Sort a year of mixed Amazon business purchases into QuickBooks categories with Claude, including the fiddly split transactions
- Posted
- by badlibrarian (Hacker News)
- Last checked
- Method:
- How we verify
Evidence: Described by posterThe person describes what happened in words, without screenshots or video.
Outcome
badlibrarian runs a business and sometimes buys things on Amazon. At tax time they used to search for the big business items and categorise them in QuickBooks Online until they gave up, using a janky browser plugin and two monitors full of Excel windows. Now Claude does it and doesn't give up, despite QuickBooks being slow. It will even click 19 times to split a transaction because they'd put a router and shampoo in the same Amazon cart one night in February 2025.
Agent
Prompt Recreated prompt
The source didn't share its exact prompt, so we wrote this from what it describes.
Run this task now, exactly as written below. Everything you need is here, so start straight away and only stop if something required is missing or a rule below tells you to. Goal: Match my Amazon orders to my bookkeeping transactions and categorise the business items, splitting mixed orders. Fill in before running: - My Amazon order history export for the year: [ATTACH] - My bookkeeping software and expense categories: [DETAILS] - What my business does, so you can judge what's a business item: [DETAILS] You're not my accountant or financial adviser. Show your working, label estimates as estimates, and tell me which points a professional or the official source should confirm. Rules: - Match each Amazon charge to its bank or card transaction by date and amount. - Mark each item business, personal or unsure, with the category for business items. - For orders mixing business and personal items, split the transaction by item, including tax and shipping shares. - Show me the list before changing anything in the accounts, and keep a log of every change. - If a site asks me to sign in, pause and let me do it myself (including any CAPTCHA or two-step code); never guess or store passwords. - Check facts that can change (prices, opening hours, dates, availability, rules) against the official source, and tell me anything you couldn't verify. Output: A matched list of orders with categories and splits, then a log of the changes made. You'll know it worked when: every business purchase is categorised correctly and personal items are left out.
Customize this prompt
Answer the questions below and we'll put your answers into the prompt for you. You can leave any of them empty.
My Amazon order history export for the year
You'll attach this in the chat tool, not here. Add the file in the chat before you send the prompt.
Your prompt
Run this task now, exactly as written below. Everything you need is here, so start straight away and only stop if something required is missing or a rule below tells you to. Goal: Match my Amazon orders to my bookkeeping transactions and categorise the business items, splitting mixed orders. Fill in before running: - My Amazon order history export for the year: [ATTACH] - My bookkeeping software and expense categories: [DETAILS] - What my business does, so you can judge what's a business item: [DETAILS] You're not my accountant or financial adviser. Show your working, label estimates as estimates, and tell me which points a professional or the official source should confirm. Rules: - Match each Amazon charge to its bank or card transaction by date and amount. - Mark each item business, personal or unsure, with the category for business items. - For orders mixing business and personal items, split the transaction by item, including tax and shipping shares. - Show me the list before changing anything in the accounts, and keep a log of every change. - If a site asks me to sign in, pause and let me do it myself (including any CAPTCHA or two-step code); never guess or store passwords. - Check facts that can change (prices, opening hours, dates, availability, rules) against the official source, and tell me anything you couldn't verify. Output: A matched list of orders with categories and splits, then a log of the changes made. You'll know it worked when: every business purchase is categorised correctly and personal items are left out.
Scroll to see the whole prompt. Your answers show in green.
2 blanks are still empty: My bookkeeping software and expense categories; What my business does, so you can judge what's a business item. They'll stay in brackets in your prompt, so the chat tool may ask you about them.
What you type stays in this browser tab. We don't send it or save it, and it's gone when you leave the page. If you use a "Try this in" button, your answers go to that tool as part of the prompt.
Try this in:
This prompt has blanks to fill in, like [ATTACH]. We'll copy it instead of filling it in, so you can edit it before you send.
The source used Claude. These are general chat tools, so results may differ.
Opens in a new tab. We don't see what you send.
These links are only a shortcut. We're not affiliated with OpenAI, Google or xAI, and your results may not match the source.
Optional stronger version
Our rewrite with extra checks. The poster didn't test it.
Run this task now, exactly as written below. Everything you need is here, so start straight away and only stop if something required is missing or a rule below tells you to. Goal: Match my Amazon orders to my bookkeeping transactions and categorise the business items, splitting mixed orders. Fill in before running: - My Amazon order history export for the year: [ATTACH] - My bookkeeping software and expense categories: [DETAILS] - What my business does, so you can judge what's a business item: [DETAILS] You're not my accountant or financial adviser. Show your working, label estimates as estimates, and tell me which points a professional or the official source should confirm. Rules: - Match each Amazon charge to its bank or card transaction by date and amount. - Mark each item business, personal or unsure, with the category for business items. - For orders mixing business and personal items, split the transaction by item, including tax and shipping shares. - Show me the list before changing anything in the accounts, and keep a log of every change. - If a site asks me to sign in, pause and let me do it myself (including any CAPTCHA or two-step code); never guess or store passwords. - Check facts that can change (prices, opening hours, dates, availability, rules) against the official source, and tell me anything you couldn't verify. - Flag big items that might need to be treated as equipment rather than an expense, for my accountant to check. Output: A matched list of orders with categories and splits, then a log of the changes made. You'll know it worked when: every business purchase is categorised correctly and personal items are left out. Before you finish: re-read my goal and constraints, check your answer against each one, and list anything you assumed or couldn't confirm.
Source
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50047430
Related cases
- Do a small business's quarterly BAS books from bank, Stripe, PayPal and Wise statements with Claude CoworkRecreated promptEvidence: Described by poster
Sridhar Katakam used Claude Cowork to go through the statements and transactions from several bank accounts, Stripe, PayPal and Wise and prepare business expense and income spreadsheets. Their accountant reviewed them and said they were good enough that Katakam no longer needed the accountant's services for BAS and could file it themselves, a saving of about $530 AUD per quarter. The accountant also suggested having Claude do the same for the whole year, and said the fee for filing the income tax return would come down.
Claude Cowork · Ops · Source date:
- Ask Claude whether to convert an LLC to an S Corp, and miss that NYC taxes make it cost moreRecreated promptEvidence: Described by posterFailureBeginner-friendly
mikeocool asked Claude about converting their LLC to an S Corp. Claude said it was a great idea and estimated how much they would save in taxes. Their accountant said it would actually cost more, because of how New York City taxes S Corps. They hadn't told Claude they lived in NYC, because it didn't occur to them that it mattered. Their takeaway: tax questions are full of details like this, often subtler than where you live.
Claude · Ops · Source date:
- Turn a box of 63 crumpled receipts into a QuickBooks batch-upload sheet with Claude CoworkEvidence: Described by posterBeginner-friendly
John Fong had a box of receipts that had sat on their desk for 1.5 years, some crumpled, some with faded ink, and some restaurant meals split across two receipts with the tip on its own. They started a Claude Cowork project called AP Agent, photographed 63 receipts into a folder and asked for an Excel sheet they could batch upload to QuickBooks. They took a shower and 8 minutes later came back to a completed file with every receipt allocated to an account and amount. It flagged 3 receipts it had only partly read, asking them to check those, and 3 that weren't valid expenses under CRA (Canada Revenue Agency) rules.
Claude Cowork · Ops · Source date: