For people who work in an office, in administration, accounts or purchasing: customer emails, the morning's mail, internal policies, bank reconciliations, quotes, invoices, contract deadlines, procedures, colleagues' questions, letters in the office's style. Ten cases, each with the request to copy and adapt and with what to check before the result leaves the office.
The examples use fictional documents from a small company. Each case lists the stages of the manual that teach the move. The cases were tested in Claude in the Italian edition of this guide, and the cases that report what the model did in a test were tested again in English on these documents, in November 2026. Where a test showed a typical mistake, the case says so.
Where the test used a fictional document, the case offers it for download: you can redo the test and compare the answer with what the case describes.
Before you start: customers' and colleagues' data
Administration handles data that is not yours: customers' names and addresses, bank details, salaries, colleagues' expense claims. Three rules apply to every case below.
- With a free or personal tool, remove from the documents whatever the job does not need: bank account numbers, National Insurance numbers, employee data. To reconcile a bank statement, dates, descriptions and amounts are enough.
- If your office gives you its own tool, ask what you are allowed to upload (fact sheet "If the tool comes from your office").
- No figure and no letter leaves the office until someone has checked it against the document it comes from.
1. Replying to an angry customer
The situation. A harsh email arrives: the customer disputes an invoice and threatens to stop all payments. They are right about one thing and wrong about another.
The request. Paste the email and your notes, then:
"Write the reply to this email using only the facts in my notes. Acknowledge what the customer is right about, explain calmly where they are wrong, offer only what my notes allow. Polite and firm, 12 lines at most. Do not promise anything that is not in my notes."
To redo the test. The fictional document used: case1_customer_email.txt.
What to check. The concessions. To calm the sender down, the model tends to offer more than you can give: a credit note, an exception, a deadline. Read the reply looking for every commitment and check each one against your notes.
Stages. 2 (the same request, done well), 6 (Word and Outlook).
2. The morning's email
The situation. Thirty emails arrived overnight, and half of them do not matter.
The request. With your email connected (stage 16), or by pasting the emails:
"Read these emails and sort them into three groups: to do today or with a deadline, to read with no action needed, to delete. For each email in the first group: who sent it, what they want, by when. List separately any email that looks like a scam or asks for a payment, a password or a click on a link."
To redo the test. The fictional document used: case2_morning_email.txt.
What to check. The deadlines, against the original email. And the group of suspicious emails: a model that reads your mail can be fooled by an email written for that purpose, so never ask it to carry out instructions it finds in the messages, and only make a payment after checking it through another channel.
Stages. 16 (your data, connected), 4 (the check).
3. A six-page policy on one page
The situation. A new internal procedure arrives, long, and it has to be explained to colleagues.
The request. Upload the document, then:
"Summarise this policy on one page for colleagues: when it applies from, what changes from before, the limits and deadlines with the exact figures, what happens if they are not met. Do not add anything that is not in the text."
To redo the test. The fictional document used: case3_expenses_policy.docx.
What to check. The figures and deadlines, one by one, against the text. Then look in the policy for the sentences with "also", "by the same deadline", "unless": those are the conditions a summary loses first. The model can only say "what changes from before" if you also give it the previous version: in the test it answered, rightly, that the policy does not list the differences.
Stages. 3 (a document of your own), 4.
4. Reconciling the bank statement with the invoices
The situation. At the end of the month you need to check that the payments received match the invoices on record.
The request. Upload the bank statement and the invoice register (Excel or CSV), without account numbers, then:
"Match the payments in the bank statement against the invoices in the register. Pair each payment with an invoice by customer and amount. List separately: payments with no invoice, invoices marked as paid with no payment, open invoices that have already been paid, amounts that do not match. Do the calculations with a program and show me the table."
To redo the test. The fictional documents used: case4_bank_statement_october.csv, case4_invoice_register.csv.
What to check. The unmatched rows: they are the ones that matter. An amount with two digits swapped (915 instead of 951) is the most common mistake and the easiest to miss by eye. If the model matches on "similar amount", ask it to match identical amounts only and to list the others.
Stages. 7 (Excel: formulas, data and charts).
5. Comparing three quotes
The situation. Three suppliers, three quotes written three different ways: one with VAT, one without, one with delivery charged separately.
The request.
"Put the three quotes in a table on the same basis: price excluding VAT, delivery included, payment terms, delivery time, validity. Do the calculations and tell me which is the best value. If a figure is missing, write 'not stated'."
To redo the test. The fictional document used: case5_quotes.txt.
What to check. That every price has been brought to the same basis: that is where people and models both go wrong. Redo the calculation for the winning quote by hand. Price is not everything: payment in advance and long delivery times weigh too, and the choice is yours.
6. From invoices to a table
The situation. A pile of invoices and credit notes to record or check.
The request. Upload the PDFs or paste the text, then:
"Extract a table from these documents: number, supplier, date, description, net amount, VAT, total. Credit notes as negative amounts. Recalculate the total of each document from net amount and VAT and flag those that do not add up. At the bottom, the overall total."
To redo the test. The fictional document used: case6_supplier_invoices.txt.
What to check. The documents the model flags as wrong: open them. If it flags none, redo two documents at random by hand. Credit notes must subtract, not add. With poor-quality scans, check every figure.
7. The contract deadline schedule
The situation. Rentals, services, licences, insurance policies: each with its own expiry, its own automatic renewal and its own notice period.
The request. Upload the contracts, then:
"Make a table of the contracts: supplier, expiry date, automatic renewal yes or no, last date to give notice with the date worked out, how notice must be given, amount. Today is [date]: flag the notice deadlines that have already passed and those in the next 90 days. If a clause is ambiguous, say so instead of picking one reading."
To redo the test. The fictional document used: case7_contracts.txt.
What to check. The calculated dates: redo at least the ones that are close. In the test the model found the notice deadline that had already passed and flagged the ambiguous clause. If it cites a legal rule that is not in your documents, treat it as its own reading and check it before you rely on it. Write today's date in the request, because the model does not know it for certain. Once the table is right, it can become a reminder that arrives on its own every Monday (stage 20).
Stages. 3, 7, 20 (the task that comes back on its own).
8. The procedure for a new colleague
The situation. Someone who retires or moves to another office leaves scattered notes, and the new colleague has to learn fast.
The request. Paste the notes, then:
"Turn these notes into a step-by-step procedure for a new colleague: in the order things happen during the month, with the dates, who does what, and the rules not to forget. Remove any confidential information and tell me what you removed. At the end, list the questions to ask the person who wrote the notes."
To redo the test. The fictional document used: case8_procedure_notes.txt.
What to check. Confidential information: passwords, codes and where the keys are kept do not belong in a written procedure. Rules that were not in the notes: in the test, while removing the line about the password, the model added a rule about personal credentials, sensible but invented. A procedure has to describe how the work is really done: additions are either removed or approved. The list of questions at the end is the most useful part, because notes written by someone who knows the job always skip something.
Stages. 2, 5 (the finished work).
9. An assistant for colleagues' questions
The situation. The same questions come back every week: how much is refunded, by when, who signs.
The request. Create a project (stage 12) or an assistant (stage 14) with the office's policy and rules. In the instructions:
"Answer colleagues' questions only on the basis of the uploaded documents, in three lines, citing the section of the policy. If the documents do not answer, write 'The policy does not say: ask the finance office' and do not infer."
Then try it with three questions: two that the documents answer and one they do not.
What to check. The question with no answer is the real test: if the assistant answers anyway, it is inventing, and the instructions need rewriting. Check the assistant again every time a rule changes: it answers with the documents it has, even outdated ones.
Stages. 12 (the first project), 14 (a custom assistant).
10. A letter in the office's style
The situation. Every office has its own phrases and its own taboos. The model writes well, but not the way your office writes.
The request. Once: in a project (stage 12), upload the office's letter template and one or two good letters. Then, for each letter:
"Write the reply to [reference] following the office template and the style of the example letters. Content: [your notes]."
To redo the test. The fictional document used: case10_letter_template.txt.
What to check. The phrases the template forbids: search for them in the text. The content against your notes, especially figures, days and percentages. If a style rule is broken twice, put it in the project instructions (stage 11).
Cases tested on 7 November 2026.