No CFO trusts AI with the company books on day one. This free setup pairs Firefly III with Claude so you practice AI bookkeeping on personal finances first, then move to the company.
Never used Claude? It is free and takes 30 seconds to open. Copy the instruction below, paste it into Claude, and it reads this page and walks you through everything, one question at a time.
A short instruction plus a link to this page lands on your clipboard. First copy asks for your email once. That unlocks every button across the whole library.
Free account, no card, 30 seconds. This tab stays open so you can come back.
Open claude.ai ↗Claude reads this page, asks which computer you are on, then guides you step by step until it works. If anything errors, tell Claude what you see, and it fixes it with you.
I want to run my personal P&L on AI without handing my bank data to cloud SaaS. I am non-technical. I am comfortable copy-pasting into ChatGPT. I have never opened Terminal before. Treat me like a smart founder who has never run a command on a computer. Here is how I want you to help me: Ask me ONE question first: what computer am I on, Mac or Windows. Wait for my answer. Do not ask anything else upfront. Then walk me through getting Firefly III running on my own machine and connected to you, so I can run my personal books through AI before I ever take this near my company. The repo is https://github.com/firefly-iii/firefly-iii. Rules for how you guide me: One command at a time. Put the command in a code block on its own. Below it, one sentence on what it does. One sentence on where to paste it (for example, "paste this into the Terminal app, the black window you just opened"). One sentence on what success looks like so I know it worked. One sentence on what to do if I see red text or an error. Define every technical word the first time you use it. Repo, Docker, container, port, API key, CSV, localhost, environment variable. If you say it, define it in the same breath, in plain English. The first time you need me to open Terminal (Mac) or PowerShell (Windows), walk me there. Mac: press Command and Space, type Terminal, press Enter. Windows: press the Windows key, type PowerShell, press Enter. Tell me what the window should look like when it opens. If I need Docker installed (I probably do, because Firefly III runs inside Docker), do that first. Send me to the official Docker Desktop download page for my OS, tell me to install it like any other app, tell me to open it once so it finishes setting up, and tell me how I know it is running (the little whale icon in my menu bar or system tray). Then walk me through pulling and running Firefly III with the official Docker command from the Firefly III repo. Do not invent commands. If you are unsure, tell me you want to check the README first and ask me to paste a link or output back to you. Once Firefly III is running, walk me through opening it in my browser (the address will be something like http://localhost on my own computer, meaning the app is running on my machine, not on the internet). Help me create my admin account inside Firefly. Then help me: 1. Download the last 3 months of CSV statements from my main bank (CSV is just a spreadsheet file banks let you export). Walk me through importing them into Firefly using its built-in CSV importer. 2. Generate a Firefly III Personal Access Token (this is the API key, the password that lets you talk to my Firefly). Walk me through where to click inside Firefly to create it. Tell me to paste it back to you in this chat. 3. Once you have the token and the Firefly address, pull my last 3 months of transactions through the Firefly API, categorise every transaction like a junior accountant, and flag any recurring subscriptions I might have forgotten about. Show me the list. That is the first real outcome I want to see. Stop when I can see a categorised list of my last 3 months of transactions plus a list of forgotten subscriptions, and I confirm in this chat that it worked.
Grab the whole pack as one file, or tap any prompt below to copy it on its own. Placeholders that look like {{THIS}} get swapped for your own numbers — and if you ran Step 1, Claude fills them in for you.
The code is public and free. The setup instruction above installs and wires it for you. You never need to open this link.
No finance leader hands AI the corporate books cold. Firefly III plus Claude is the trust ladder: personal books first, real reps, then the company — so you understand the AI before you recommend it internally.
The setup rail and every prompt above are free and stay free. The cost is your time, and the risk of wiring it wrong on live data.
Back to the prompts ↑We deliver the full graduation playbook: self-hosted Firefly stack, the Claude prompt library for all 10 trust rungs, weekly Sunday-brief automation, and the personal-to-company crosswalk so the same workflow lifts straight into corporate FP&A. You climb the ladder without losing weekends to setup.
Book a build call →Firefly III is AGPL-3.0. Respect the license, especially if you modify and redistribute.
Want this wired into your stack instead of running it yourself? That is our AI deal desk and finance automation service.
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Practice AI Bookkeeping On Your Own Books is a finance and data build in the consultance.ai AI Build Library. No CFO trusts AI with the company books on day one. This free setup pairs Firefly III with Claude so you practice AI bookkeeping on personal finances first, then move to the company. It fits CFOs, controllers, FP&A leaders and finance directors at $5M to $500M companies who want to actually understand AI on the books before recommending it internally. Setup difficulty is Medium, with 4 plain-English steps.
No CFO trusts AI with the company books on day one. This free setup pairs Firefly III with Claude so you practice AI bookkeeping on personal finances first, then move to the company.
It fits CFOs, controllers, FP&A leaders and finance directors at $5M to $500M companies who want to actually understand AI on the books before recommending it internally.
Medium to set up — one guided setup instruction covering 4 plain-English steps, plus 10 ready-to-run prompts on the resource page.
We would deliver the full graduation playbook: self-hosted Firefly stack, Claude prompt library for the 10 trust rungs, weekly Sunday brief automation, and the personal-to-company crosswalk so the same workflow lifts straight into corporate FP&A.
Firefly III is AGPL-3.0. Respect the license, especially if you modify and redistribute.
Practice AI Bookkeeping On Your Own Books is the starting point. On a free AI audit we map where it fits your stack and what consultance.ai would build around it.
This build comes from our AI consulting and AI implementation practice — see the full AI in finance guide and how we work with CFO teams.