FinancePlots Academy
Claude for Finance
The Context Block
Claude performs dramatically better when you tell it who you are, what your company does, and what you need — before asking the question. This opening 'context block' is the single biggest lever for output quality. Without it, Claude guesses your situation and often gets it wrong.
Always lead with role, company size, industry, and currency. Three sentences of context saves five rounds of back-and-forth.
Context block example
# Bad prompt
"What's a good gross margin for my business?"
# Good prompt with context block
"""
I am the CFO of a UK-based SaaS company with £2M ARR and 15 employees.
We sell HR software to SMBs on annual contracts.
All figures are in GBP.
What is a healthy gross margin for a SaaS business at our stage,
and what are the main levers to improve it?
"""Live Example
Your Prompt
I am the CFO of a UK SaaS company, £2M ARR, 15 employees, HR software for SMBs, figures in GBP. What is a healthy gross margin at our stage and what are the main levers to improve it?
Claude's Response
For a UK SaaS business at £2M ARR, a healthy gross margin is typically 70–80%. At your stage, infrastructure costs and customer success headcount are the biggest drivers below that threshold. Key levers to improve it: 1. Move from managed hosting to cloud-native (AWS/GCP) to cut server costs 2. Automate onboarding to reduce CS hours per customer 3. Shift support to a tiered model — self-serve for SMBs, managed for larger accounts 4. Review payment processing fees — often 1–2% of revenue at your scale If your gross margin is currently below 65%, the most likely culprit is customer success being classified above the gross profit line. Many SaaS CFOs reclassify onboarding costs to S&M to improve the reported margin.
Quick Quiz
What is the most important element to include at the start of a finance prompt?