Build a QuickBooks P&L and cashflow dashboard with Claude

This is an end-to-end example: connect a data source over MCP, generate a dashboard from live numbers, and close the review loop on one link. Total time, start to shared link, is under fifteen minutes. The same shape works for any of the other examples — only the connection step changes.

Here's the finished dashboard, published to a canvas — click any tile or number to leave a comment, exactly as your team would:

The three moving parts

1. The QuickBooks Online MCP server gives Claude read access to your books — profit & loss, balance sheet, cash flow, customers, invoices — through a controlled set of tools. You authorize the company and choose what it can touch.
2. Claude pulls the numbers and writes a single self-contained HTML dashboard. You iterate on it in the artifact panel until it's right.
3. Drafty turns that HTML into a stable link your team reviews. Comments pin to the exact element; Claude ships the fix to the same URL.

The generation step is fast now. The part this example is really about is the third one — getting the dashboard in front of people without losing their feedback to a screenshot circled in Preview.

Step 1 — Connect the QuickBooks MCP server

Intuit ships an official QuickBooks Online MCP server. It runs locally as a stdio process, so you clone it, build it, and authorize your company once over OAuth — the tokens land in a local .env, never in a chat.

Set it up:

Then run the OAuth handshake — it opens your browser to sign in and authorize the company, and saves the refresh token and realm id to .env:

In Claude Code: add the built server, passing your QuickBooks credentials and the read-only flag so it can never write to your books:

In Claude Desktop: open Settings → Developer → Edit Config and add a quickbooks entry under mcpServers with command: "node", args: ["path/to/dist/index.js"], and the same env block — including QUICKBOOKS_DISABLE_WRITE: "true".

Step 2 — Pull the numbers

Ask Claude in plain language. It uses the MCP server's report tools (get_profit_and_loss, get_cash_flow, get_balance_sheet) to fetch real data:

Claude calls QuickBooks, returns the figures, and you sanity-check them against the QuickBooks reports before going further. This is the moment to catch a wrong assumption — a cash vs. accrual basis you didn't expect, a date range off by a month, an uncategorized account skewing a total — while it's cheap.

Step 3 — Build the dashboard

Once the numbers look right, ask for the artifact:

Claude renders it live in the artifact panel. Iterate in place — you're not regenerating from scratch:

• "Make net income the biggest number and put net cash change right under it."
• "Add a 6-month net-income trend line."
• "Group payroll and contractors into one 'people' expense category."

Step 4 — Publish to Drafty for review

A Claude artifact link is a preview, not a stable URL — iterate the artifact and the link you already sent now shows the old version. Ask Claude to publish it to a Drafty canvas instead, so the link you share always stays current:

Claude pushes the dashboard and hands back a drafty.im/canvas/… link that renders on any device. Send it — your team opens it in a browser, no login and no Claude account needed.

Step 5 — The review loop

This is the part that's not obvious until you've done it once.

A reviewer clicks the specific tile, line item, or number they want changed and leaves a pinned comment — "this expense total looks high, are we including the annual software renewal that should be amortized?" The comment is anchored to that element, not floating in a Slack thread. Claude reads the comments through the CLI, reruns the relevant QuickBooks query if needed, and pushes a revised dashboard to the same URL. The reviewer refreshes and sees the change; the thread stays attached to the element.

The mechanic matters because of what it removes. A Slack message about a chart produces "the number on the left looks wrong." A pinned comment on the actual tile produces "this — split out the one-time equipment purchase from operating expenses." One of those produces a correct revision; the other produces a guess.

Keeping it fresh

An MCP-generated dashboard is a snapshot — it holds the numbers Claude pulled when it built it; it doesn't re-query QuickBooks when someone opens the link. For a monthly close or a board-ready snapshot, that's fine.

To make it a live canvas that always shows today's figures, copy this prompt — Claude sets up the refresh for you and schedules it to run on its own:

The link stays stable while the content updates underneath it — see keeping a canvas updated automatically.

What to watch for

• Read-only, always. A P&L and cashflow dashboard needs read access and nothing more. Set QUICKBOOKS_DISABLE_WRITE=true so the server can't change your books.
• Check the figures before you share. The MCP returns exactly what you ask for — if your report runs on the wrong accounting basis or date range, the dashboard will confidently show the wrong net income. Reconcile against the QuickBooks P&L and cash flow reports once.
• The link is the deliverable, not the artifact. Share the Drafty URL, not the Claude artifact preview — that's the one you can update in place.