u/StitchinStatistician · Sep 17, 2026
About 30 hours of manual work done in about 25 minutes in one week
TL;DR
What did u/StitchinStatistician use Claude Cowork for?
A small business owner built a Claude Cowork skill that reads supplier invoices and fills the spreadsheet they upload to an inventory system. They say one week's invoice work that would have been at least 30 hours by hand took about 25 minutes, and the skill took a few minutes to set up.
What they did
The owner keeps a spreadsheet that stages purchase orders for upload into an inventory management system, and made a Claude skill that reads PDF invoices and fills that sheet to their specs. They also have it build a daily or weekly email briefing with a prioritized checklist, add calendar entries for urgent tasks, and it helped them put together a hiring and onboarding package for a creative role.
How it went
They say one week's invoice work that would have been at least 30 hours by hand took about 25 minutes, and the skill took a few minutes to set up.
"Last week alone it handled at least 30 hours of manual work in about 25 minutes (excluding the skill setup, which I set up one time a few months ago in maybe 4 minutes, and I further refine it a little every time)."
— u/StitchinStatistician
Worth knowing
- They separate plain chatbots ("If you're talking about straight LLMs, no.") from Cowork, and they keep refining the skill over time.
- Price check: Claude: free plan; Pro: US$20/month, or US$17/month on a yearly plan (US$200/year) (checked Nov 1, 2026).
Paying for Claude? See cheaper Claude alternatives.
Try it yourself
Paste this into a chatbot, then add your own details underneath.
I'll attach supplier invoices as PDFs. For each line item, pull the supplier, SKU, description, quantity, unit cost and invoice date into a table that matches the columns of my purchase-order sheet. Flag any line you couldn't read clearly instead of guessing.
More people who did this
- u/ThePracticalDad (Reddit, Aug 4, 2026): Refreshing detailed product data used to take a week or more of Excel lookups. Now a skill their team built does it in 5 minutes. Says it saves 1-2 days a week.
- u/Where_Da_Party_At (Reddit, Jul 14, 2026): Keeps a blank purchase order template, a folder per vendor with price sheets, and Claude skills describing their style, so Claude Cowork "spits me out a perfect purchase order in about 3 minutes."
Original post
See u/StitchinStatistician's original post on Reddit → (Sep 17, 2026)
Filed under Money & Bookkeeping hacks
Sources
- u/StitchinStatistician on Reddit, Sep 17, 2026 — the original post
- Claude pricing — checked Nov 1, 2026