive. You can reconnect at any time.
Your local Business-Pulse folder and your Weekly Business Pulse Skill remain in place for when you return.

Delete - I don't want to use this again

Remove all project resources and start fresh. Follow each step below.

Toggle off Claude for Small Business in Claude Cowork.
In Settings > Connectors, disconnect your Google Workspace connector.
Navigate to your Skills in Claude (Customize > Skills) and delete the Weekly Business Pulse Skill.
Delete your local project folder by opening Terminal and running the command below.

rm -rf ~/Documents/Business-Pulse/

Your Google Sheets data remains in Google Drive. Claude never modified those files, so no cleanup is needed there.

That's a Wrap!

Nice work. You just built a complete AI-powered business reporting workflow that pulls from three separate data sources and delivers a consolidated weekly pulse for your coffee shop, bakery, and flower shop.

Here's what you learned:

Connected Claude for Small Business to your Google Workspace and built an organized data pipeline from Toast exports, Google Sheets, and vendor PDFs into Claude Cowork.
Generated a consolidated weekly business pulse report covering revenue, costs, and profitability across all three of your business concepts.
Created an employee performance tracker with structured 1-5 ratings pulled directly from your real Google Sheets data.
Secret Mission: Built a custom Skill that automates the entire weekly workflow with one click.

Ready to quiz yourself?