Connect Claude to your books: ask about your cash, profit and VAT in plain English
On this page
- 1.AI bookkeeping: what it does, where it's reliable, and when you can trust it
- 2.Connect Claude to your books: ask about your cash, profit and VAT in plain English
- 3.How to know if your books are actually correct
Add Ledgers as a connector in Claude and ask about your cash, profit and loss, VAT and deadlines in plain English, or have it draft an invoice for you to review. Here's how to connect, what it can and can't do, and how your data is handled.
What the connector does
Ledgers keeps your books: bank feeds, categorisation, invoices, bills, VAT and the month-end close. The Claude connector lets you ask your books questions from Claude and have Claude draft things for you to review, without exporting a spreadsheet or copying numbers across.
Ask things like:
- "How much cash do we have, and how many months of runway is that?"
- "What did we spend on software in the last quarter?"
- "Show me the profit and loss for July to September."
- "Which invoices are overdue, and by how much?"
- "What's waiting for me in the review queue?"
- "When is our next VAT return due?"
- "Draft an invoice to Acme Ltd for 10 hours of consulting at £120 an hour."
Claude answers from your books as they stand at that moment, using the same figures you see in Ledgers.
What it can and can't do
| Claude can | Claude can't |
|---|---|
| Read your cash position, profit and loss, trial balance, transactions, invoices, bills, VAT returns, review queue and deadlines | Post or approve journal entries |
| Draft a sales invoice for you to review | Send an invoice, or anything else |
| Pay a bill or move money | |
| File a VAT return or anything with HMRC | |
| Change your settings or your team |
Drafts appear in Ledgers for you to check. Nothing an assistant does reaches a customer, a bank or HMRC without you.
How to connect Claude
You need a Ledgers account and a Claude account.
- In Claude (claude.ai, the desktop app or the mobile app), open Customize, then Connectors, and choose Add custom connector.
- Give it a name, such as "Ledgers", and enter this address:
https://ledgers.work/api/mcp - Claude opens the Ledgers sign-in. Sign in as usual, including your two-step sign-in code.
- Choose the organisation whose books Claude may use. If your role lets you edit, you can also allow drafts.
- Press Allow. You're back in Claude, with the Ledgers tools ready.
- In a conversation, make sure the Ledgers connector is switched on, then ask a question.
If you look after more than one organisation in Ledgers, each connection covers one of them. Connect again to choose another.
How your data is handled
- Your Claude account does the thinking. The connector runs on your own Claude plan. When Claude needs a figure, it asks Ledgers, and Ledgers answers that one question from your books.
- What leaves Ledgers. Only the answers Claude asks for, about the organisation you chose, go to Claude. Anthropic handles them under your own agreement with Anthropic. Our privacy notice says the same.
- Sign-in and access. Claude never sees your Ledgers password or sign-in link. It gets a key that works only for the organisation you chose, expires within the hour and renews quietly while you use it. Removing the connector stops it.
- Your role still applies. Claude can do no more than you can: a read-only member's connection can only read.
Good questions to start with
- "Summarise my business's last three months in five bullet points."
- "Which suppliers did we pay the most last quarter?"
- "Is there anything unusual in this month's transactions?"
- "What's our VAT position for the current quarter?"
- "List the transactions still waiting for a category."
If something doesn't work
- Claude can't reach Ledgers. Check the address is exactly
https://ledgers.work/api/mcp. - "Approved for reading only". Your connection was made without drafts, or your role doesn't allow editing. Remove the connector and connect again, allowing drafts.
- "You are not a member of that organisation". You were removed from the organisation after connecting. Ask its owner to invite you again, then reconnect.
- Still stuck? Email support@ledgers.work.
Frequently asked questions
Does Ledgers pay for, or see, my Claude conversations?
No. Claude runs on your own Claude account. Ledgers only receives the requests Claude makes to it (for example "the profit and loss for last quarter") and answers them from your books. It never receives your chat history or anything else in Claude.
Can Claude post entries, pay bills or file my VAT return?
No. Claude can read your books and draft a sales invoice for you to review. Posting, approving, paying, sending and filing stay in Ledgers, with you.
Which Claude plans can use the connector?
Custom connectors work in Claude on the web and in the desktop and mobile apps; which plans include them is set by Anthropic. On Team and Enterprise plans, an owner of your Claude organisation may need to add the connector before members can connect it.
How do I disconnect it?
Remove the Ledgers connector in Claude under Customize, then Connectors. To cut off every assistant connected to your Ledgers account at once, email support@ledgers.work from your sign-in address.
Does it work with ChatGPT?
Not yet. The connector is built on the open Model Context Protocol, which ChatGPT also supports, and we're preparing a ChatGPT version. Today it is tested with Claude.
Tools and guides for this
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