Transcription
What if I told you that this could be 8 seconds and this also 8 seconds? No Excel, no Python, no designer, just Claude.
Look, if you're in finance or FP&A, you know the pain. You spend hours building charts that your CFO glances at for 30 seconds. Budget versus actuals, rolling forecast, waterfall charts. They take forever to get right. Or at least they used to.
Because here is what most people don't realize about Claude. It's not just a chatbot. It's become generally insane at data visualization. And I have been testing it over and over. So, in this video, I'm going to show you 30 real ways that actually work, what gets you a great result, what falls flat, and the exact shortcuts I would use if I were starting from scratch today.
Let's start in the guide. When we go a little bit below, we can see all of the 30 practical prompts. Now, what you can do is to copy-paste each one of these prompts and then go to Claude and add your own data sets. But if you don't want to add your data or you don't have that data set, I'm also going to provide you with the Excel file. So, in here we have all the 30 prompts as well. And then in each of these individual tabs, I have different data sets for you so that you can try, uh, Claude.
Now, let's add the first one that we're basically telling Claude to chart budget versus actual versus forecast for each department and that we're grouping this data with bars with variance percentage labels on each group. Now, as you can see with this prompt and then just by adding the data, then it will be basically start to think about exactly how to gather our request and then giving us the visual. It is grouping the departments and drawing the group bars right now and calculating the variance labels as well. As you can see, in the same conversation, it is appearing the graph already here with budget, actuals, and forecast, and you can hover over and see more detail on it. So that's the first prompt.
Now, as I was mentioning, you can go to either the interactive app and then just like copy-paste the same thing, or you can also go and then get the prompt from the Excel file that I'll be providing in the description and then you will be basically pasting the prompt and also the data set.
Now, the second detail. So let's send it and then in the meantime that we wait for Claude to give us the data visualization, I'll explain that this data set is basically a heat map where the rows are departments and each of the columns are the months from January till December. And what I wanted is basically to show the variance percentage with a couple of different colors. So red if it's over budget or green if it's under budget. And as you can see, Claude is creating this visualization for us with the departments, the months, and the percentages in here.
Let's go and show you the third one. Now, I'm going to copy-paste again. Same thing in the prompt and then the data set in here. And now, basically, in this one, what I wanted is to show a dual-axis line chart. So budget on one axis and then the actuals on the other axis and also over the last 12 months. And I wanted to have a gap basically in a shape between the two lines. Now, let's see what Claude did for us on this one. So, as you can see, you have another Claude visualization with the gap between the two of them.
Let's go around and see the fourth one. So I'm going to paste a prompt and again the data set. And I have to say that I thought that it would be better for you watching if I run all the prompts and then show you. But at the same time, I really wanted this to be an interactive experience. So for you to really see the amount of time that Claude takes in order to create the visuals that, as you can see, is not that much. It's just a couple of seconds, so less than minutes for each visual.
In the meantime that I was saying this, for example, Claude finished another of this visualization. In this case, the horizontal bar chart ranking the top 10 budget variance drivers this quarter with the largest overspend here at the top, that is the enterprise sales commission, to the lowest one, and even a benefit with the engineering over time.
So let's do one more. Now, this one is one of my favorites because it's a waterfall chart with opening cash, operating influx, capex, debt service, and so on. And this chart is one of the ones that are mainly used in financial planning and analysis. I remember when I was an FP&A analyst around 10 years ago that I used to really need to create these waterfall charts almost every day. And since they were a little bit complex, then it really took me a lot of time to really understand how to create them. Now, with Claude, as you can see, you can create them in seconds.
Let's do one more from the Excel file. So then this one. And now, in the meantime that Claude finishes this visualization, I want to also show you one more thing. So it's not all about these visuals with data. You can also do a lot of benefits by asking Claude to provide visuals from a process. So just something from text. And I also want to show you this because in the uh guide that I'm giving you, I'll give you all the prompts and all of these data sets for the 30 different visualizations. But I also think that this is important for you. But let's finish this one. So this one is a 13-week rolling forecast as a line chart and then a shaded minimum cash threshold band. So basically, it's this one.
Now, as you can see, we have already done all of these different visuals with Claude. So let's move to something a little bit different. I also really wanted to show you this because a lot of times it's not all about the prompts in here. I only asked it, "Where is a good visual way to represent this FP&A data to a CFO?" and I uploaded a data set in an Excel file. Now, in a couple of minutes, then Claude ran two commands and got a clear picture of the data and built this dashboard for me with KPI cards on top, revenue and profitability, and then different charts in here to understand the financials.
Another prompt that was a little bit different was to show this process as a flowchart. So let's say that you want to showcase how the month-end close process works for your finance team. I will start with the ERP, billing, payroll, procurement, and even expense management. Now, you just need to really explain to Claude how it works and then it will create it for you, as you can see in here.
One more thing that I trained here is just to ask it to help me decide between two different options but showing a side-by-side comparison with financial forecast pros and cons, and also risks. And as you can see, it gave me a recommended option, but also the other option here with the different KPI cards, pros, cons, and few risks, and some charts in here as well.
One more that was a little bit more complex is like I really wanted it to help me visualize this concept as a diagram to show how capex moves through the accounting system and the financial statements using both IFRS and US GAAP. So, as you can see here, it also started creating this visual for me.
One more is to visualize the system or concept as a simple diagram, and I wanted to show revenue recognition under IFRS 15 and ASC 606, and again, it started really creating this visual for me.
Next one is just the waterfall chart that I also showed a little bit before, and again, just to build a side-by-side comparison between two alternatives. So, as you can see, Claude can really improve the way you do visualizations for FP&A. I hope you enjoyed this video and please have a look at the other guides that I have for not just Claude, but in general, other AI tools for FP&A finance. Thank you.