Accounting firm founder teaches Claude basics for bookkeeping workflows

Hey there bookkeeping side hustle community. It's Kate and we are here with a interesting uh discussion today. We're calling it your first 60 minutes with Claude. Although Claude's not a person. Uh Claude is an AI and we are here with the human Isaac Perdomo from Obser. Um

right. I met Isaac in person at Scaling New Heights this past summer, but I have definitely been seeing his action in on social media, seeing him as I would just say like a real tech expert um but um particularly learning a lot of stuff in the accounting or or serving a lot of people in the accounting space. So, he was um kind enough to say he'd come uh because I admitted that I don't use youthclude and I think I'm a little you know I've been like wrestling with that like whether I say that online for everyone on YouTube to hear forever. Um and I have my own kind of reasons for that. I' I've tried to in put time into another soft another AI software and so but I hear about Claude Claude Claude and um so he's going to give us the cell I guess. I mean, I guess you don't really care what we do. I mean, we're not making money from Claude by talking about this, but just getting accounting pros to think about this particular AI. So, first 60 minutes with Claude for people who are nervous. I would consider myself in that category. Um, so Isaac, welcome. So glad that you are here.

Thanks for having me, Kate. I'm excited to dive in into like what people should know about Claude if they're getting started.

Yeah. Um, y'all, if you have questions in the for for Isaac, go ahead and ask him now. Those of you are watching live, if you have questions later, um you can ask them here on the YouTube channel. Um Isaac also has a YouTube channel that if you search oper that you would find the link to his channel will be below and we'll try to keep our little channels in this video linked. But um but if you're watching live, uh tell us where you're watching from and then feel free to ask questions. I'll be fielding them as he's going to go. But but he's our expert. He's our teacher. And I want you to introduce yourself, Isaac. Who are you? Why should we listen to you? How do you know this clawed creature? [laughter]

Great question. Well, my name is Isaac. I'm here the founder of Observe.co. We effectively run an agency that for the last five years, everything we've done or talked about has been how to automate workflows for accounting firms. So in that process, I've had to learn myself, but also hire very smart people that know more than I do and have taught me a lot in terms of how to use AI, how to use automation, but also how does how to make it relevant and helpful for accounting firms uh in particular. Some of the people we hire and have in have in our team are former accountants and have done this work at a high level. So, I'm proud to uh be the leader, so to speak, but also be a little bit of a nerd myself uh learning all of these things.

Yeah. Yeah. If y'all see him on LinkedIn, he's very active over there. He's got he's got that nerd vibe, but that someone you can talk to. So, um it's a good combination. Um we got uh folks from Montana, Detroit, North Idaho, far away, much cooler than it is here in Fort Worth, Texas today. Um okay. Uh, I have a question before we share your screen. Should people be opening Claude right now? Even those watching later, what are we doing?

Well, if you are new and you want to get the most out of today, I definitely will encourage you to have Claw open.

Um, can't recall if it has a free version. I know you Kate bought your uh subscription before the call. That would be ideal. Um, I hope that it's useful regardless.

All right. So, I I do have it over here. We'll see where this conversation goes. But for now, how about we share your screen and you dive in as our instructor.

I'm ready to get going.

All right,

let's do it. All right. So, I had some slides about me. I already shared a little bit. So, I'll start here. And at least I want to like set the stage of why this matters before we get into the details. Technology has a way of becoming mainstream. And every decade there's a skill that a professional must learn, right? If you think about in the 90s when computers weren't as popular, you had to learn to use like Windows and mouse. I actually remember I'm perhaps going to date myself literally taking like mechanography courses. So like how to type

uh back when I was a child, right? And of course technology evolved and new technologies come up. Um, and then like him, Word and Excel, like it's the tools that we use to work every day and that are really not a requirement if you want to be competitive in the marketplace. Uh, of course, some of the uh more recent cloud tools like FreshBooks and QuickBooks and Zero. That's really where accountants ultimately do their job have been some of like the most recent technology that people have needed to get trained on to do a job and be uh competitive in the marketplace and we do have a belief that fundamentally in this next decade the work will be done within AI tools and it is a skill that professionals have to learn sooner or later and I rather people you're take the time to do it earlier rather than later to stay ahead. Um, it's kind of like a nice to have today, but I think it will become a fundamental uh skill and an expectation for every professional whether you're listening to this and you own a small firm or you're still side hustling or whether you own an established firm and are already kind of up and running. Yeah, I mean I have I have my firm and um but I I'm gonna have to keep working for like probably 10 years at least, you know, if I think about it. I don't know. And I like as of now I still like my job. Um and so like I have this choice of kind of being ashamed like, "Oh, I'm not keeping up. Oh, I don't know which tool to use. Oh, I'm overwhelmed. Oh, it's all expensive. I'm just going to hide under a rock." or like basically say it's it's kind of it's this is the time to learn it now. And I don't I I know in my heart I'm not behind yet. Like we're not I I know that I'm not behind and I'm willing to admit that in public. Um I'm not ahead,

but I'm also not too far behind. And so I that's why I'm willing to just sort of stick my neck out and and and try hear what the people who are really into this have to say even though at my core I can tell that I'm not super into it like um

it doesn't light me up but

but I need it.

It's always behind relative to what? Right. Is it relative to your peers or relative to the technology itself? I mean it's moving so quickly that I would say in the context of the technology we're all behind because there's always new things coming up every day.

Yeah. But in the context of other people in the marketplace, I definitely think that people under overestimate how much others know. Uh, and to your point, for you and the people in the room, they're probably not as behind as they think they are.

If anyone else feels behind though, chime in on the comments so I don't feel lonely.

Hashbehind.

Yeah. [laughter] Um, and actually a little bit of a question for the people in the audience from one of five, like how sophisticated would you say your AI skills are? Is it more like a one you use it occasionally, two, three, you're using it every day and you're already like doing accounting work and fancy stuff with it or like four or five where you just using this all across the board and building some custom tools and agents and fancy things to get work done? Um,

I'm going to put mine in the in the chat first. I'm I would like there's the several people watching live uh on these comments. They'll see if anyone else will chime in. Then I'll admit it if out loud if people don't. But I I just commented on the live comments what mine is. [laughter]

What? What? You admit it out loud.

Ellen Nora said she's two to three.

Excellent. Okay. One.

Another gal is a one.

Um.

Perfect.

I said I was a two.

Excellent. Okay. Well, let's get started then. What are we going to be talking about today? We're going to talk be talking about some use cases that I thought were relevant that I put together for you guys. And I do want to take some time to discuss specifically what about clot you should know if you're just getting started with some fundamentals. Um I do want to I I expect to showcase and show rather than tell whenever I can so people can start to follow along and get a little bit more familiar with the tool. Here are the use case that I'm going to be covering. I just just briefly read the highlight or the title because we're going to dive into him later. But how can you take a P&L be like a super simple dashboard for an accounting firm client to see how they did on that particular month or that particular quarter or period? Uh if you just had a discovery call, how can you turn that into some scope of work and a pricing and a proposal? We're going to also be talking about how do you get like a trial balance and a general ledger to create a document to do like a pay diagnostic for a client. And last but not least, we're going to talk how do you connect your accounting software to claw to start to control it with your voice and through the chat itself. Okay. So, I hope you're all excited. Let's dive in. So, first thing you should know about Claude is modes. And it's funny that you mentioned whether uh you needed the desktop app, Kate, earlier today.

Yeah,

because fundamentally all the functionalities make it usually to the desktop app first and then they're moved to the browser version. Just yesterday, co-work both chat and code have always been available in the browse app and co-work just became available on the brow a lot of the benefit even if you don't have the desktop app which I know it's your case now what's we have chat we have coord and we have code fundamentally chat was the f