Every finance team has the ritual. The books close, the Excel pack is updated, and then someone loses a day to the deck: copy the chart, paste it into PowerPoint, resize it, fix the font that changed itself, repeat fourteen times, and rename the file “Board_Deck_June_FINAL_v4.” The analysis was finished on Tuesday. The rest of the week went to moving it between two programs that sit next to each other on the same taskbar.

This column has so far used AI in a chat window — you bring the file to the tool. This week the tool comes to you. Claude now works inside Microsoft Office itself, as add-ins for Excel and PowerPoint installed from the Microsoft Marketplace, available on paid Claude plans (Pro starts at about US$20 a month; Team and Enterprise plans add admin controls). And the feature that matters for month-end is deceptively simple: the two add-ins share one conversation. What Claude just did in your workbook, it remembers when you switch to your deck.

Be honest about where report week actually goes. Not the thinking — the transfer. Excel holds the numbers; PowerPoint holds the story; and between them sits an hour or three of manual freight: paste-special, stretch, re-title, check the legend, notice the June chart still says May. Every hand-off is a chance for the deck to fall out of step with the workbook — and a board member with sharp eyes will always find the slide where the figure is one version old.