How to Set Up Claude for a Small Business: The First 30 Minutes

Setting up Claude for a small business takes about thirty minutes: one account per person, the desktop app, and four settings most owners skip. This lesson walks through each step in order.

If you searched for how to set up Claude for Small Business and meant Anthropic's plugin of that name, the install steps are in the plugin lesson. It needs a paid plan and the desktop app. Do this lesson first anyway. The plugin works far better on an account that already knows your business, and everything below works on the free plan.

What you're setting up

Three things carry the Claude name, and owners mix them up.

Checked in October 2026. This chapter covers the first row. Chapter 3 covers the other two.

Step 1: one account per person

Go to claude.ai and sign up with your work email. Use the address you'd put on an invoice, because the day you move to a paid or team plan, that account becomes the billing record.

Give each person their own login. A shared password looks thrifty and costs you three ways: one memory that blends everybody's work, one chat history every user can read, and no way to tell who pasted what. Anthropic's consumer terms also treat an account as one person's.

Two people can each run a free account for $0. Start there.

Step 2: install the apps

Download the desktop app from claude.com/download for Mac or Windows, and the phone app from your app store. The browser version is fine for chat. The desktop app matters later: it's where Claude can work with folders on your computer, and Anthropic's install guide for the small business plugin starts there.

The phone app earns its place on day one. Dictate a messy voice note in the truck, and a clean email draft is waiting before you're back at the shop.

Step 3: four settings, ten minutes

Open Settings from your initials in the lower left corner.

1. Instructions for Claude. This box applies to every chat on your account. Paste a short introduction to your business so you stop retyping it:

Six lines is enough. Details that belong to one kind of work, like your refund policy or your quoting rules, go in a Project (Chapter 2). If you'd like a fuller block built by interview, the free Context Pack Builder writes one.

2. Privacy. Under Settings > Privacy, find Help Improve our AI models. On Free, Pro and Max accounts, Anthropic may train on your chats unless this switch is off. Decide on purpose. Lesson 3 explains what each position means.

3. Memory. Settings > Memory. It's on by default on personal plans, which means Claude has been taking notes since your first chat. Open it and read what's there. Delete anything wrong.

4. Capabilities. Check that code execution and file creation is switched on. Without it, Claude can't build a spreadsheet or a Word file, and skills won't load.

Step 4: one real job

Skip the test questions about the weather. Give Claude something from today's pile:

Read the result with a critical eye. Where it sounds unlike you, say so in the next message. Where it left a blank, good. That's the behaviour you want from an assistant handling your promises.

What this setup doesn't do

Claude still can't see your inbox, your calendar or your books. It works from what you paste until you connect those in Chapter 3.

The free plan has a usage cap that resets on a rolling five-hour window. On a heavy morning you'll hit it. The next lesson covers when that's worth $20 a month.

And an account that knows your business in six lines is a start, with the real teaching still to come in Chapter 2. If you're still weighing Claude against the other assistants, the four-way comparison is honest about where each one wins.

Try it now

Create your account, paste the six-line introduction with your real details, and run the call-notes prompt on something from this week. Then open Settings > Memory tomorrow and see what Claude wrote down about you.