Claude for Small Business: what it costs in AUD, how to set it up and the first 10 jobs to give it

What Claude for Small Business does

The plugin lives in Cowork, the part of Claude that carries out multi-step tasks for you. You connect the tools you already use, then pick a job. The workflows include a Monday brief on the week ahead, month-end prep, a cash-flow snapshot, invoice chasing, screening job applicants, contract review and proposal building. A September update took the total to 43. Claude drafts and stages the work, and you approve before anything sends, posts or pays.

Nothing on Anthropic's pages limits it by country, and Australia is on Anthropic's supported countries list. The September update added Xero and MYOB connectors. MYOB has been rolling its connector out in stages since August 2026, so check it shows up in your account before you plan around it.

You don't need the plugin to get value from Claude, and most of the jobs below work in an ordinary chat. It earns its place once your books, CRM and email are connected and you want Claude working across them.

Which Claude plan you need

A team of five on annual billing comes to A$170 a month, or A$2,040 a year. Team needs at least two seats, and you can mix standard and premium seats on one plan.

Free, Pro and Max are personal accounts, and each person makes their own choice about whether their chats help train Claude. On Team, Anthropic doesn't train its models on your content by default, and you get one bill, one admin view and Projects you can share.

Our rule of thumb: Pro if it's only you, and Team as soon as a second person uses Claude for customer work, so the work stays with the business when someone leaves. Our Claude Team plan guide goes deeper.

One thing to check before you buy: Anthropic says Claude data is stored in the United States. If a client contract or your industry requires Australian storage, sort that out first.

Setting it up in an afternoon

Buy the seats with a business email. Use work addresses, not personal Gmail accounts, so access ends when someone's work account is closed.

Write a one-page rule on what goes in. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner recommends, as best practice, that businesses keep personal information, especially sensitive information, out of publicly available AI tools. Our free AI use policy template gives you a version to edit.

Install the plugin. In the Claude desktop app, open Cowork, click Customize, then under Plugins click + and install Small Business. A setup step asks about your business and walks you through connecting your tools.

Connect one tool, then check it. Start with whichever holds most of your work: Xero or MYOB for the books, or Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace for email and files. The Microsoft connector needs your administrator to approve it once, and Claude only sees what each person can already see. Give it a week before adding the next.

Build your first Project. A Project holds instructions and reference files for one kind of work, so nobody explains the business from scratch each time. Add your price list, a few of your best customer emails and your standard terms, then instructions like these, and share it with the team:

You're helping [business name], a [what you do] business in [suburb or city] with [number] staff.
Our customers are [who they are and what they usually ask for].
Write in plain Australian English with short sentences and no hype.
Use prices only from the attached price list. If something isn't in our files, ask me rather than guessing.
Keep customer emails under [number] words and sign off as [name].

The first 10 jobs to give Claude

Pick jobs that come round every week and that someone puts off. Several have a ready-made workflow in the plugin. Whatever Claude drafts, a person reads it before it goes to a customer.

1. The email you've been avoiding. Paste it in, take out personal details the job doesn't need, and say what you want to happen.
   PromptCopy

   Here's an email from a customer: [paste email].
   I want to [hold our price / offer a partial refund / say no politely].
   Draft a reply in our tone, under 150 words, that keeps them as a customer. List anything you're unsure about underneath.

2. Meeting notes into actions. Paste your notes or a transcript and ask for who does what by when, plus a short follow-up email.
3. A first draft of a quote or proposal. Use the plugin's proposal workflow, or a Project with your price list. Give it your notes from the call and edit from there.
4. The long document you'd otherwise read twice. A lease, a supplier contract or a tender. Ask for the obligations, dates, costs and anything unusual, plus questions for your lawyer or accountant, who still gives the advice.
5. The process that lives in one person's head. Have them talk it through into a voice memo, paste the transcript, and ask for a procedure a new starter could follow. Then have the same person check it.
6. Job ads and position descriptions. Give it the role, hours, award or pay details and what good looks like after three months, and ask for an ad in your voice.
7. Making sense of your numbers. With Xero or MYOB connected, ask which customers have dropped off or which months run lean. Without a connector, upload an export. Check totals against your own system before acting on them.
8. Chasing unpaid invoices. This is one of the plugin's ready-made workflows. Ask for a list of what's overdue with a draft reminder for each, and read the first batch line by line before you approve any.
9. Research before a meeting. Claude can search the web, so ask it to summarise a prospective client or supplier. Open the sources it lists, because it can get details wrong.
10. A monthly update to customers or staff. Give it five dot points about what happened this month and ask for a short note in your tone.

What it's worth

In Thomson Reuters' 2025 survey of 2,275 professionals, people expected AI to save them about five hours a week each. For a team of five, that would be around 25 hours a week back for customers and the work that grows the business, against a Team bill of A$170 a month.

Your numbers will differ. The AI Time Calculator shows the hours and their value for your own team in two minutes.

Mistakes we see in smaller teams

• Everyone on their own personal account. It feels cheaper until someone leaves with a year of customer work in their chat history.
• Letting workflows run on their own in week one. Anthropic lets you approve each plan or, when you're ready, let a workflow run end to end. Keep approving every step until you've seen it do the same job right several times.
• Giving up after one weak answer. Most weak answers come from missing context. Put the background in a Project and try again before deciding it can't do the job.

Common questions