The 15 Claude for Small Business Workflows, Explained

Claude for Small Business ships with 15 workflows. They are slash commands you type inside Claude Cowork once you install the Small Business plugin. Type a / in the chat bar, pick one from the list, and Claude runs a job it already knows the steps for. The 15 are /plan-payroll, /month-heads-up, /close-month, /price-check, /tax-prep, /call-list, /sales-brief, /run-campaign, /handle-complaint, /customer-pulse-check, /crm-cleanup, /review-contract, /monday-brief, /friday-brief and /quarterly-review.

Those are the real names, and that matters more than it sounds. Plenty of write-ups list invented names like "Invoice Chaser" or "Cash-Flow View" and present them as Anthropic's. They are not. Anthropic publishes the actual list, with a description of each, in its install tutorial on Claude Academy. Everything here comes from there or from the launch announcement.

We are ES Studios, and we configure this plugin for small businesses as a done-for-you service. Below is every command, what it does, what it reads from, and who gets value from it.

All 15 workflows in one table

The descriptions and areas below are both Anthropic's own. The grouping is not the split most people assume: there is no separate marketing bucket and no separate customer service bucket. Sales and marketing sit together, and customer service sits with operations.

Command	Area	What it does
/plan-payroll	Money and finance	Builds a 30-day cash forecast, ranks overdue invoices, and drafts a reminder for each one.
/month-heads-up	Money and finance	Reads the next 30 days of cash, finds your tightest week, and flags what to watch before month-end.
/close-month	Money and finance	Reconciles your books against your payment processor and writes the close packet for your accountant.
/price-check	Money and finance	Builds a margin-by-product table and pricing scenarios with break-even math.
/tax-prep	Money and finance	Calculates quarterly estimated taxes or builds a year-end 1099 list, formatted for your accountant.
/call-list	Sales and marketing	Scores your leads on engagement, fit, and urgency, and writes a call card for the top ones.
/sales-brief	Sales and marketing	Ranks top and bottom sellers and drafts a content plan that pushes the winners.
/run-campaign	Sales and marketing	Reads your sales history, finds the slow stretch, drafts the offer, builds the assets, and stages the send.
/handle-complaint	Customers and operations	Reads a customer email, looks up their order and history, and drafts a reply matched to the situation.
/customer-pulse-check	Customers and operations	Reads disputes, tickets, emails, and reviews and groups them into themes with a draft response for each.
/crm-cleanup	Customers and operations	Finds stale deals, duplicate contacts, and missing fields. Shows what it found before changing anything.
/review-contract	Customers and operations	Reads a contract and writes a plain-English summary, a red-flag list, and a marked-up redline.
/monday-brief	Business intelligence	One page to start the week: cash, sales trend, pipeline, this week's calendar, and what most needs you today.
/friday-brief	Business intelligence	Revenue against last week, what sold, wins and watches.
/quarterly-review	Business intelligence	Revenue and margin trends, customer health, opportunities, and risks, written as a narrative.

Money and finance: five commands

This is the strongest part of the plugin, and where most of our clients see value in week one. All five lean on QuickBooks. Three also read PayPal.

/plan-payroll does two jobs at once. It builds a 30-day cash forecast, then ranks your overdue invoices and drafts a chase email for each. The forecast is not the point. The actions that would close the gap are. If you run payroll and lie awake about it, this is your command.

/month-heads-up is the lighter version. It reads the next 30 days and tells you which week is tightest. Run it early in the month, before you commit to a big purchase.

/close-month reconciles your books against your payment processor and writes the close packet your accountant asks for. Bookkeepers get the most from it, as does any owner doing the close themselves at 10pm.

/price-check builds a margin-by-product table with break-even math. Anthropic is careful about the framing, and so are we: it shows the numbers, you decide what to charge. It earns its place where you have enough products that you do not know which line carries the others.

/tax-prep handles quarterly estimated taxes or a year-end 1099 list for your accountant. Seasonal, and best value if you use contractors.

Sales and marketing: three commands

These lean on HubSpot, with QuickBooks or PayPal supplying sales history and Canva making assets. With no CRM, two of the three have little to read.

/call-list scores your leads on engagement, fit and urgency, then writes a call card for the top ones. For anyone who sells by phone this is the highest-value command in the plugin. It answers a question every salesperson asks each morning and usually answers badly.

/sales-brief ranks your best and worst sellers and drafts a content plan around the winners. Retail and e-commerce get more from it than service businesses.

/run-campaign is the biggest command in the set. It reads your sales history, finds the slow stretch in your year, drafts the offer, builds the assets in Canva, and stages the send. It chains three skills and stops to ask you between steps. It also needs Canva and HubSpot properly connected before it does anything impressive.

Customers and operations: four commands

/handle-complaint reads a customer email, pulls up that customer's order and history, and drafts a reply that fits. It uses Gmail and HubSpot, and suits anyone whose inbox is the support channel.

/customer-pulse-check is the wider version. It reads disputes, tickets, emails and reviews together, groups them into themes, and drafts a response for each. Run it monthly. It answers "what are people annoyed about" from the pattern, not from the last loud complaint.

/crm-cleanup finds stale deals, duplicate contacts and missing fields in HubSpot. Note the second half of Anthropic's description: it shows you what it found before changing anything. That is the right default for a command pointed at your customer list.

/review-contract gives you a plain-English summary, a red-flag list and a marked-up redline. It is the only command needing no connector at all. You upload a file and it works, with Docusign optional. That makes it the easiest one to try on day one.

Business intelligence: three commands

All three run the same underlying skill and differ only in timeframe.

/monday-brief gives you one page: cash, sales trend, pipeline, this week's calendar, and what most needs you today. It reads whatever you have connected, so it degrades gracefully: two tools gets you a thinner brief, not an error.

/friday-brief closes the loop: revenue against last week, what sold, wins and watches.

/quarterly-review writes the quarter as a narrative: revenue and margin trends, customer health, opportunities and risks. Useful if you report to a partner, a board, or a bank.

The 15 building-block skills underneath

This causes the most confusion of anything here. Anthropic's launch announcement says the product has 15 skills. The install tutorial lists 15 slash commands. These are not the same 15.

Underneath the commands sit 15 smaller skills. A command is a wrapper that runs one or more in order. /plan-payroll runs cash-flow-snapshot then invoice-chase. /run-campaign runs three. The skills also work alone, and Claude picks one automatically if you describe the job in plain English.

• cash-flow-snapshot: a 30/60/90-day forecast, tight weeks flagged
• invoice-chase: ranks overdue invoices, drafts a reminder for each
• margin-analyzer: margin by product, plus break-even math
• month-end-prep: reconciles, flags what is off, writes the close packet
• tax-season-organizer: quarterly estimates, or the year-end 1099 list
• lead-triage: lead scores plus call cards with talking points
• content-strategy: drafts a content plan around what actually sells
• canva-creator: posting calendar, social designs, captions, staged email
• ticket-deflector: drafts the reply to a support email
• customer-pulse: themes across disputes, tickets, emails and reviews
• crm-maintenance: stale deals, duplicates, missing fields
• contract-review: summary, red flags, redline
• business-pulse: the one-page brief behind all three brief commands
• job-post-builder: job post, interview guide, offer letter template
• smb-onboard: the setup skill that saves the context every other skill reads

Two never appear as a slash command. job-post-builder and smb-onboard are reached by asking in plain English. If you counted the workflows and could not find hiring anywhere, that is why.

What you need before any of this works

The plugin is free, included with a paid Claude plan. You need the Claude desktop app, a Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise plan, and Cowork.

The connectors are where the real work sits. Anthropic named seven partner integrations at launch: QuickBooks, PayPal, HubSpot, Canva, Docusign, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. The skills read mainly from QuickBooks, PayPal, HubSpot, Canva, Gmail and Docusign. A command with nothing connected has nothing to read, which is the most common reason a first run disappoints.

On safety, Anthropic's wording gets overstated in both directions. Skills draft, propose and stage, and you approve before anything sends, posts or pays. Your existing tool permissions still apply, so Claude cannot see what your own account cannot. But the launch announcement is equally clear that once you trust a workflow you can let it run end to end. Approval-first by default, autonomy available, not "nothing ever fires automatically".

Which three to turn on first

Do not switch on all 15. Claude will happily run a command against a half-connected QuickBooks, hand you a confident wrong number, and lose your trust in the whole thing. Start narrow.

1. Run smb-onboard first, before any command. It saves your industry, team size and priorities so every other skill has context. Skipping it is the difference between generic output and useful output.
2. /review-contract, because it needs no connector. Upload a contract you already understand and read what comes back. A free trust test with nothing at stake.
3. /monday-brief, because it builds the habit. It reads whatever is connected, so it works early and improves as you add tools. A command you run weekly beats a clever one you run once.
4. /plan-payroll once QuickBooks is connected, and only after you have checked one line of its output against your books by hand. This is the one that pays for the seat.

Add /call-list next if you sell by phone, or /close-month if bookkeeping is your bottleneck. Leave /run-campaign until Canva and HubSpot are properly wired.

Common questions

Are the 15 workflows the same as the 15 skills?

No, and this trips up almost everyone. There are 15 slash commands and 15 separate skills beneath them. A command runs one or more skills in order. The launch announcement counts the skills; the install tutorial lists the commands. Both numbers are 15, which is why they get merged.

Do I have to type the slash commands?

No. Describe the job in plain English and Claude picks the skill that fits. Typing / and choosing from the list is how you make certain you get the one you meant.

Does Claude for Small Business cost extra?

No. The plugin is included with a paid Claude plan. You pay for your Claude seat and for whatever partner tools you already use. You do not need Claude Team specifically. Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise all work.

Which workflows work without connecting anything?

Only /review-contract, which reads an uploaded file, and the job-post-builder skill. Everything else reads from QuickBooks, PayPal, HubSpot, Canva or Gmail, and has very little to say without them.

Will it send emails or change my CRM without asking?

Not by default. Skills draft, propose and stage, and nothing goes out until you approve it. /crm-cleanup shows what it found before changing anything. Anthropic does let you run a workflow end to end once you trust it, so the honest answer is approval-first with autonomy available, not "never".

Is there a workflow for hiring?

Yes, but not as a slash command. job-post-builder writes a job post, an interview guide with a scoring rubric, and an offer letter template. Ask for it in plain English.

What if I use Xero or Stripe instead of QuickBooks and PayPal?

The tools listed are defaults. When you customize the plugin you can point a skill at a different payment processor, accounting tool or CRM, and it reads from those instead. The harder a skill leans on a connector, the more setup that swap takes.

Getting it set up properly

The install takes two minutes. Getting 15 workflows reading clean data from the right connectors, tuned to how your business runs, is a different job. That is what ES Studios does as a done-for-you service: connect the tools, run smb-onboard against your real numbers, check the first outputs against your books, and hand you the short list worth running weekly.