Stop chasing invoices and missing bills: the Claude email setup
A plain-English walkthrough for owners who run the business off the side of their desk. In about 30 minutes you connect Claude to your email and it does two jobs for you every day:
Finds the bills you owe before they go late.
Finds the invoices you sent that have not been paid, so you can chase them.
No new software to learn. It reads your inbox, sorts everything by due date into one place, and pings you each morning with what needs to happen.
What you are building
A single list of every bill and every unpaid invoice, with who, how much, and when it is due.
That list lives in Notion or a Google Sheet, sorted so the most urgent sits at the top.
A short message to you each morning telling you what to pay today and which customers to chase.
That is it. Money out on time, money in faster, and you stop holding it all in your head.
What you need
An email account (Gmail or Outlook).
A Claude account with connectors turned on (the paid plans include this).
One place to store the list. Pick Notion or Google Sheets. If you do not have either, a Google Sheet is the fastest start and it is free.
Step 1: Connect Claude to your email
Open Claude and go to Settings, then Connectors.
Turn on the Gmail connector (or Outlook). Sign in and approve read access when it asks.
While you are there, turn on the connector for where the list will live, Notion or Google Drive.
Read access is all Claude needs to find your bills. It is not sending anything or paying anything. You stay in control of that.
Step 2: Have Claude pull this week's bills and unpaid invoices
Paste this prompt into Claude. Change the dates and your business name to match.
Search my email from the last 60 days for two things. One, bills and invoices I owe, anything that looks like a payment due from a supplier, software, utility, or vendor. Two, invoices I sent to my customers that have not been marked paid. For each one, pull the sender or customer name, the amount, the due date, and a one-line description. Show me bills I owe and invoices owed to me in two separate tables, each sorted by due date with the soonest first.
Claude will read your inbox and hand back two clean tables. Spot-check a few against your actual emails so you trust it.
Step 3: Send the list to Notion or a Google Sheet
Once the tables look right, tell Claude where to put them.
For a Google Sheet:
Create a Google Sheet called Money Tracker with two tabs, Bills I Owe and Invoices Owed To Me. Add the rows you just found. Columns: Name, Amount, Due date, Description, Status. Set Status to Unpaid for every row.
For Notion:
Add these to a new Notion database called Money Tracker. Properties: Name, Amount, Due date, Type (Bill or Invoice), Status. Sort by Due date, soonest first.
Now everything lives in one spot instead of scattered across your inbox.
Step 4: Set the morning reminder
This is the part that saves you. You want Claude to check each morning and tell you what needs action that day. Use a scheduled task.
In Claude, ask to schedule a daily task at the time you start work, say 7 a.m.
Use this as the task prompt:
Check my email and my Money Tracker for any bill due in the next 3 days and any invoice owed to me that is more than 14 days past due. Reply with a short morning list: what to pay today, what is coming up, and which customers I should chase. Keep it under ten lines.
Each morning you get a tight list. Pay what is due, chase who is late, get on with real work.
Step 5: Chase the money you are owed (optional, high value)
For the unpaid invoices, have Claude draft the follow-ups so you are not writing them from scratch.
For each invoice owed to me that is more than 14 days past due, draft a short, friendly payment reminder email to that customer. Keep my tone warm but clear. Do not send them. Show me the drafts so I can review and send.
Read each one, tweak if needed, and send them yourself. Never let it send on its own. You want eyes on anything that goes to a customer.
The rules that keep this safe
Claude reads and organizes. It does not pay bills or move money. You do that yourself, every time.
Always review customer emails before they go out.
Spot-check the amounts and due dates for the first week until you trust the list.
What good looks like after a week
You have not paid a single late fee.
You know exactly who owes you and how much.
The whole thing takes you five minutes each morning instead of an afternoon of digging.
That is time back for the work that grows the business, landing jobs and finding new leads, instead of shuffling paper.
Fifteen years doing this for owners like you. Set it up once and it runs every morning without you.
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