Overview
Teams in administration, accounting, legal, purchasing, warehouse and customer service can save a lot of time once Claude is set up around their own documents and routines. This modular course starts with a shared foundations day and then splits into two department days built entirely on real documents.
Day 1 gives everyone the same confident start: prompting, a department Project, and a first connection to Outlook and file storage. Day 2 is for administration, finance and legal: contracts, invoices and receipts, figures and liquidity, and recurring workflows. Day 3 is for purchasing, warehouse and customer service: enquiries and quotations, goods receipt and stock, and multilingual communication. Every department leaves with at least one workflow that runs faster from the following week.
Who it's for
Teams in mid-sized companies, from beginners to advanced users. It is especially suited to:
- Administration and office staff
- Accounting and finance teams
- Legal and contract specialists
- Purchasing, warehouse and logistics teams
- Customer service teams
Prerequisites
- No programming skills are needed
- A short department questionnaire completed in advance: your three most important processes, the tools you use and any planned changes
- Anonymised sample documents for each department
By the end of this course you will be able to
- Use Claude for the tasks of your own department instead of only as a chatbot
- Build Projects and knowledge files for your department
- Review and compare contracts, invoices and receipts with Claude and extract data from them
- Prepare enquiries, quotations and multilingual customer communication faster and with consistent quality
- Connect Claude with Outlook and file storage and automate your first recurring workflows
- Define at least one workflow per department that runs faster from the following week
Course outline
Times show the standard running order and can be adjusted when we tailor the course to your team. The trainer stays available during breaks to help anyone finish an exercise.
Welcome & goals 10 min
How the three days work and what each department hopes to achieve.
What Claude can do today 45 min
More than a chatbot: an overview of chat, Projects, Artifacts, Cowork and Skills. Its limits, typical errors and why a person always reviews the result. Comparing the picture with the answers from your department questionnaire.
Try it: Each participant names the two tasks that cost the most time, and the group groups them by department.
Good prompting in practice 55 min
Writing a request that works: role, task, context, examples and output format, brought together by the GCES method (Goal, Context, Expectations, Source). Refining a draft step by step instead of starting over, and capturing what works as a template for recurring tasks.
Try it: Answer a typical business email from your own mailbox with Claude, then save the prompt as a template.
Projects and a custom knowledge base 65 min
One Project per department holding price lists, catalogues, templates and rules. Naming files sensibly and keeping them up to date, and sharing within the team with the right permissions.
Try it: Create a department Project with three real documents and ask five test questions.
What goes into Claude: data rules for departments 35 min
Deciding which documents may be uploaded and which may not: personal data, contracts, financial records and customer information. Anonymising samples, choosing the right account, and keeping a person responsible for what leaves the department.
Try it: Sort a set of example documents into 'safe to upload', 'anonymise first' and 'do not upload'.
Connectors and first automations 65 min
Connecting Outlook, OneDrive or SharePoint through the Microsoft 365 connector, starting with read-only access. Reply drafts instead of automatic sending: Claude writes the draft and a person reads and sends it.
Try it: Have Claude sort three open emails from your mailbox and review the reply drafts without sending any.
Cowork and Skills for the team 40 min
A first look at Cowork, which works on tasks in a folder you release, and Skills, which save a procedure so Claude follows it the same way each time.
Try it: List one routine in your department that could become a Skill and describe its steps.
Day 1 practice: tune your department Project 20 min
Improve your Project using what you found in the test questions.
Try it: Fix the three weakest answers by changing instructions or adding source files.
Close 10 min
Recap of Day 1 and what each department will focus on next.
Welcome back 10 min
Questions from Day 1 and the plan for the department day.
Reviewing and comparing contracts 55 min
Reviewing contracts, comparing a draft with earlier versions, and marking the changes clearly. What Claude can highlight and what needs a lawyer.
Try it: Compare a contract draft with the earlier version and generate a list of changes.
Contract drafts, deadlines and obligations 45 min
Setting up contract drafts from templates, without replacing legal advice, and extracting deadlines and obligations as a list with the clause each one comes from.
Try it: Extract the deadlines and obligations from a sample contract and check each against the clause.
Extracting data from invoices and receipts 45 min
Extracting the key data from invoices and receipts cleanly into a table, and checking totals and tax lines because scanned or photographed documents can be misread.
Try it: Transfer five receipts into a table and verify the totals against the originals.
Matching invoices to orders and terms 45 min
Matching an invoice against the order and agreed terms, and preparing deviations as a clear list for approval.
Try it: Mark deviations between five receipts and their orders and prepare the list for approval.
Figures, overviews and liquidity 70 min
Having Excel analyses explained and prepared, building a liquidity overview from open items, and checking the calculation path by recalculating key results. Treating Claude's figures as drafts for a finance professional to confirm.
Try it: Create an overview by due date with a short comment from an open-items list, then recalculate two totals.
Recurring administrative workflows 65 min
Spotting the workflows that repeat every week, writing a Skill for a standard one, and defining the control steps that keep a person in charge.
Try it: Build a Skill for a standard workflow in your department and test it on two cases.
Close 10 min
Recap of the day and the workflow each department will take away.
Welcome back 10 min
Questions from Day 2 and the plan for today.
Answering enquiries from catalogues and price lists 45 min
Answering catalogue and price enquiries with price lists stored in the Project, quoting where the answer came from.
Try it: Answer a real enquiry using your catalogue and price list and check the figures.
Quotations, follow-ups and calculations 45 min
Writing quotations and follow-ups with consistent quality, and having a calculation prepared as an Excel file with formulas.
Try it: Produce a quotation and an Excel calculation, then verify two formulas.
Goods receipt from photos and delivery notes 45 min
Recording goods receipt from photos and delivery notes into a structured list, and handling poor-quality images.
Try it: Turn three delivery-note photos into a goods-receipt table and check them against the paperwork.
Reconciling stock lists and tracing errors 45 min
Reconciling stock lists with purchase and sales lists, and tracking down the recurring sources of error in stock.
Try it: Reconcile two stock lists and generate a list of discrepancies.
Customer communication in several languages 65 min
Replying in German, English and other languages. Securing tone and technical terms with a glossary in the department Project, and preparing conversation notes and phone-call preparation.
Try it: Answer a customer enquiry in two languages and cross-check the technical terms.
Use case matrix 50 min
Gathering the ideas from all three days and ordering them by effort and benefit, so the team can see which workflow to automate first.
Try it: Create a prioritised use case matrix for all departments together.
Next steps toward automation 30 min
An outlook on Cowork and Skills for the whole team, and who is responsible for each next step.
Try it: Agree an owner and a date for the top three items on the matrix.
Close 10 min
Recap of the three days.
What you'll need
Claude
- A Claude account. A Team or Enterprise plan is recommended: sharing Projects needs one of them.
- Skills and file creation need code execution and file creation to be switched on; on Team and Enterprise this is an administrator setting.
- The Microsoft 365 connector needs your Claude organisation owner and a Microsoft administrator to approve it. If that is not in place, the connector exercise runs as a demonstration.
Preparation
- A completed department questionnaire: your three most important processes, the tools you use and any planned changes.
- Anonymised sample documents for each department, such as contracts, invoices, price lists, stock lists and customer enquiries.
- A laptop.
Practice files are provided for every exercise. You are welcome to use your own everyday documents where your organisation's policy allows.