How do I set up Claude for my business?

Write down five things before you ask it to do any work: a business snapshot, your customers and offers, your voice with real examples, your goals and key numbers, and your owner rules about what it may and may not decide. Put all five into a single Claude project so every conversation starts with them. It takes about two hours to draft and roughly two pages of plain text.

What should I put in Claude's project instructions?

The facts a competent new manager would need on their first morning, plus the boundaries you would give them. That means what the business sells and to whom, how work arrives and who does what, the numbers you actually watch, examples of writing you were happy with, and an explicit list of what Claude drafts versus what it may never send. Avoid adjectives and include real material.

Is Claude for Small Business worth it for a UK business?

Anthropic launched a small-business tier in May 2026 and UK interest has climbed steadily since. Whether the subscription pays for itself depends almost entirely on whether anyone sets up the context — an unconfigured account gives you a very articulate stranger with no knowledge of your business. Set up properly, the honest return is faster drafting, better-prepared meetings and clearer questions about your own numbers, not headcount you no longer need.

How long does it take to set Claude up properly?

About two hours to write the first version, then ten minutes a month to correct it as you find gaps. The first version being imperfect is fine and expected. What matters is editing the context when Claude gets something wrong, rather than re-explaining it in every new conversation.

Do I need to be technical to set Claude up for my business?

No. There is no code, no integration and no configuration screen involved in the five parts — it is writing down things you already know in plain English. The harder part is judgement: deciding what Claude may do unsupervised, and being honest about which of your processes are actually written down.

What is Claude bad at for business use?

Anything requiring exact recall of a long document, arithmetic you have not checked, knowledge of what happened in your business this morning, and any decision with a legal or financial consequence. It is also confident when it is wrong, which is more dangerous than being obviously wrong. Treat everything with a number or a commitment in it as a draft.

Can Claude see my emails, CRM or accounts?

Not by default. It only knows what is in the project context or what you paste into a conversation. Connecting live business systems is a separate decision with real UK GDPR implications, and it is worth being deliberate about which customer data leaves your systems and why. Starting with written context rather than connected accounts is the lower-risk order.

Guide · Updated August 2026

How to set Claude upfor your business.

To set Claude up for your business, write down five things before you ask it to do any work: a snapshot of what the business is and how it makes money, who your customers are and what you sell them, how your business sounds with real examples attached, the goals and numbers you actually watch, and the rules about what Claude may decide on its own.

Put all five in one Claude project so every conversation starts with them. It is about two pages of plain text and roughly two hours of work, and it is the difference between a very articulate stranger and something that knows your business.

The five things Claude needs to know about your business

1Business snapshot — The essential facts about what the company is, how it makes money and how work actually flows through it.
2Customers and offers — Who you help, what you sell, and the distinctions that matter in a real conversation.
3Voice and examples — How your business actually sounds, shown through real work rather than described with adjectives.
4Goals and key numbers — The targets, measures and commercial constraints sitting behind your day-to-day decisions.
5Owner rules — What Claude may help with, what has to be checked, and which decisions stay yours.

Everything below is the long version, with an example under each part that you can copy and edit. There is nothing to buy to use it, and it works the same whether you are on a free account, a paid one or the small-business tier Anthropic launched in May 2026.

Why most setups fail

The tool was neverthe missing part.

Most business owners who try Claude do the same thing: open a blank conversation, ask it something real about their company, get back an answer that would suit any firm in the country, and conclude the hype was overdone.

That is a fair conclusion from the evidence available. It is also the wrong one. A model with no context about your business is doing the only thing it can do, which is answer the average version of your question.

The work is not prompting. It is writing down what you know and have never had to say out loud, because until now the only people who needed it were staff who picked it up over months. Five parts, in one place, kept current.

The structure

Five parts, one project,about two pages.

Business snapshot

The essential facts about what the company is, how it makes money and how work actually flows through it.

Without this, Claude answers as a generic consultant. The advice comes out technically correct and completely useless to you, which is the most common reason people try it once and quietly stop. Write it as if briefing a competent new manager on their first morning.

Copy this shape, swap in your facts

We are a commercial cleaning company in the UK with 12 staff.
We clean offices, GP surgeries and small industrial units on recurring
contracts, plus one-off deep cleans.

Roughly 80% of revenue is monthly contracts, 20% is ad-hoc work.
Enquiries arrive by phone, the website form, and referrals from two
facilities-management partners.

A typical contract is £900-£2,400 a month and runs 18 months.
September to November is busy. July and August are quiet.

We use Xero for accounts, Google Workspace for everything else, and a
shared WhatsApp group for the cleaning teams.
Dan (owner) quotes and sells. Priya runs scheduling. Nobody owns marketing.

Customers and offers

Who you help, what you sell, and the distinctions that matter in a real conversation.

Left to itself, Claude flattens everything you do into one undifferentiated blur, and it cannot tell a good enquiry from a time-waster. Include who you are deliberately not for — the exclusions do more work than the descriptions.

Copy this shape, swap in your offers

We sell three things:

1. Recurring contract cleaning - £900-£2,400 a month, 12-24 month term.
   Best fit: multi-site offices and healthcare with 20+ staff.
2. Deep cleans - £600-£3,000, one-off. Often the first job that turns
   into a contract.
3. Post-construction cleans - £1,500+. Best margin, least predictable.

We are not for: domestic cleaning, single rooms above shops, or anyone
who wants a fixed price without a site visit and will not book one.

What people get wrong about us: they assume we do houses. We do not,
and the first reply should say so politely and immediately.

Voice and examples

How your business actually sounds, shown through real work rather than described with adjectives.

Adjectives do not transfer. Telling Claude to be professional yet friendly produces the exact house style of every other business that said the same thing. Two examples you were happy with and one you were not will teach it more than a page of instructions.

Paste real work, then add the rules

Paste in: two quote emails you were happy with, one you were not,
and your last three replies to an awkward customer. Then add:

- Write like a person, not a company. Short sentences.
- Always give a price range, or say plainly why we cannot yet.
- Never use: "reach out", "touch base", "we pride ourselves on".
- Sign off "Cheers, Dan" to existing customers, "Kind regards, Dan"
  to new enquiries.
- British spelling. £ before the number. No exclamation marks.
- If a customer is annoyed, acknowledge the specific thing that went
  wrong before offering anything.

Goals and key numbers

The targets, measures and commercial constraints sitting behind your day-to-day decisions.

This is what turns Claude from a writing tool into something that can prioritise. Without numbers, every idea it offers you looks equally sensible, and you end up doing the easiest one. Name the constraint, not just the ambition.

Copy this shape, swap in your numbers

This year we want recurring revenue up from £58k a month to £75k a
month without hiring a second supervisor.

Numbers we watch monthly: contracts won, contracts lost, average
contract value, staff hours per site, days from enquiry to quote.

Our real constraint is supervisor time, not demand.
Our worst number right now is 6 days from enquiry to quote.

So: anything that shortens that beats anything that generates more
enquiries. Say so if I forget this.

Owner rules

What Claude may help with, what has to be checked, and which decisions stay yours.

This is the part everyone skips and the one that decides whether you ever trust the output. Claude is fluent when it is wrong, so the rules are less about safety theatre and more about knowing which sentences you are allowed to believe without checking.

Copy this shape, adjust the boundaries

Always fine: draft, summarise, research, prepare questions, and tell
me what is missing from a document.

Draft only, never send: anything going to a customer, a supplier or
HMRC. I read it and send it myself.

Ask me first: pricing decisions, anything naming an employee, anything
that commits us to a date.

When you are not sure of a fact about this business, say so and ask.
Do not guess a number. If I have not given you the figure, say
"I do not have that."

If you think I am asking the wrong question, say that before answering.

Where to put it

Four moves that make itstick past week two.

The structure is the easy half. The half that decides whether it is still in use at Christmas is what you do the first time it gets something wrong.

Make one project, not ten

In Claude, create a single project for the business and put all five parts in its instructions and project knowledge. Every conversation started inside it inherits the lot. Resist the urge to spin up a project per task until you know what you actually repeat.

Keep it to about two pages

Plain text, no formatting gymnastics. Roughly half a page each for parts one, two, four and five, and however much real example material part three needs. Long context is not better context, it just buries the important lines.

Test it on something you already know

Ask it a question you can mark yourself: draft a reply to last week's awkward enquiry, or summarise what your worst month was and why. If the answer could have been written for any business in your trade, a part is missing or too vague.

Correct it in the document, not the chat

When it gets something wrong, fix the underlying context rather than arguing with it in the conversation. That is the whole habit. Ten minutes a month of editing is the difference between a setup that compounds and one you abandon by March.

Honest limits

Where this does not help,and what Claude is bad at.

Six things worth knowing before you spend the two hours. None of them are reasons not to do it. All of them are reasons people end up disappointed when nobody said them out loud.

It does not know anything you have not told it

Claude cannot see your inbox, your CRM or your bank feed unless you connect or paste them. A well-written context document makes it useful the moment you are in the conversation. It does nothing at all while you are asleep.

It is confident when it is wrong

The failure mode is not gibberish, it is a plausible, well-written paragraph containing a number nobody gave it. Anything with a figure, a date or a legal consequence in it gets checked by a human. That is what part five is for.

It will not fix a process nobody follows

If quotes go out late because one person is doing three jobs, writing better quote emails faster does not solve it. Context makes an existing process quicker. It does not invent the discipline to run one.

It is not a bookkeeper, a solicitor or a decision

It is genuinely good at helping you read management accounts in plain English and arrive at sharper questions. It is not the person who should answer them, and in the UK it is not a substitute for regulated advice.

Five documents is overkill for some businesses

If you are one person selling one thing, write part one and part five, use it for a month, and add the rest when you feel the gaps. A structure you never update is worse than three paragraphs you actually maintain.

It is context, not automation

Setting this up makes a chat window useful. It does not answer your phone at 7pm, chase a quote that has gone quiet or move data between two systems. Those are separate jobs with separate tools.

If you are in the UK

Three small thingsworth writing down.

Say you are British in the context, not in every prompt. One line in part three about spelling, £ before the number, and dates written the way you write them saves you correcting the same three things forever.

Be deliberate about customer data. UK GDPR does not stop you using AI, but it does mean you should know what personal data you paste into a conversation and why. Anonymised examples teach voice just as well as real ones with names in.

Write your trade vocabulary down. CIS, RAMS, snagging, Companies House filing dates, the way your sector actually names things. A model trained largely on American business writing will otherwise translate you into a language your customers do not speak.

FAQ

Frequently asked
questions.

The questions people actually type before setting this up — answered straight.

If you would rather not do it alone

You can run all of thiswithout us. Genuinely.

This is the same starter structure Axivon installs in the Business Brain Programme. It is published in full because a structure you can read and copy is more useful to us than one we keep behind a form, and because the businesses that write it themselves and get stuck know exactly what they are stuck on.

What the programme adds is the part a document cannot: a private setup day working from your real material, then fortnightly sessions where you bring actual work, fix what failed and add one capability at a time. If your problem is the two hours of writing, do it yourself. If your problem is that you have written it and it still is not part of how you work, that is the gap we fill.

Axivon is a revenue-led AI transformation partner for growing UK businesses. We stay platform-neutral — this page is about Claude because that is what was asked, not because it is the answer to every problem.

The Business Brain Programme Not sure this is your problem

The Revenue Leakage Review is the paid diagnostic for when the bottleneck is somewhere else entirely — enquiries going cold, calls unanswered, admin eating the week.