One spreadsheet tracked the money. The founder started building its replacement at our workshop.

What problem did Corey bring to the workshop?

One Google Sheet that holds the numbers for the group: cash flow, forecasts, commissions and invoices. His team works from a SharePoint file, so Corey was downloading it, opening it beside his sheet and updating each client line by hand. In his words, it was "very cumbersome, very manual labour heavy."

The sheet has a dashboard, a monthly cash flow view, expenses for each business, an invoice tracker and a projected model, with the same pages mirrored for each business. The heaviest page lists every client's expected commissions and fees and roughly when each payment will land. That timing depends on where each client is up to, whether they are building, buying or developing, so every line has to be checked against the team's file.

Corey estimated that one page alone was about 80 per cent of the manual work. The updating fell to him, on top of running the business.

Why hadn't AI fixed it already?

Corey was already using ChatGPT and Claude day to day, but as chat tools, not connected to anything in the business. He had tried to build a cash flow assistant for this exact sheet and got stuck.

He was not new to AI either. He had built a small tool that audits lead spreadsheets for his sales manager, and by his count he had done three or four AI courses. At one recent course, he told us, the content went over his head five minutes in, and he got little out of the rest of the session. What he wanted was to become self-sufficient with AI, and then bring his team along with him.

What was the plan before the day?

Turn the spreadsheet into an app. On a strategy call before the workshop, Corey shared his screen and walked us through the sheet. We agreed the strongest path was a custom app that keeps all the data in one place, rather than patching the sheet, because AI can work with data far more easily once it lives somewhere it can reach.

The app is built with AI by prompting in plain English, with no coding. The plan covers what a business app needs: hosting, a web address and logins, with room to add pipelines, invoice tracking and staff permissions later. We hold a call like this before the workshop, so people arrive knowing what they will build.

What happened at the workshop?

Corey started building the finance tracker. He spent the day working on his own business, following along step by step and building as we went. On the day, he described his project as "a finance tracker for a couple of different businesses."

Our workshop is hands-on and held in Perth, and everyone brings real work. Around Corey, other business owners were building quoting tools, CRM set-ups and automations for their own businesses. Nobody works on a generic practice exercise, and there is help in the room when someone gets stuck.

Where is the finance tracker up to?

It is being built. The first version was started on the day of the workshop, and it is not finished yet. Until it is, we are not claiming any hours saved.

What comes next?

Connecting the tools the business already uses. Once the tracker holds the numbers, the plan is to connect Gmail, Xero and GoHighLevel, so the app and Claude can work with emails, invoices and client records. Getting the data into one place comes first.

A single app that pulls the money side of the group together is the foundation for automating the rest. Corey's wider goal is to have at least half of his staff working more effectively with AI.

Could this work for other owners running several businesses?

Yes. Any owner who keeps a group's numbers in one hand-built spreadsheet has the same problem and the same fix: get the data into one place AI can reach, then automate the updating. The person who knows the numbers best is the right person to build it.

That is what our training is for: owners and teams building on their own work, with us beside them. For property businesses we go deeper in AI for real estate, and when a business wants the build done for them, that is our custom development work.