Claude for Small Business: The Free Setup Course

You opened Claude, asked it for an email, and got something decent. Then you closed the tab. The next morning it had no idea who you were, what you sell, or that you'd asked it anything. So Claude stays a toy you remember on slow afternoons, while the inbox, the quotes and the month-end pile sit where they were.

This is a Claude for small business course that fixes the setup, because the setup is where most owners stall. In about two and a half hours you'll have Claude configured for your shop: the right plan, the privacy switch set on purpose, a Project for each part of the business, your inbox and files connected, and a handful of jobs it does each week without being briefed again.

A note on the name. Claude for Small Business is also what Anthropic calls the plugin it launched on May 13, 2026: 44 skills and 35 app connections that run on paid plans. Chapter 3 shows you how to install it and what a Canadian owner should check before relying on it. Most of the course works on the free plan, and each lesson says when a step needs a paid one. Vexlo is an independent consultancy. We aren't affiliated with Anthropic, we take no money for mentions, and where Claude falls short the lesson says so.

Across five chapters, you will learn:

• How to set up Claude for a business in thirty minutes, and the four settings most owners skip
• What the free plan already covers, and the two signs it's time to pay for Pro
• Whether Claude is safe for business data: the training switch, what to keep out of a prompt, and how PIPEDA applies when your chats are processed outside Canada
• How to use Projects, project instructions and memory so Claude stops forgetting your prices, your tone and your rules
• How to connect Gmail, Google Drive, Outlook and QuickBooks, and how to keep a connected assistant on a short leash
• What Cowork and scheduled tasks do, with first jobs sized for a business of five
• How to check Claude's work before a customer sees it
• When the Team plan beats separate Pro accounts, and a one-hour training session for your staff

Plan details, menu names and prices were read from Anthropic's own pages in October 2026. Claude changes fast, so each lesson tells you which screen to check when a step doesn't match yours.

You don't need another course first. If your prompts come back flat, Prompt Engineering Fundamentals fixes that in an afternoon. When you want reusable skills on top of this setup, Claude Skills for Small Business lists 35 free ones, and AI Skills for Small Business teaches you to write your own. Anthropic runs free video courses too, and the last lesson tells you which of them are worth your team's time.

Each chapter ends with a short quiz. Take the whole course in one sitting, or one lesson per coffee. By the end, opening Claude on a Monday morning feels less like starting a conversation with a stranger and more like walking into an office where someone already knows the business.