How to build a reusable finance dashboard with Claude

Written up from the video How to Build a Reusable Finance Dashboard in Claude (Full Walkthrough).

You can use Claude to build a board-grade, interactive finance dashboard from your monthly management pack, as a single file anyone can open in a browser, and then reuse it every month. The quality comes from the prompt: a clear role, hard boundaries on which numbers it may use, the layout in the order a CFO reads, and your brand. Claude builds the dashboard and updates it. The narrative behind the numbers and the final check stay with you.

In the video I show the finished dashboard for a fictional business, how it was built, and how it rolls forward when the next month closes.

What the dashboard does

The finished dashboard switches between the month and the year to date, filters by region, and opens with a one-line story of the period. Then come the key metrics, a CFO Take, performance against plan, an EBITDA bridge showing why EBITDA moved, the full-year outlook combining actuals and forecast, and the revenue and client detail at the bottom. It is everything leadership needs to understand the business's performance, on one screen.

What you give Claude

• The monthly management pack: actual versus budget, the three statements, the revenue and cost breakdowns, the budget, the forecast, the general ledger and the workings.
• The CFO commentary for the month. This is where the dashboard's narrative comes from, so it has to be written by a person first.
• Your logo and brand rules.

The prompt: what goes into it

The prompt I used is long, and the detail is deliberate. What matters is not the exact wording but the elements it covers:

• The role and the objective. A senior FP&A partner building a dashboard a CFO would put in front of a board.
• The boundaries. Use only the numbers in the pack. Every figure must trace back to it. If something cannot be derived, leave it out and say so. Never present a forecast month as an actual. If anything is ambiguous, stop and ask before building.
• The data source. Build the actuals from the general ledger, the most granular source, so every figure can be recalculated live when a filter changes, rather than typing the month's numbers into the layout.
• The slicers. Which periods and regions can be selected, and what each one recalculates.
• The layout, in the order a CFO reads. The position first, then the judgement, then performance against plan, then the forward view, then the supporting detail.
• The CFO Take. The story band says what happened. The CFO Take says why it happened and what to do about it, drawn from the CFO's own written commentary.
• The KPI cards and charts you want to see. These vary from business to business.
• Honest handling of anything that cannot be split. If costs are booked centrally, the regional view shows revenue and attributable costs rather than pretending to a standalone regional profit, and says so in a single line.
• Your brand. Colours, fonts, logo and how the output should look. Leave this out and the result will not look professional.

After the first build there was some back and forth to refine it, as there is with any real piece of work.

Rolling it forward to the next month

This is what makes the dashboard reusable rather than a one-off. When the next month closes, you need three things: the general ledger extract, the breakdowns, and the CFO's commentary for the month.

1. Update the model. In the video I copied the previous month's pack into a new folder and used Claude in Excel to fold the new month into the income statement, balance sheet and cash flow, with everything tying out.
2. Update the dashboard in the same project and the same chat. This is the important habit. Going back to the conversation where the dashboard was built means you do not have to explain the context again. Give it the new month's file and last month's dashboard, and ask it to update the same dashboard, ask any questions and do nothing on its own.

The new version adds the month to the period selector and looks exactly the same: same approach, same colours, same branding.

Where your judgement comes in

• The narrative. Claude can describe what moved. Why it moved, and what the business should do about it, comes from the CFO's commentary. That is the part the board is really reading.
• The boundaries. Deciding that forecasts are always labelled, that regional profit is not overstated, and that nothing is shown that cannot be traced to the pack.
• The check before it goes out. Reconcile the control totals yourself. The reconciliation belongs in your working papers, not on the board's dashboard.