Tag

Claude small business plugin

Claude for Small Business Is a Plugin, Not a Plan: 44 Skills, Turn On One First (2026)

Claude for Small Business Is a Plugin, Not a Plan: 44 Skills, Turn On One First (2026)

Claude for Small Business is a plugin, not a new plan. It adds 44 skills to the paid Claude plan you already have. Turn on one of them. I opened it in my own Claude. The way I remembered it, I didn't install anything 'cause it's just tailored, built for owners who don't have a setup yet. My app says otherwise: installed, toggle on. My own setup already does those jobs, so for me it was inspiration. For you, if you don't have a setup yet? Install it, keep what fits your week, and tweak it as you go. Here's the job I'd start a friend on. Say you run a cleaning business and you keep missing leads because you're out cleaning all day. Tell Claude, twice a day, before work and again at 7 p.m.: check my inbox for any leads and then draft a response. It can literally do that and you can just look in your phone.The Small Business plugin in my Claude desktop app, October 10, 2026. Four steps get you there: install it, skip what you'd never use, hand it your inbox, then put the inbox on a schedule. What you need (as of October 10, 2026)Pro for one person, Team for more than one. That's Anthropic's own answer on its small business page. Pro is $20 a month, or $17 billed annually, on Claude's pricing page. Max works too. Free does not. The Claude desktop app. Anthropic's install guide says "You'll need the Claude desktop app on a Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise plan." No extra bill. Anthropic lists no separate price. Alex Kim at wotai.co put it plainly: "The plugin itself adds nothing to your bill." It does spend your normal usage. Twenty minutes and one inbox. Gmail or Microsoft 365. Using a work account? It reads only what your account can already see. If the inbox belongs to a company, ask whoever runs IT before you connect it. Skip for now: the other 43 skills, and Claude Code. The plugin also installs there, but that's a developer's path, not yours.New to handing Claude a job at all? How to use Claude Cowork is the five-minute version of that, and it agrees with this page: one job first. Step 1: Install the plugin from Customize in the desktop app Customize (left sidebar) > Plugins > search "Small Business" > Install That's where the plugin sits in my app today. The other door is the + under the message box: Plugins > Browse plugins.The Plugins menu in my Claude desktop app, October 10, 2026. Once it's in, type / in a new chat to see the skills, or just describe the job in plain English. The plugin's README on GitHub also has a setup skill: say "get me started" and it walks you through about 15 minutes of questions about your business. Step 2: Skip every skill you would never use Type / in a new chat to see the list. That's a lot of skills. Most of them are not for you, and that's fine. My rule for skipping: if there's a PowerPoint and it looks nice, but you don't use PowerPoint, then why would you install it? Don't. Same for anything else that looks good in the list and has no job in your week. Here's what's inside, grouped by the job, read off the plugin's README (version 1.35.1, September 15, 2026):The job Skills in the plugin How manyMoney and books pay-the-bills, invoice-chase, cash-flow-snapshot, close-month, month-end-prep, ap-processor, payroll-prep, plan-payroll, tax-prep, tax-season-organizer, report-builder, report-pack 12Leads and customers speed-to-lead, lead-triage, lead-finder, call-list, grow-pipeline, crm-autopilot, outreach-composer, reactivate 8Marketing marketing-monday, social-content-engine, content-strategy, canva-creator, review-reputation, seo-ai-visibility, ad-manager, growth-pulse 8Inbox, stock and hiring inbox-manager, inventory-planner, restock, hiring-screener, job-post-builder 5Proposals and paperwork proposal-builder, contract-review, grant-rfp-writer, ticket-deflector 4Weekly check-ins monday-brief, business-pulse 2Setup smb-onboard, smb-router, brand-style, build-agent, build-connector 5It grew fast. At launch on May 13 it was 15 workflows and 15 skills, which is the number you'll see in the May headlines. You don't need any connector to start. Anthropic says "Every workflow runs from a spreadsheet, a PDF, or a forwarded email," and the README says connectors "make it deeper, never mandatory." Anthropic's plugin page counts 43 workflows and 37 partner connectors, including QuickBooks, Shopify, Stripe, Square, Xero and Gusto. My app shows 44 skills and 35 connectors. Neither number changes what you do first. Step 3: Hand it your inbox first + (under the message box) > Connectors > Gmail (or Microsoft 365), sign in once, then run /inbox-manager Why the inbox and not the books? Everyone has one. You're responding to leads and requests versus just being filled and overwhelmed with missing shit. The inbox-manager skill drafts. It does not send. Its own instructions on GitHub say "Draft everything. Send nothing yet," and it writes replies in your voice from Gmail or Microsoft 365, whichever is connected. This is my own connectors list. Gmail is the one I'd tell anyone to start with:My Claude connectors, September 5, 2026. The prompt I'd hand a cleaning business on day one: Check my inbox for any new leads from the last 12 hours: people asking for a quote, a cleaning date, or prices. For each one, draft a reply in my voice that answers what they asked and offers two time slots this week. Don't send anything. List the drafts for me with the sender and one line on what they want.The second job, once the first one is boring: the /monday-brief. It pulls what's pending into one message at the start of the week, so it can ping you: this is what's waiting, this needs your reply. Which connector to add after Gmail is its own decision, and I ranked them in the best Claude connectors. Applicable for: cleaners, Etsy and Shopify sellers, contractors, studios, coaches, anyone whose leads arrive by email. Step 4: Schedule the inbox twice a day once the drafts stop surprising you Run it by hand for a week. Then: Scheduled (left sidebar) > New task. Make two daily tasks with the same prompt, one for the morning and one for 7 p.m. Don't schedule it on day one. My rule: by hand first, on the clock after. Anthropic's scheduled tasks article says scheduled tasks are on every paid plan, and new ones run remotely, "even when your computer is asleep or the Claude Desktop app is closed." Check the first scheduled run's drafts yourself before you trust the morning one while you're on a job. Each run starts fresh and doesn't remember the last one, so keep everything it needs in the prompt. Setup and the trust path are in Cowork scheduled tasks. How to tell it worked Open Gmail on your phone and check the Drafts folder.It worked if each draft answers the actual question in that lead's email, with their name and what they asked for. It didn't if the drafts are generic ("Thanks for reaching out!") or it drafted replies to newsletters. Tighten the prompt: say what a lead looks like in your business. Nothing went out. If anything was sent without you, stop and check the connector's permissions before the next run.Where I draw the line on money Here's what Anthropic built in. On its small business page: "Anything that sends or pays still waits for your approval." And: "Payroll is set up for you to submit, bills wait for your approval before they're paid, and Claude doesn't file anything for you." The README adds that the plugin "does not provide financial, tax, legal, or HR advice." Gmail works the same way by default:Anthropic's Gmail connector help page. My own line goes further than the defaults:Guardrails, and a second checker. I would have another AI watch Claude for me. I wouldn't trust one model completely with sensitive stuff like that. Give it a small account, not your main one. Maybe not even the main account, maybe it's the petty account, and you can give it access to it. Then it can tell you balances when money comes in. Or everything, read-only. It can see it all and draw conclusions. You make the final decisions.Would I ever let it run money on its own? Only on that smaller account. A landlord on r/ClaudeCowork described the real version of this work: "pulling bank statements, sending leases through Dropbox Sign, reconciling in QuickBooks, filing scanned paperwork." Those are the jobs where you want to read the plan before you click approve. If heavy workflows start eating your plan, Claude Pro vs Claude Max is the math on when the bigger plan pays for itself. More setups for Claude in a normal job live under Claude guides. Turn on one job and let it earn the next Forty-four skills and no plan to buy looked like a lot of homework. It isn't. You don't need a new plan, and you don't need 44 skills. You need one job that already eats your week. For most small businesses that's the inbox: leads answered the same day instead of found on Sunday. What I would recommend is downloading and tweaking over time. Start with the inbox this week, and add the second skill only when the first is still running a month from now. Frequently asked questions Is Claude for Small Business free? The plugin has no price of its own, but it needs a paid Claude plan. Anthropic's install guide asks for the Claude desktop app on Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise, so it does not run on the Free plan. Pro is $20 a month, or $17 a month billed annually. Do I need Claude Team for Claude for Small Business? Not if you work alone. Anthropic's own answer is Pro for one person and Team for a business with more than one, both month to month. Most owners using it run businesses under ten people, and many are solo. Does Claude for Small Business work with Shopify, QuickBooks or Stripe? Yes. As of October 10, 2026, the plugin page lists 37 partner connectors, including QuickBooks, PayPal, HubSpot, Shopify, Square, Stripe, Xero, Gusto, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. Connectors are optional: Anthropic says every workflow also runs from a spreadsheet, a PDF or a forwarded email. Do I need to code or use Claude Code to use it? No. You install it from the Claude desktop app and run a skill by typing a slash or describing the job in plain English. Anthropic's answer to whether you need to be technical is that connectors are one click. Can Claude for Small Business pay my bills on its own? Not by default. Anthropic says anything that sends or pays still waits for your approval, payroll is set up for you to submit, and Claude does not file anything for you. The plugin's own README also says it does not provide financial, tax, legal or HR advice. Where this comes from Anthropic's small business page, plugin page, install guide, scheduled tasks article and the plugin's GitHub README, all read October 10, 2026. The plugin card, menu and connectors list are my own Claude app. The plugin is installed on my account, but I haven't run its skills for this page, so the inbox steps are my advice, not a test of this plugin. Published October 10, 2026. Prices and counts checked October 10, 2026.