Claude Sheets Teardown: A BFCM Tracker in 5 Prompts

Claude Sheets is a new spreadsheet inside Claude, released in beta on 10 November 2026 for all paid plans on web, desktop and mobile. You describe the sheet, Claude builds it with tabs, formulas, formatting and drop-downs, and it outlines every change it makes. Below I take one real job, a Black Friday campaign tracker for a Shopify store, and break it into five prompts you can copy, with what each line is doing and what to check in what comes back.

In my experience of working with eCommerce businesses for over two decades, one recurring challenge during major sales events like Black Friday is bringing data from different business functions into one actionable view. Sales, marketing, inventory, orders and campaign performance often sit in separate systems and spreadsheets. Tools like Claude Sheets introduce an interesting possibility: using AI to turn business requirements into functional spreadsheets without spending hours building formulas and dashboards manually. However, the real value is not just in creating a spreadsheet, but in validating the data, understanding the logic and making better business decisions from it. In this article, I will explore how practical AI prompting can simplify BFCM planning for Shopify merchants.

What Claude Sheets is (and is not)

• It is: a shared spreadsheet you build and edit together with Claude. Anthropic’s own examples are a campaign tracker and a hiring budget.
• It is not: a full Excel replacement. Anthropic says the functionality is basic for now and suggests exporting to .xlsx or CSV, or using Claude for Excel, when you need more.
• Who has it: on by default for Team plans; off by default for Enterprise, where an admin turns it on under Organization settings > Artifacts.

That limitation is fine for this job. A campaign tracker needs structure and a few honest formulas, not pivot tables.

The job

A Shopify brand running BFCM (27 to 30 November) needs one sheet that answers three questions every morning: which offers are live, what each channel is costing, and which tasks are late. Most teams keep this in three places. We want one.

Prompt 1: the skeleton

Create a sheet called "BFCM 2026 Tracker" for a Shopify fashion brand.
Make three tabs:
1. Offers: Offer name, Discount type (drop-down: Percentage, Fixed amount, BOGO, Free shipping), Code, Start date, End date, Collections, Status (drop-down: Draft, Scheduled, Live, Ended).
2. Channels: Channel (drop-down: Meta, Google, Email, WhatsApp, Influencer), Daily budget (INR), Spend to date, Orders, Revenue, Cost per order, ROAS.
3. Tasks: Task, Owner, Due date, Status (drop-down: Not started, In progress, Done, Blocked), Notes.
Freeze the header row on every tab. Do not add sample data.

Why it is written this way: the drop-down values are spelled out, so Claude does not invent its own labels. “Do not add sample data” matters; fake rows have a habit of surviving into the real sheet. Check: every tab exists, drop-downs work, headers are frozen.

Prompt 2: the formulas

On the Channels tab:
- Cost per order = Spend to date / Orders. Show blank, not an error, when Orders is 0.
- ROAS = Revenue / Spend to date, rounded to 2 decimals. Blank when Spend is 0.
Add a total row at the bottom that sums Daily budget, Spend, Orders and Revenue, and calculates overall Cost per order and ROAS from those totals (not an average of the rows).
Explain each formula in one line after you add it.

Why: the last instruction in brackets catches a very common spreadsheet mistake: averaging ratios instead of dividing totals. Asking for a one-line explanation makes the formula auditable by someone who is not a spreadsheet person. Check: type a 0 in Orders and make sure nothing shows #DIV/0!.

Prompt 3: the warnings

Add conditional formatting:
- Offers: highlight the row in light red if Status is "Live" but End date is before today.
- Channels: highlight ROAS in light red if below 2, light green if 4 or above.
- Tasks: highlight the row in light amber if Due date is before today and Status is not "Done".
Keep the colours soft so the sheet is readable on a phone.

Why: a tracker is only useful if it shouts when something is wrong. The thresholds (2 and 4) are placeholders; set your own break-even ROAS before the sale. Check: back-date one task and confirm it turns amber.

Prompt 4: the morning summary

Add a fourth tab called "Today" at the front. It should show:
- Number of offers with Status "Live"
- Total spend to date and overall ROAS (from the Channels total row)
- Number of overdue tasks, and a list of them with Owner and Due date
Use formulas that reference the other tabs, so it updates on its own. No manual numbers.

Why: the team opens one tab at 9 am and knows where to look. “No manual numbers” stops Claude from typing a value that looks right today and is wrong tomorrow. Check: change a status on the Tasks tab and watch the count change on “Today”.

Prompt 5: the review

Review the whole sheet as if you were the finance person who has to trust these numbers.
List anything that could give a wrong result: formulas that break on blanks, ranges that will not include new rows, inconsistent date formats, drop-down values that do not match the formulas.
Fix only what I approve. Show me the list first.

Why: this is the step most people skip. The model built the sheet, so ask it to attack the sheet. “Show me the list first” keeps you in charge of the edits. Claude Sheets already outlines its changes, which makes this back-and-forth easy to follow.

What I would not do

I would not paste raw customer data (names, phone numbers, addresses) into any AI tool to “analyse orders”. Keep the tracker at the level of offers, channels and tasks. For order-level analysis, use Shopify’s own reports or your data warehouse. And while it is in beta, I would treat Claude Sheets as the place you design and run the tracker, with an .xlsx export kept as a backup on sale days.

If prompt-writing still feels like guesswork, my Prompt Master framework is a good next read. The pattern above is simple: say what to build, spell out the constraints, then ask the model to check its own work. More in the AI prompt section.

FAQ

Is Claude Sheets free?

It is available on all paid Claude plans, in beta. It is not listed for the free plan.

Can I export a Claude Sheet to Excel?

Yes. Anthropic says you can export to .xlsx or CSV when you need full spreadsheet features.

Why can’t I see Claude Sheets on my company account?

On Enterprise plans Sheets and Whiteboards are off by default. Your admin can switch them on in Organization settings > Artifacts.

Sources

• Claude: Claude Whiteboards, Claude Sheets and Claude Data (10 Nov 2026)
• Claude: Working with Claude Sheets, Whiteboards and interactive connectors
• TechCrunch: Anthropic launches Claude Meetings, Sheets and Whiteboards

Tejash Shah is Co-Founder and CTO of Binary Web Solutions and writes about practical AI for commerce and everyday work.