The Claude for Small Business Plugin: How to Install It and What's Inside
12 min read
The Claude for Small Business plugin is Anthropic's bundle of 44 skills and 35 app connections for owners, and it installs in about two minutes on a paid plan. This lesson covers the install, what's inside, and what a Canadian business should check before leaning on it.
Anthropic launched it on May 13, 2026. The pitch: you describe a worry in plain words, "can I make payroll?" or "who owes me money?", and Claude picks the right skill and walks you through it, pausing for your approval before anything is sent, posted or paid.
How to install the plugin
You need the Claude desktop app and a Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise plan.
- Open Cowork and click Customize in the left sidebar.
- Under Plugins, click the plus button.
- Find Small Business and click Install.
- Start a new task and type: get me started.
That last step runs a setup of roughly 15 minutes. Claude offers to connect your first two tools, runs one real job to show what it does, then asks about your business and saves the answers so every skill can use them. Answer the interview properly. It's the same idea as the instructions you wrote in Chapter 2, collected by conversation.
On a Team plan, the owner decides which plugins members may install, so the option can be missing until they enable it.
What's inside
Counted from Anthropic's public plugin folder on GitHub in October 2026 (version 1.35.1, dated September 15):
| Area | Skills | What you can say |
|---|---|---|
| Finance | 12 | "Close the books", "pay the bills", "who owes me money?" |
| Sales and leads | 8 | "Who should I call?", "win back quiet customers" |
| Marketing | 8 | "Is my marketing working?", "make the content" |
| Customers and proposals | 4 | "Quote this job", "review this contract" |
| Operations and hiring | 5 | "Go through my email", "write a job post" |
| Briefings | 2 | "Monday brief" |
| Setup and building | 5 | "Get me started", "update my brand" |
Eleven of the 44 are workflows that chain several skills, with an approval checkpoint at each step. Closing the month and planning payroll are two of them.
The plugin's configuration lists 35 app connections. The ones a small business is likely to use: QuickBooks, Xero, Zoho Books and MYOB for the ledger. Stripe, Square and PayPal for payments. Shopify and Wix for a store. HubSpot and Zoho CRM. Gusto for payroll. Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive. Slack, Notion, Trello, Canva, Docusign, Mailchimp, Zoom and Zapier.
You don't need any of them connected to begin. Anthropic's notes say the skills also work from a CSV export, a pasted email or an uploaded PDF.
What a Canadian owner should check
The plugin was built in the US, and a few parts show it. We read the skill files to see how they treat a business outside it.
Tax. The tax skill's own description says its math is US federal. For a business outside the US, it closes the books and hands you a packet for your accountant, with no estimate. That's the right behaviour, and it means "quarterly taxes" and "1099s" do nothing for you. GST/HST isn't covered. Our free GST/HST Filing Prep prompt fills that gap, under the same rule that your accountant has the last word.
Payroll. Staging a pay run goes through Gusto, a US payroll service. With QuickBooks Payroll or other software, you get a validated run sheet to key in yourself. The skill frames overtime by US state, so check its output against your province's employment standards.
Your accounting software. QuickBooks, Xero and Zoho Books are on the list. Wave, Sage and FreshBooks aren't. If your books are in one of those, you'll work from exports, which is fine for month-end questions and clumsy for anything daily.
Currency and country. The setup interview records your country, currency and financial year end, and reads them from your ledger when one is connected. Confirm it captured Canada and CAD before you trust a dollar figure.
Advice. Anthropic states plainly that the plugin doesn't provide financial, tax, legal or HR advice, and that a qualified professional should review outputs where appropriate. Take that at face value.
A sensible first week
Day one, run "get me started" and connect one tool. Day two, ask the question that keeps you up: "who owes me money?" or "what are customers saying?". Check the answer against the source system. For the rest of the week, use only skills that read and report. Leave anything that sends invoices, posts content or stages payments until you've seen the reading skills get your numbers right three times.
No paid plan, or books that aren't in QuickBooks?
A plugin is a bundle. A skill is one file, and single skills install on every Claude plan, Free included. If you're on the free plan, keep your books in Wave or a spreadsheet, or want to read each line of what you install, standalone skills are the better fit.
We publish 35 of them, free and MIT-licensed. Claude skills for small business explains the difference and how to install one, and the ranked list of ten tells you where to start. Plenty of owners will end up running both: the plugin for what it connects to, a few single skills for the jobs it doesn't cover.
Before you install a skill or plugin from a source you don't know, run it through our free Skill Check. A skill is a set of instructions your assistant will follow, and you should know what they say.
Where this breaks
The plugin changes often. It was at 44 skills when we counted, and Anthropic's own install tutorial still says "30+". Menu names shift too. If a step above doesn't match your screen, Anthropic's install guide is the source of record.
Approval gates only protect you if you read what you approve. A staged bill run with a wrong payee is one click from being a real payment. Slow down on anything that moves money.
Try it now
On a paid plan: install the plugin, run the setup, and ask one read-only question about money or customers. Verify the answer in the source app. On the free plan: open the ranked list of skills, pick the one aimed at your worst weekly job, and install that today.