How to use Claude at work: a step-by-step guide for owners and managers
How to use Claude on your own work, from the first account settings to an answer checked against the source.
What you need to start
You need a Claude account and a web browser. Claude runs at claude.ai, in the Claude desktop app, and in the mobile apps. You can sign in with Google or with an emailed link, and every new account verifies a phone number by text message.
Sign up with an email address that you plan to keep. Anthropic’s help centre says that the email on an account cannot be changed.
The Free plan is enough to try Claude, and projects work on every plan, with up to five on Free. Claude Cowork, the mode that carries out longer tasks with your files and apps, needs a paid plan. For company files, use a Team or Enterprise account that the company owns. For what each plan includes, see Claude for business: Team and Enterprise plans.
Step 1: Check the data settings on your account
The plan decides what happens to what you type. On Team and Enterprise, Anthropic does not use your conversations to train the Claude models by default, according to Anthropic’s article for company plans. Free, Pro, and Max follow the consumer terms instead.
- On Free, Pro, or Max, open Settings, then Privacy, and decide on the model improvement setting before you upload a company file. That setting decides whether your chats help train the models.
- Use an incognito chat for a one-off question. Incognito chats are not used for training and stay out of your chat history. Anthropic still keeps each incognito chat for 30 days.
- Think before you click thumbs up or down. Feedback sends the whole conversation to Anthropic, which stores feedback for up to five years.
- On Team, the owner sets the company rules, such as feedback and project sharing. For the list, see settings to change on day one.
Step 2: Tell Claude how you work
Instructions for Claude are account-wide notes that apply to every conversation. Set the instructions under Settings, in the Instructions for Claude field. Anthropic suggests your preferred methods, the terms you use, the situations you meet, and how you like answers written.
Instructions for an owner of a plant in Ontario: “Write in Canadian English and use metric units. Keep answers short. When a figure comes from a document, name the document and the page. If a figure is missing, say so.”
On Team and Enterprise, an owner can also set organization instructions of up to 3,000 characters. When the two conflict, the organization instructions take precedence, according to Anthropic’s guide.
Step 3: Make a project for one job
A project is a workspace that keeps a separate chat history, files, and instructions. Files you add to a project are available in every chat inside that project. A chat does not see what was said in another chat in the same project unless you add that information to the project files.
Make one project for each job, such as quotes or supplier contracts. Add the documents the job depends on, then write project instructions, for example “Answer from these files only”. On a paid plan, a project can hold more files than one conversation fits. Claude then searches the files instead of reading every page at once.
On Team, a project can be shared with named colleagues, who can view the project or edit the project. The creator of a project decides who can see the project, within the sharing rules the owner sets.
Start with the job that takes the most hours
Tell Derik which job takes the most hours in your week and who would attend. He will tell you what a working session built on that job would cover.
Start a conversationStep 4: Upload the documents
Claude reads PDF, Word, Excel, CSV, plain text, and other document formats, plus images. Excel files need the code execution and file creation setting turned on. Each chat takes up to 20 files, according to Anthropic’s upload guide.
- Claude reads the images, charts, and graphics in a PDF of 100 pages or fewer. In a longer PDF, Claude reads the text only.
- In Word and other non-PDF files, Claude reads the text and skips embedded images. Send a drawing or a scanned page as a PDF or an image.
- When you ask about a page, use the page number that your PDF viewer shows. The number printed on the page can differ.
- Name files plainly, such as “2026 price list, supplier A”, so that you can point Claude at the right file by name.
Step 5: Write the first prompts
Anthropic’s prompting guide compares Claude to “a brilliant but new employee” who lacks your context. Give Claude the document instead of describing the document, and say what the output should look like. Allow Claude to say that a figure is missing. The examples below come from a plant or a distributor.
Reply to a customer’s quote request
Upload the customer’s email, your price list, and your standard terms of sale.
“Draft a reply to this request for 200 machined brackets. Price each line from the attached price list, and quote the lead time from the terms. List any part number that is not in the price list instead of guessing a price.”
Check every price against the price list and the lead time against the current schedule. Send the reply yourself, from your own mailbox.
Compare two supplier price lists
Upload this year’s and last year’s price lists from the same supplier, or one list from each of two suppliers.
“Match these two price lists by part number. Make a table with each price and the change in percent, largest increase first. List the parts that appear in only one list.”
Check three part numbers by hand. Watch the units, because one list can price by the piece and the other by the box.
Summarize a supplier contract
Upload the agreement as a PDF.
“Summarize this supply agreement for the owner. For payment terms, price changes, liability, and termination, quote the clause and give the page number. Say so if the agreement does not cover a topic.”
Open the contract at each page that Claude cites and read the clause in full. A summary helps you prepare for a lawyer, and the lawyer still reads anything you sign.
Build a weekly report from an ERP export
Export last week’s shipments and the open orders from the ERP to Excel or CSV.
“From this export, build a one-page weekly report. Show shipments by customer, orders past their promise date, and the five largest open orders. Show how each total was calculated.”
Compare each total with the same report from the ERP. Save the prompt in the project instructions, so next week’s report starts from the same request.
Step 6: Check each answer against the source
Claude can write a confident answer that is wrong, which Anthropic calls a hallucination. Anthropic’s guide on reducing hallucinations recommends prompts that make each answer traceable to the source.
- Give Claude permission to say that it does not know.
- For a long document, ask for word-for-word quotes first, then the answer.
- Ask Claude to find a supporting quote for each claim, and to remove any claim without one.
Anthropic’s guide ends with a plain rule: “Always validate critical information, especially for high-stakes decisions”. In practice, check each number against the document it came from, and test the answer on one case that you already know.
Step 7: Connect company data
A connector lets Claude search, read, and act in another program, such as your email or your shared drive. Claude gets the same permissions you have in that program, so a file you cannot open stays closed to Claude. Add connectors under Customize, then Connectors.
- The Microsoft 365 connector searches SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook, and Teams. A work account is required, and an administrator gives a one-time consent first.
- The Google Workspace connectors work with Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive. By default, Claude asks for your approval before sending an email.
- Claude for Excel is an add-in for paid plans that works inside your workbook. Answers come with citations down to the cell.
On Team and Enterprise, an owner turns each connector on before staff can use the connector. The owner can also let a connector read a service while blocking any change, such as reading email without sending any. With the Google Workspace connectors, answers cite the emails and documents used, with links to the originals.
Step 8: Hand off longer jobs
Claude Cowork takes on a task with several steps. You describe the outcome, and Claude plans and runs the steps. The result comes back as finished files, such as a spreadsheet with working formulas. Cowork also runs scheduled tasks, such as a summary every Monday morning.
On accounts with Anthropic’s new Claude experience, chat and Cowork run in one conversation, with no mode to choose. If your message box shows no Cowork option, ask for the task in any conversation.
With the Manual permission setting, Cowork asks before each action, such as using a connector. Keep Manual on for anything that sends messages or touches money, which is what Anthropic advises for “work with real consequences”.
A task you repeat can become a skill, a saved set of instructions that Claude follows each time. A plugin bundles skills and connectors for one role. Claude for Small Business is one such plugin, with ready-made workflows for the back office and for sales.
Claude training and courses
Anthropic’s Claude Academy offers free courses and tutorials. You can browse without an account, and a free Claude account saves your progress and earns completion badges. You do not need a paid plan or a work account.
Anthropic describes Claude 101 as the starting point for anyone bringing Claude into their everyday work. The course has 13 lessons and a quiz, and Anthropic estimates 2.5 hours. For owners, AI Fluency for small businesses covers which jobs suit AI and how to handle customer data. The course ends with a short AI use policy.
A completion badge is not a certification. Claude certifications are paid, proctored exams, and only people at Claude Partner Network firms can register. For the four exams, see Claude certification.
A course teaches general skills, so each person still has to apply those skills to the company’s documents and to the rules for company data.
How ThriveAI helps
ThriveAI teaches owners and managers to use AI on their own work. Training runs as working sessions on the attendee’s own tasks and documents, on site at the plant or office, in French or English. A workshop is one working session where people bring a real task.
Derik Lawlis leads every ThriveAI project. Derik plans and quotes each engagement separately, around the jobs chosen and the people who take part. For leadership teams, see AI training for executives. For managers, see AI for managers, and for the people who do the work, see AI training for your team.