AI for Accountants Vol. 5 - Projects & Cowork
Welcome to issue #012 of New Age Accounting — Vol. #5 of AI for Accountants. Build it once. Rinse and repeat.
Most accountants using AI are doing something that’s quietly killing their productivity.
They build a great workflow. Get a great output. Close the tab. Next month they open a brand new chat and start from scratch — same context, same instructions, same examples, rebuilt from zero.
Every. Single. Month.
This issue is about fixing that. There are two ways to do it. Both work. Pick the one that fits how you work.
The problem with starting fresh
Every time you open a new chat, Claude doesn’t know anything about you. It doesn’t know your chart of accounts. It doesn’t know your format. It doesn’t know your CFO’s communication style or what threshold you use for material variances.
So you paste it all in. Again. Or you skip it and get generic output. Again.
The goal is to build the context once and reuse it every month. Here are the two ways to do that.
Option 1 — The saved Cowork chat
This is the simpler path and it works.
Cowork is Claude working through a multi-step task autonomously within a single conversation (Vol. 4). The key insight most people miss — you don’t have to start a new chat every month. You can go back into the same conversation and Claude already has the full history. The context is there. The workflow is there. You pick up where you left off.
Here’s what that looks like in practice with a real workflow.
Every month I run a flux analysis. Using Claude’s MCP connection I pull chart of account names directly from our system. Then by period I pull the balances for each account. Claude compares current period to prior period — calculating dollar and percentage change for every line. Then it pulls the data together and generates commentary explaining the material movements.
One workflow. Chart of accounts pulled. Balances compared. Variance calculated. Commentary written.
The first time I set this up I built the context — my role, my company, my format, my materiality threshold. Now every month I go back into that same chat. Claude already knows all of it. I connect via MCP, pull the current data, and the workflow runs.
Best for: Individual workflows you own yourself. Recurring monthly tasks where you’re the only one using it. Getting started quickly without a lot of setup.
The one limitation: If you accidentally close the chat, start a new one, or want someone else on your team to run the same workflow — you’re rebuilding from scratch. The context lives in the conversation history, not above it.
Option 2 — Claude Projects
Projects is the more structured path. Same goal — build once, use every month — but the context lives at the workspace level, not inside a conversation.
A Project is a persistent workspace where you write standing instructions and upload reference documents once. Every conversation you open inside that Project — whether it’s your first or your fiftieth, whether it’s you or someone on your team — starts with all of that already loaded. Claude already knows everything before you type a single word.
Three things go inside a Project:
Instructions — who Claude is, what context it has, how it should behave (Vol. 3). Your persistent CO-STAR framework baked in permanently (Vol. 2). For a flux analysis Project this might include your role, your company’s industry, your materiality threshold, your CFO’s preferred tone, and how you want variances presented.
Knowledge — documents you upload once and reference forever. Your chart of accounts. A prior month’s flux as a format template. Any standing context that would otherwise take five minutes to paste in every conversation.
Conversations — every chat inside the Project starts from the same foundation. New conversation, same context. The history doesn’t have to carry it — the Project does.
Best for: Workflows you want to share with a team. Workflows that rely on uploaded reference documents. Building a clean organized library of named workspaces instead of hunting through chat history. Scaling beyond yourself.
Which one should you use?
Honestly — it depends.
If you’re a solo accountant running your own monthly workflows and you’re comfortable going back into the same chat every month — the saved Cowork approach works. It’s simpler to set up and gets you the same result.
If you want something more organized, more shareable, more reliable regardless of what happens to any individual conversation — build a Project. The setup takes longer upfront but the infrastructure is cleaner and scales better.
Both beat starting from scratch every month. That’s the point.
How to build your first Project
Step 1 — Open Claude desktop and find the Projects section in the left sidebar.
Step 2 — Create a new Project and name it for the job it does. “Monthly Flux Analysis.” “Close Commentary.” “Cash Analysis.”
Step 3 — Write your instructions. Start simple: who Claude is, what company context it needs, what standard it holds, how you want the output formatted. Refine over time.
Step 4 — Upload your knowledge. At minimum: your chart of accounts and one prior output as a format template.
Step 5 — Open your first conversation inside the Project. Test it. Refine the instructions based on what’s missing. It gets better every time you use it.
The compounding effect
Whether you go with a saved Cowork chat or a Project — the principle is the same.
Build the context once. Every month after that you’re not starting from scratch. You’re building on something that already works.
The first month takes the most effort. The second month is faster. The third month faster still. By month six you have a workflow that produces consistent structured output faster than anything you’ve ever done manually.
That’s the compounding effect of building once instead of rebuilding every month.
Pick your most repetitive monthly workflow. The one where you spend the first ten minutes re-explaining context that hasn’t changed. Set it up — as a saved Cowork chat or a Project. Run it once. See what the second month feels like.
Vol. 6 is next. Keep building.
Here’s my question to you:
What’s the first workflow you’re going to stop rebuilding every month? Drop it in the comments — I read every one.
The purpose of New Age Accounting is simple: to empower accountants — at every level — to become builders, not bookkeepers. Whether you’re a staff accountant, a controller, or a CFO, there’s something here for you. Some topics will be high level, others will come with step-by-step guides, and some will include the exact prompts and tools you need to start building today.
If you’ve made it this far, you’re already thinking differently about this profession. Subscribe and come build with us.