Cash Flow Analyzer

A worked example of an advanced workflow: a Claude-managed scheduled agent that, once a week, reads the QuickBooks Online cash-flow report and aged-receivables data, summarizes the net cash position and the overdue invoices dragging on it, and publishes a digest to Slack as a canvas with a one-line summary. Cash position is the number that actually keeps an MSP owner up at night, and it lives buried in QBO; this workflow surfaces it every Monday without anyone opening the accounting package. It is strictly read-only and never writes to QuickBooks. There are no servers and no code to deploy: the agent is a saved prompt plus a schedule plus two MCP connectors, running in Claude’s cloud.

What it builds

The finished workflow runs unattended on a weekly cron. Each run it pulls the cash-flow statement and the aged-receivables aging report, reasons about inflows, outflows, and the receivables that have not converted to cash yet, and notifies your team — turning a buried accounting report into a two-number weekly digest (net position, receivables drag) with a Slack trail.

Prerequisites

Before building, your Claude account needs all of the following:

Requirement	Notes
Conduit connector	Connected in claude.ai (https://conduit.wyre.ai/v1/mcp). Provides the qbo__* tools. See Connecting an AI Client.
QuickBooks Online connected in Conduit	The QuickBooks Online vendor connection must be able to read reports and invoices. The routine uses only read tools — no write scope is required.
Slack connector	The first-party Slack connector connected in claude.ai (https://mcp.slack.com/mcp). Provides slack_create_canvas and slack_send_message.
Scheduled routines access	Created via the /schedule capability; managed at claude.ai/code/routines.
A destination Slack channel	e.g. #finance, plus its channel ID. The Slack connector must have access to it.

Known gotchas

These are the things that cost real time the first time through. Account for them up front and the build genuinely takes minutes.

• State the reporting period explicitly in the prompt. The QBO report tools return period-scoped data, and the default period can shift week to week depending on when you call them. If the routine does not pin a specific start_date and end_date, consecutive weekly runs may cover different windows and the numbers will not be comparable. The routine prompt pins the period to month-to-date so every Monday’s number covers the same accumulating window.
• This workflow is deliberately read-only — keep it that way. The QuickBooks Online connection exposes qbo__qbo_*_create and qbo__qbo_*_update tools, but the routine’s permitted_tools lists none of them — only qbo__qbo_reports_cash_flow, qbo__qbo_reports_aged_receivables, and qbo__qbo_invoices_list. An unattended routine must never touch the books. The safety guarantee lives in the connector configuration, not in the prompt.
• One routine per QBO connection for multi-entity MSPs. A QuickBooks Online vendor connection points at a single company file. If your MSP manages multiple legal entities in separate QBO files, run one routine per QBO connection rather than trying to sweep all entities in a single run. The company context is set at the connection level, not per tool call.
• permitted_tools must be populated per connector. A routine with a connector attached but an empty permitted_tools list runs with no tools and silently does nothing — no error, no output. List the exact tool names the routine needs.
• A routine reaches only its attached connectors. The routine sandbox blocks arbitrary network egress, so notifications must go through the Slack connector’s tools, not an outbound webhook. Attach every connector the workflow touches.
• Faster-than-hourly cadences are rejected. The scheduler will not accept a cron more frequent than once an hour. The weekly cron (0 12 * * 1) is well within that limit. Note that cron expressions are interpreted as UTC — Monday 08:00 America/New_York is 0 12 * * 1 in UTC (12:00 UTC during Eastern Daylight Time; adjust to 0 13 * * 1 when Eastern Standard Time is in effect).
• If Slack is not in the /schedule connector list, read its connector_uuid and url from an existing routine that already uses Slack: list routines via RemoteTrigger, get one that uses Slack, and copy the mcp_connections entry. The build prompt handles this automatically.
• Prefer report tools over per-record gets. qbo__qbo_reports_cash_flow and qbo__qbo_reports_aged_receivables return aggregated summaries in a single call. Use qbo__qbo_invoices_list with a bounded maxResults to name the specific large overdue invoices — do not call qbo__qbo_invoices_get in a per-invoice loop, which risks the 60-second tool timeout across a large receivables book.

The one-shot build prompt

With the connectors above in place, paste this to Claude. It confirms the Conduit connector, creates the routine, and verifies it end to end.

Build me a scheduled Cash Flow Analyzer agent. Do all of this end to end:

1. Confirm the Conduit connector works and QuickBooks Online is reachable: call
   qbo__qbo_reports_cash_flow and check it returns a report for the current
   period.
2. Confirm a Slack connector is connected. Note the destination channel name
   and ID (e.g. #finance). If Slack does not show in the /schedule connector
   list, read its connector_uuid and url from an existing routine that already
   uses Slack (RemoteTrigger list -> get -> mcp_connections).
3. Create a Claude-managed scheduled routine named "Cash Flow Analyzer":
   - Schedule: weekly, cron "0 12 * * 1" (Monday 08:00 America/New_York =
     12:00 UTC). Faster-than-hourly cadences are rejected.
   - Attach TWO connectors, each with permitted_tools populated:
       * Conduit: qbo__qbo_reports_cash_flow,
         qbo__qbo_reports_aged_receivables, qbo__qbo_invoices_list — READ
         tools only. Do NOT list any qbo__qbo_*_create or qbo__qbo_*_update
         tool.
       * Slack: slack_create_canvas, slack_send_message
     An empty permitted_tools list = the routine runs with no tools.
   - Routine prompt: every run, pull the cash-flow report and the
     aged-receivables report for the current week, summarize net cash position
     and inflows/outflows, identify the largest overdue receivables dragging on
     that position, build a report, publish it as a Slack canvas titled
     "Cash Flow — <date>", and post a one-line summary to the channel. Use the
     exact routine prompt below.
4. Trigger a manual run and verify: a canvas titled "Cash Flow — <date>" was
   created, a one-line summary landed in the destination channel, and the net
   cash position figure matches what you can see in QuickBooks Online.

The resulting routine prompt

This is the lean prompt the build process installs into the scheduled routine itself. Substitute your own destination channel if it is not the default.

You are the Cash Flow Analyzer. You run weekly, READ-ONLY against QuickBooks Online (a single company file). You must NEVER create or modify any QuickBooks record — only read.

Use ONLY: qbo__qbo_reports_cash_flow, qbo__qbo_reports_aged_receivables,
          qbo__qbo_invoices_list, slack_create_canvas, slack_send_message.

Steps:
1. Call qbo__qbo_reports_cash_flow with a reporting period of the current
   month-to-date (use start_date = first day of this month, end_date = today).
   State the exact reporting period in the report so each week's number is
   directly comparable to the next.
2. From the cash-flow report, extract: total cash inflows (operating + investing
   + financing receipts), total cash outflows, and net cash position for the
   period. Note any line items that are unusually large relative to the rest.
3. Call qbo__qbo_reports_aged_receivables to get the aging summary: current,
   1-30 days, 31-60 days, 61-90 days, and 90+ days overdue buckets and their
   totals.
4. Identify the largest overdue receivables dragging on the cash position.
   Call qbo__qbo_invoices_list with status "Unpaid" and maxResults 20 to name
   the specific open invoices. Sort by Balance descending. Record customer name,
   invoice number (DocNumber), amount (Balance), DueDate, and days overdue
   (today minus DueDate) for invoices where DueDate is before today.

Build a report with three sections:
- CASH POSITION: net cash for the stated period, total inflows, total outflows,
  and any notably large line items.
- RECEIVABLES DRAG: aged-receivables totals by bucket, grand total outstanding.
- TOP OVERDUE INVOICES: the largest overdue invoices by Balance, sorted
  descending, with customer, invoice #, amount, and days overdue.

Include a one-line executive summary: "Net cash position $X this period; $Y in
overdue receivables (top overdue: $Z from <customer>)."

Deliver:
- Call slack_create_canvas titled "Cash Flow — <today's date YYYY-MM-DD>" with
  the full report in Markdown.
- Call slack_send_message to the destination channel with the one-line executive
  summary and a link to the canvas.

This routine is strictly read-only: never call any qbo write or update tool.
If a report cannot be read, include a "could not read" section naming it and
noting the error — do not skip it silently or fabricate numbers.

How it works

A weekly cadence, by design

Cash position changes meaningfully over days and weeks, not minutes. The routine runs every Monday morning so the digest is waiting before the week’s collections and AP work starts. Monday also gives the prior week’s transactions time to clear and reconcile in QBO before the report runs. A weekly cron is kind to the API: one read sweep per week, not one per hour.

Read-only as a finance-routine guardrail

The routine’s Conduit connector is attached with a permitted_tools list containing only read tools. The qbo__qbo_*_create and qbo__qbo_*_update tools are not reachable from inside the routine, so there is no path by which an unattended run could alter the books. This is a deliberate design choice for any finance routine: the safety guarantee lives in the connector configuration, not in the prompt. When you extend this routine, never add a write tool.

Cash position and receivables drag as the two-number story

The routine is built around two numbers: net cash position for the period (what the cash-flow statement says is in the business right now) and total outstanding receivables (money owed but not yet collected). The aged-receivables report adds texture — how much of that outstanding balance is current versus 30, 60, or 90+ days overdue. The qbo__qbo_invoices_list call names the specific large overdue invoices behind those totals, so the digest answers not just “what is the position” but “what is holding it back.”

Delivery is a Slack canvas plus a summary

The full cash-position and receivables report can be long, so the routine publishes it as a Slack canvas — a durable document teammates can scroll, reference, and compare week to week — and posts only a one-line executive summary to the channel linking it. The channel stays readable; the detail lives in the canvas. See delivery adapters for other ways to surface a routine’s output.

Extending it

The natural next step is a fuller weekly financial digest: add qbo__qbo_reports_profit_and_loss to the Conduit connector’s permitted_tools and instruct the routine to include a P&L summary alongside the cash-flow and receivables sections — revenue, gross margin, and net income for the same period — in a single Monday morning canvas.

The workflow is also accounting-platform-agnostic. Swapping to Xero is a small connector change: replace the qbo__qbo_reports_cash_flow, qbo__qbo_reports_aged_receivables, and qbo__qbo_invoices_list tool names in permitted_tools with the Xero connection’s equivalents (xero__* tools from the same Conduit connector). The report-building logic and the Slack delivery body of the routine are identical — the tool names are the only things that change.

Questions or a workflow you’d like documented? See Getting support.