Bring Messy Company Data Into the Report
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The full transcript below is live.
A customer calls your front desk: "I think you charged me twice." You pull up the register - two identical charges, two minutes apart. Refund her and you might be paying her twice. Don't, and if she's right you look like a thief. By the end of this lesson your system settles that question from the messy files the owner sent over - and tells her exactly what those files can and cannot prove.
You need the owner report from the previous lesson in company-1-medspa/output/.
What you need open
- This page, in your browser.
- Cursor, with the
relay-business-brain-v1folder open, and Claude Code running in Cursor's built-in terminal. - The owner report in a browser tab.
What she actually sent
Open company-1-medspa/raw-intake/ in the file tree:
invoice-export.pdf- the register report. Look at the footer: page ONE of FOUR. Ten days, newest first. Sales, zero-dollar package redemptions, gift cards, refunds - all in one list.booking-calendar.png- one single day of the calendar.ads-manager.png- three months of ads, purchases column blank. The one the owner says Lexi always names FINAL-final.owner-voice-memo.md- four transcribed minutes from a parking lot.intake-notes.md- the scratch notes from the intake calls, messy on purpose.
The .html files are the same exports in browser form - same content.
That is the data. That is always the data. No API, no clean export, no spec. A system that needs clean inputs is not a system.
Ask - in your own words
New skill this lesson: you do not need a prepared prompt anymore. Talk to it the way you would brief a sharp employee - with a dictation tool like Wispr Flow, or typed in your own words. Cover these five things:
- Read everything in the raw intake folder - the PDF, both screenshots, the voice memo, the intake notes.
- The owner thinks she double-charged a customer named Noreen. Trace every Noreen line in the register against the calendar and settle it: was she double-charged in the end, and what did she actually get?
- Add a section to the owner report: what each file proves, what it cannot prove, and what to ask for next.
- Keep it in owner language on the report, with the full trace in the proof file.
- Change no company file.
Prefer to paste? The written version:
Read company-1-medspa/raw-intake/owner-voice-memo.md,
company-1-medspa/raw-intake/intake-notes.md, and the two screenshots and the
PDF in company-1-medspa/raw-intake/. Do not change any company file.
The owner thinks she double-charged a customer named Noreen. Trace
every Noreen row in the transaction PDF and her appointment on the
July 8 calendar image, and settle it plainly: was she double-charged in
the end, and what did she actually receive?
Then add a section named "Company data: what each source proves" to
company-1-medspa/output/owner-report.html: for each raw file - what it
is, its exact date range, what it can prove, and one thing it cannot.
The transaction PDF is page 1 of 4, not a full month - say what that
means for its totals. Explain the Erin Loeffler zero-dollar line: why a
$0 row can still be a delivered service. Where a question needs data
this folder does not contain, name the exact export to request next.
Keep the report section in owner language with tap-to-expand evidence,
and put the full row-level trace in
company-1-medspa/output/report-proof.md. Do not merge records or
contact anyone.What the new section must show
The Noreen trace - every number from the sources:
- July 8, 1:38 PM - sale #20844 - HydraFacial - $225.00
- July 8, 1:40 PM - sale #20845 - HydraFacial - $225.00
- July 9, 5:05 PM - refund #20860 for -$225.00, referencing #20845, noted "duplicate charge 7/8"
- The July 8 calendar shows one Noreen appointment: 1:00-1:45 PM, HydraFacial $225, checked out as sale #20844.
- Conclusion the report must state: she received one service, was charged twice at checkout, and the duplicate was refunded the next day. Net one charge of $225. Not an open double-charge - and also not two services.
Erin's zero - sale #20866, July 10, a SkinPen series redemption (2 of 3), $0.00. A delivered service with no new cash. Revenue read off this list without understanding package redemptions is wrong.
Source limits - the section must say the PDF is page 1 of 4 (rows 1-40 of 124), the calendar is one day, the ads screenshot is April-June with purchases blank, and each of those limits changes what conclusions are safe.
Check one number yourself
Open invoice-export.pdf and find the three Noreen rows. Read the refund row's reference column out loud: it points at #20845. The register itself recorded which charge was the mistake. You just verified a money conclusion against the primary source in thirty seconds.
End of lesson
Messy inputs did not stop the system - they became precise statements about what is known, what is not, and what to request next. That sentence is what a client pays for in month one.
Your 15-minute task is in the Practice and Help tab.
Full transcript
[00:00:24] exists. And the last video, the last lesson,
[00:00:27] we produced the owner's report,
[00:00:29] a live living system that someone,
[00:00:33] a client, a company would actually pay for.
[00:00:36] And today, what I want to go over is something that nobody really shows
[00:00:40] you in AI demos. What happens when clients send you something and
[00:00:45] a real money question is on the table,
[00:00:47] where there's anxiety, there's stress,
[00:00:50] there's pressure, and how we're going to settle that from the mess of the
[00:00:55] data that the client, in this case, has provided to us.
[00:00:58] So for a second, I want you to put yourself in the owner's seat
[00:01:03] for a second. Let's say it is Tuesday morning and
[00:01:08] a customer called Noreen,
[00:01:10] called your front desk. And says,
[00:01:13] I think you've charged me twice.
[00:01:17] Instantly, your stomach drops.
[00:01:19] You pull up the register and there it is.
[00:01:22] You see right there, two identical charges.
[00:01:24] The same day, two minutes apart.
[00:01:26] $225,
[00:01:29] both of them. And now,
[00:01:31] as a business owner, you're stuck in a limbo.
[00:01:34] You're stuck between Too bad. Options.
[00:01:37] One is, you could refund her, but what if it was already refunded?
[00:01:42] And you're paying her twice now. Option number two is,
[00:01:45] you do not refund her. But,
[00:01:48] in this case, if Noreen,
[00:01:50] the client who just called us, is right,
[00:01:53] you look like a thief. You are risking
[00:01:58] the reputation of your business online.
[00:02:00] In front of clients and customers,
[00:02:03] because, simply put, this is about money, guys.
[00:02:06] And when the conversation is about money,
[00:02:08] there is stress and this pressure involved. So,
[00:02:12] the not knowing feeling is the worst part of running a small business.
[00:02:22] So, this is a straight-up continuation of the previous lesson.
[00:02:27] I still have the exact same chat open over here,
[00:02:29] where we had created the reportproof.md file.
[00:02:33] And, once again, what we need open is this page over here,
[00:02:36] which you already are taking a look at. Cursor with the same setup and
[00:02:39] the owner's report in a browser tab. So,
[00:02:42] let's take a look at what the client, or in this case,
[00:02:45] the company, the medspa, has actually sent to us.
[00:02:48] Let me move this down over here, and let's take a look at the
[00:02:51] raw intake. So, first, I'll just quickly go through all of these images.
[00:02:54] And this is genuinely what it looks like at times,
[00:02:57] guys. It differs, but when you're working with small businesses,
[00:03:01] this is not uncommon. Messy systems,
[00:03:04] messy data, messy processes.
[00:03:07] And this is the opportunity for us,
[00:03:09] and where our expertise comes into play. She sent it us a screenshot of
[00:03:14] her ads manager, a screenshot of her booking calendar,
[00:03:18] a intake notes, the voice memo that she had sent,
[00:03:22] an invoice export, where,
[00:03:24] once again, if it's a PDF on cursor,
[00:03:27] this is not legible. What you need to do is right-click and click on
[00:03:30] open in the browser. Well now we can see it is parsed and here
[00:03:34] we have the invoice, the owner's voice memo and
[00:03:43] this is what we collectively have. So now let's go back into the exact
[00:03:47] PDF of the registration report where,
[00:03:50] if we zoom into this, we can see at the footer that she has
[00:03:55] sent us page 1 of 4.
[00:03:57] So a screenshot of one single day of the booking calendar.
[00:04:00] That we have over here. And adds screenshot
[00:04:05] and the one that says,
[00:04:09] okay, cancel that when I say the one that She says.
[00:04:58] And these folders, ahem,
[00:05:01] cancel that. And these screenshots,
[00:05:04] files, and PDFs are exactly the data that we have access to.
[00:05:08] And this is always the data. In this case,
[00:05:11] there was no API, no clean API. No export and no specifications.
[00:05:15] It is simply an edge case or a case scenario of messy,
[00:05:18] dirty data. And what we're going to be doing over here,
[00:05:23] cancel that entire section. I'm redoing it from scratch.
[00:05:32] And what we have over here, collectively, is the data that has been provided
[00:05:36] to us. A couple of screenshots, a voice note,
[00:05:39] and a PDF document. This is the data.
[00:05:42] And that is always the data, guys.
[00:05:45] But the beautiful part is that these screenshots,
[00:05:47] the AI can simply see this image,
[00:05:50] extract every piece of the information,
[00:05:53] and transcribe it. There's no API,
[00:05:57] there's no clean export, there's no specification.
[00:06:00] If our system always needs clean inputs,
[00:06:03] it is not really a system, and it is not prepared for the actual
[00:06:07] dirty world use case of real business data.
[00:06:10] And finally, what we're going to be doing over here is something really cool,
[00:06:14] where we're finally graduating from using copy-paste prompt templates,
[00:06:19] and really going into using and just talking to the AI,
[00:06:24] which is the right way to be, and this fast,
[00:06:26] modern way of using AI. So what we're going to be doing is,
[00:06:34] just watch me ask. Okay,
[00:06:36] cancel that.
[00:06:54] And guys, and guys, you've completely earned this.
[00:06:56] At this point, I truly believe that you have enough experience to wield and
[00:07:01] use AI freely, fluently,
[00:07:04] and just speak. So watch me just ask the Cut that out anyway.
[00:07:13] Again, completely. And guys,
[00:07:16] cut that out. And guys,
[00:07:19] you've completely earned this. At this point, I truly believe that you're well and
[00:07:22] prepared to be able to simply communicate to the AI.
[00:07:27] So watch me just ask the AI the way you talk to a Sharp
[00:07:30] employee. So what I do is I come back over here.
[00:07:33] Let me just close these folders over here, these files to clean it up.
[00:07:37] And take a look at this. I'm going to turn on WhisperFlow.
[00:07:43] So what I want you to do is read everything in the raw intake
[00:07:47] folder. Over here,
[00:07:49] the PDF documents, the screenshots,
[00:07:52] the voice memo, the intake notes.
[00:07:55] The owner over here has sent me a message thinking that she double charged
[00:08:00] a customer. Named Noreen,
[00:08:05] this is the spelling, and what I want you to do is trace every
[00:08:09] Noreen line in the register against the calendar and settle it for me.
[00:08:14] Was she double charged on her end? And what did she actually get?
[00:08:19] then also add a section to the owner's report telling me
[00:08:24] or telling the owner's report, sorry, what each of these files proves,
[00:08:28] what it cannot prove, and what to ask her for next.
[00:08:31] Do not change any company files.
[00:08:38] There we go. As you see guys, this is how I communicated to the
[00:08:42] AI. I just spoke to it like I was speaking to an employee.
[00:08:45] I even and messed up,
[00:08:48] I believe, when I was saying this. Specific line. And I just repeated myself.
[00:08:52] Something interesting you might have seen me do while this AI is generating everything.
[00:08:56] I just dragged the file into it. This is a practice I would highly
[00:09:00] encourage each and every one of you to incorporate,
[00:09:03] where when you're asking the AI to go over a specific file or folder,
[00:09:08] simply just drag it. So let's I wanted the AI to go over 4
[00:09:12] specific folds. Let's see. Let's say specific folders,
[00:09:15] the raw intake, the mybrain folder,
[00:09:17] the entirety of it, and the brain. What I would do is I would
[00:09:20] just dump this. Because simply put,
[00:09:23] the AI guys, it does not understand.
[00:09:26] If you just tell it the raw intake. In this case,
[00:09:31] assuming that there's only one folder or file in this entire system
[00:09:36] called raw intake, it was. It will be able to find it.
[00:09:39] But let's say we say something such as go into claw.md.
[00:09:42] As we know, there are multiple claw.md files.
[00:09:44] There's one over here and there's one over here. So what you want to
[00:09:47] be doing then is just drag the exact one into it.
[00:09:50] And another interesting thing you may have noticed is I typed the word Noreen
[00:09:53] over here. Because when we're using a tool such as WhisperFlow,
[00:09:57] or any of these dictation tools, it's highly likely or it happens very at
[00:10:01] times, I would say, not highly likely, but when you're using employees' names,
[00:10:06] when you're using words that are not something you would really expect
[00:10:11] the AI to pick up with 100% certainty,
[00:10:15] it's might as well just type it. Because let's say I said Noreen,
[00:10:19] but WhisperFlow wrote it as Norien or it picked it
[00:10:24] up as Maureen for example. For instance,
[00:10:26] what happens then is now the AI is searching for a person called Maureen
[00:10:30] for the double charge. And that instantly deprecates the quality because now the AI
[00:10:34] is ingesting information that is inaccurate,
[00:10:37] which is going to lead it to producing reports that are inaccurate.
[00:11:02] So you saw me just drag the files in.
[00:11:04] No paths, no setups, just drag it.
[00:11:07] If it's an image, dump it into it. If it's a PDF,
[00:11:10] ZIP file, you can pretty much drop anything into it.
[00:11:13] It's really simple. It's really cool, but even if you drop an entire ZIP
[00:11:15] file, the AI will unzip it and parse through the information.
[00:11:19] And if you do not have a dictation tool yet,
[00:11:22] the same ask as you saw me do is perfectly fine.
[00:11:25] You can simply type into it. Or,
[00:11:27] if you want to try, you can use the written version of this prompt,
[00:11:30] even though I would highly encourage you to begin using AI autonomously,
[00:11:35] by yourself, instead of relying on these prompts.
[00:11:39] And I did not do anything special. I just really described the exact situation
[00:11:43] that the client, in this case, messaged me.
[00:11:46] Nothing else, really. So,
[00:11:48] let's take a look at what the PDF has come out,
[00:11:50] and let's give it a read, actually, first. So,
[00:11:53] Noreen was double charged at the register, and Brin already caught and reversed it
[00:11:57] the same day. No company files were changed,
[00:11:59] and the trace is full over here.
[00:12:01] As we can see, what she actually got, a hydrofacial and her net,
[00:12:06] and her net at the register for $2.25.
[00:12:09] So, this also answers Marisol's voice memovery.
[00:12:11] I don't remember which sale number was right.
[00:12:14] So, the fix is done. What the files cannot prove,
[00:12:17] and added to the owner's report, where,
[00:12:19] if we check the owner's report, we will find that that information has been
[00:12:23] ingested into the system.
[00:12:25] Where I'm reloading the page,
[00:12:30] and let's scroll down to the bottom, where,
[00:12:33] here we go. We can see the answer,
[00:12:36] and it is much better than a simple yes or no.
[00:12:38] We see the exact date at which this thing happened.
[00:12:43] The exact timestamps, 1.30pm,
[00:12:47] charge, 2.20pm.
[00:12:50] 1.40pm, 2 minutes later, same charge,
[00:12:52] looks bad. But next day, at 5pm,
[00:12:56] we can see a minus 2.25 of a refund,
[00:13:00] that points at the duplicate charge by name.
[00:13:03] And the refund line itself points at the second charge as the duplicate.
[00:13:07] The one calendar screenshot, that also adds to it.
[00:13:11] It gives us additional confidence over here.
[00:13:14] That the calendar appointment, it names the exact charge that it belongs to,
[00:13:18] and it refunded it.
[00:13:26] We know the exact spe- Cut that.
[00:13:30] We know the exact specific treatment that this client came for as well.
[00:13:35] And they checked out at 1.30pm.
[00:13:38] Or sorry, 1.38pm,
[00:13:40] in this case, over here. And yes,
[00:13:43] she was double charged for about 27 hours specifically.
[00:13:48] Then someone on the team caught it and refunded it.
[00:13:51] And the net is one service, one charge,
[00:13:53] and the mistake has already been fixed. So now,
[00:13:56] our client in this case, the owner of the med spa,
[00:13:59] they call Noreen back with the entire appointment.
[00:14:02] The whole the whole holistic answer instead of a guess.
[00:14:05] And that exact call builds trust for us with our own client.
[00:14:08] And that allows our own client to call back Noreen and build trust with
[00:14:12] her customers.
[00:14:21] And let's take a look at what the report now says about the inputs
[00:14:24] itself, the images. The PDF document we're given.
[00:14:28] The PDF, page one of four,
[00:14:31] ten days, so no monthly conclusions about this exact system and the information
[00:14:36] for the month of June. The calendar,
[00:14:39] only one specific day. The ad screenshot,
[00:14:43] three months, or sorry, three months of ads,
[00:14:46] but the purchase column is completely blank.
[00:15:14] cancel that,
[00:15:16] I'm retaking it. And for each one of these constraints,
[00:15:20] the system names the smallest files to ask her for next.
[00:15:23] Never a complete login, never just give me access to your entire business and
[00:15:28] your tools. The smallest export that allows us to answer the question.
[00:15:32] And that really, really simple restraint is what allows us.
[00:15:37] And why or not? Sorry, why owners hand over their businesses
[00:15:42] to us. So now that the system eats
[00:15:47] what the clients actually sent and turns it into answers an owner can act
[00:15:52] upon plus a straight list of what it still needs.
[00:15:55] We have made some really, really clean progress and this really encapsulates
[00:16:01] a simple yet high-quality highly effective use case of the business brain in a
[00:16:05] real operating manner and environment working
[00:16:10] with businesses. So what we have after this is a 15-minute task on
[00:16:14] your page where what I want you guys to be doing is tracing Nadia
[00:16:18] from the calendar to the register and prove while no file here can say
[00:16:23] which ad got the credit for it. And the next video will be the
[00:16:27] last technical lesson. It is a little bit different and before this system ever
[00:16:31] touches a real client, we're going to attack it.
[00:16:34] We're going to stress test our own system on purpose.
[00:16:38] We're going to interrogate our own AI the way an owner
[00:16:43] and a business CEO will be interrogating ourselves.
Your 15-minute task
The owner said it herself: "Nadia books from Instagram every time... I cannot tell you what ad technically gets credit for her."
Ask it in your own words - the skill from the lesson - or paste this into Claude Code:
Trace Nadia El-Amin across the raw files: her appointment on the July 8
calendar image and her row in the transaction PDF. Add a short
"attribution reality" note to the same report section: what the sources
prove about Nadia's visit and payment, and exactly why no file in this
folder can prove which ad deserves credit. Name the export that would
answer it. Cite every claim.Pass check
You are done only when the note shows, with citations:
- The calendar: Nadia El-Amin, July 8, 4:15 PM, Botox, marked as an Instagram DM entered by Brynn.
- The register: sale #20849, July 8, 4:50 PM, Botox Cosmetic 30 units, $390.00.
- A plain statement that the visit and payment are proven, but ad credit is not provable from these files - and which export or report to request next.
- No company file changed except the report in
output/.
If something fails
The agent cannot read the PDF or an image
Tell it to read the file again by its exact path. If it still fails, start a fresh session and paste the lesson prompt again - image reading occasionally needs a clean start.
The agent calls Noreen an unresolved double-charge
Paste:
Follow the refund row. Refund #20860 for -$225 references sale #20845 and is
noted as a duplicate of 7/8. Reconcile all three register rows with the one
calendar appointment and state the net result plainly.The agent counts the $0 rows as missed revenue or noise
Paste:
Sale #20866 is a package series redemption. Explain what a $0 redemption
means: the service was delivered, the cash was collected earlier when the
package was sold. Correct the section.The agent presents page-1 totals as monthly revenue
Paste:
The PDF footer says rows 1-40 of 124, page 1 of 4; the header date range
says June 10 to July 10. State that this is a partial, non-calendar-month
slice and name what a
full-month register export would need to cover.A number does not match this page
Open invoice-export.pdf yourself and read the row. The primary source decides. Ask the agent to correct the report from the exact row.
Before real client work
Real intake looks exactly like this folder: partial exports, one-day screenshots, a voice memo. The professional move this lesson practiced: never count anything until the money rows, the calendar, and the refunds agree - and when a question needs data you do not have, ask for the smallest export that answers it, not for a login to everything.