Set up
Try a plugin
The Finance plugin ships with /financial-statements and seven other close-week skills as a starting point, it already knows how to read a variance table and frame it for an exec audience. If your admin manages plugins and it's not available yet, skip this; nothing below requires it.
Connect your tools
Claude Cowork is more powerful when it works directly with your systems. You control permissions and access. Learn about tool access(opens in new tab).
Navigate to Customize → Connectors in Cowork to set up.
Set your working folder
Drag the files you'll use (the variance workbook, last quarter's deck, the list of known one-timers) into one folder and point Cowork at it. Cowork reads from it and writes the .pptx back to it. Create a Cowork project(opens in new tab) from your board-prep folder so the materiality threshold, the slide template, and the CFO's preferred phrasing stay attached.
The prompt
Copy this into Claude Cowork
Build the three exec slides from the March variance workbook: a headline page with result vs plan, a drivers page with top movers above our materiality threshold and the known one-timers called out, and an outlook page with what carries into Q2. Match last quarter's deck layout and write the .pptx to the close folder.
Why this works
Name each part of the output. Headline / drivers / outlook is the structure the CFO expects; saying it out loud means no fourth slide of filler.
Anticipate the audience's first question. Separating non-recurring items on the drivers page is the question leadership always asks first.
Point to last quarter's deck as the example. The template is the example, not a description of one.
Store recurring values in project instructions. Materiality lives in the project instructions, so "above our threshold" means your number, every month.
Get a better draft
Specify the chart type. "Use a waterfall on the drivers page" gets you the chart type that survived last board review.
Ask for the speaker notes. Add "put the supporting detail in the notes pane, not on the slide" so the page stays clean and the backup is one click away.
Make Cowork work for you
A plugin skill is a starting point — customize it with your own practices and expertise. A few minutes of conversation and it runs with your standards from then on.
Make what we've done in this task so far into a skill, or edit the /financial-statements skill with my feedback.
Make it repeatable
Run it on a schedule
Board prep is due the same week every quarter. Type /schedule in the prompt, or open Scheduled in the Cowork sidebar, and the customized skill builds the three pages from whatever variance workbook is newest.
/schedule Every Monday at 9am, if a new variance workbook is in FY26-Close/Board-prep, build the three exec slides from it and write the .pptx to that folder.
Builds the headline / drivers / outlook .pptx from the newest variance workbook and writes it to the board-prep folder.
Share with your teammates
Your customized skill now carries your three-slide structure, your materiality line, and your CFO's preferred framing. Share it so every business unit's pages arrive looking like one deck, not five.