Transcription
Hi everyone, I'm Hector Garcia, a CPA, big fan of all things artificial intelligence. I use chat GPT a lot looking for the ultimate productivity hacks. But today I'm actually using Claude. I'm using the Mac version of Claude Desktop with a new feature called Cowork.
Now, what Cowork does is it allows Claude, the artificial intelligence competitor of ChatGPT, to interact with files in your computer. Now, a specific use case I'm going to use for today's example is I have a whole bunch of receipts in a folder in my computer somewhere. And if I open each receipt, I can read what the receipt is all about, but I have to open each receipt to kind of know what's in it. And the reason for that is because, you know, my client, you know, maybe sent me these receipts, or maybe I scanned them, and the scanner itself gave it a very generic name. So this is a very frustrating thing for accounting professionals. We get a bunch of documents and they don't have naming that allows us to know what it is. And even though, again, the Mac gives me this really pretty, you know, screenshots here, I still kind of have to open each one to know what it is.
So, I'm going to use Claude Cowork to tell it how to rename the files in a very specific way. So, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to come down here and then I'm going to click where it says "Choose folder" or "Choose different folder." And then I'm going to go into my computer and I'm going to find the folder where all the files are. So, I got a bunch of files there. Again, all generic names, as you can tell in there. All generic names. I'm going to click on "Open." And now I have told it, "Hey, you actually have full control of this folder." And it's telling you, "Warning, we can delete the files." Right? So you have to be very careful. With great power comes great responsibility. I'm going to click on "Allow." So we started that. We now we have given permission to Claude to start manipulating these files.
Then I'm going to give it the specific prompt. I'm going to say, "Rename all the files in this folder based on the contents of each one. These are all receipts. So I want you to start with the pay name, then a hyphen, then the date of the transaction, then a hyphen, and then a quick summary of the expenses that are inside of it. Um, if you could choose a general category that would work for accounting, that would be great, but just give me that context. Then a hyphen at the very end, the dollar amount." So, I gave it the specific instructions that I want. I'm going to click on "Let's go." And within seconds, it will go in. It will load those files in the computer and it will start renaming them. I'm going to look at the folder here real quick just to see if it starts doing it for me automatically. It didn't. Maybe it's asking me a question, or maybe we're just waiting. And there we go. They've all have been renamed.
I'll go back to Claude Cowork. Uh, it basically says that it, uh, finished up. Now it's doing its verification, making sure that all the files have a right name. Notice it went in there and kind of like gave me a quick category for each one. Again, it could be wrong on the category, but in either case, it's doing its best there. And these are the names that it picked for each one, right? So, we got "Metro Diner 2022 615 Meals and Entertainment" and then the dollar amount "73.64." Now, I didn't specify to make a space or give a dollar amount, a dollar sign, or, you know, make it a little bit better to read. You know, I actually said that's how I want it, right? With the hyphen. So, let's just take a look at it. So, for example, this one's called "Publix 2022 624 liquor 16.581." Double-click on that. And yep, it is all liquor, and it's 16.581. And where's the date on this one? There we go. 624 2022. So, it's actually perfect. So, it will do that with every one of these files. Let's see this one. This one is "Mission Barbecue uh 624 2022 47.04." Let me close that. Let's see what it named this file. There you go. "Mission barbecue 2022 624 MOS Entertainment 47.04."
So, it's up to you how you're going to use this, but I have a feeling that if you get a lot of files that have random names or very generic names, you do this and you're going to be working much, much faster.
Now, let me show you something else. Let's say, for example, that my client Mike sent me a list of all the vendors that he buys from, right? And he sent me a whole bunch of receipts. What's really cool about like the combination of using artificial intelligence to manipulate some files on your computer and then using the entire power of AI is I can turn around and say, "I have a list of vendors. I want you to double-check to see if I am potentially missing any receipts." And I'll paste those vendors that my client sent me in the email. Click on "Send." And it will check the list that I gave it against all the documents that are there and then double-check if I'm missing anything. So right here it says, "Vendors on your list with no receipts found: Starbucks, Chipotle, Panera Bread." So I want you to think about how you're going to be able to leverage tools like this to have your productivity just double or triple suddenly that we can use artificial intelligence in combination with files in our desktop.
One last thing, "Check within all the restaurant receipts to see if there's any evidence of alcohol consumed in any of those receipts." Now, I'm not making a statement on whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I'm just going to give you an example of some sort of deeper contextual information that you could potentially ask it. So, right here, it's checking receipt by receipt and actually checking every single item to see if there's any evidence of alcohol. Right? And it'll tell you if, you know, any receipt doesn't have itemization, it will actually tell you that. And then it says, "I should note that there's a Publix receipt specifically that's categorized as liquor that contains alcohol because it has these brands of liquor in it."
Here's another example. I'm going to have it work on the same folder. Click on "Allow." And I'm going to say, "Create an Excel file that contains all the information that's in the file name and add up the totals by category. And also make sure there's a column with a direct clickable URL so to speak to open the file directly in my computer." And we'll hit "Let's go." Okay, it created the file. Let's see if it's in the folder. There should be a file right there in the folder. There it is. Let me open up the Excel file. Now, keep in mind this Excel file didn't exist. It was 100% created from scratch using the Claude Cowork feature. Okay, there's my Excel file. Let me go ahead and open this up and zoom this in so we can see this better. So, it has all my vendor names. It's got all the dates. It has the categories. It has a dollar amount for each one. It has the subtotals here in the bottom. And it has a link to open each file. Let's see if these links even work. And look, it opened up the file automatically. Look at that. $352 credits right there. Refund credit Walmart. What else can you ask for? Again, having that level of conversation with the receipts at that level without you having to read each one, that's pretty powerful stuff.