How to use Claude Code to automate business processes. Build custom automations, integrations, and workflows without expensive developers.
Claude Code for Automating Business Operations
Zapier and Make are great for simple automations. But when you need custom logic, API integrations, or complex workflows—they fall short.
Claude Code lets you build custom automations that do exactly what your business needs.
Why Claude Code for Automation?
The Zapier Limit
Low-code automation tools work until they don't:
- Complex logic? Multi-step conditions become unmanageable
- Custom APIs? Limited to pre-built integrations
- Data transformation? Basic at best
- Volume pricing? Gets expensive fast
- Custom UI? Not possible
The Claude Code Advantage
- Build exactly what you need
- Any API, any service
- Complex logic that makes sense
- No per-execution pricing
- Full control and ownership
Common Business Automations
1. Lead Processing Pipeline
The problem: Leads come from multiple sources. Each needs validation, enrichment, and routing.
The solution:
Create a lead processing pipeline that:
1. Accepts leads via webhook from:
- Website form
- Facebook ads
- LinkedIn ads
2. For each lead:
- Validate email format
- Check for duplicates in our CRM
- Enrich with Clearbit data
- Score based on company size and title
- Route to correct sales rep
3. Add to HubSpot CRM with all data
4. Send Slack notification to assigned rep
5. Log everything to our analytics database
Claude Code builds the complete system.
2. Invoice Automation
The problem: Creating and sending invoices is manual and error-prone.
The solution:
Build an invoice automation system:
1. When a project is marked "Completed" in our database:
- Generate invoice PDF using our template
- Calculate amount based on project type and hours
- Apply any discounts
- Add proper tax calculations
2. Send invoice via email to client
3. Create record in QuickBooks
4. Add follow-up task in 30 days
5. Update project status to "Invoiced"
3. Customer Onboarding
The problem: New customer setup involves many steps across systems.
The solution:
Create customer onboarding automation:
When a new customer signs up:
1. Create accounts in:
- Our main app (via API)
- Stripe for billing
- Intercom for support
- Our analytics system
2. Send welcome email sequence:
- Immediate: Welcome + login info
- Day 1: Getting started guide
- Day 3: Check-in
- Day 7: Feature highlights
3. Create Slack channel for customer
4. Notify success team with customer details
5. Schedule 30-day check-in call
4. Report Generation
The problem: Weekly reports take hours to compile from multiple sources.
The solution:
Build automated weekly report:
Every Monday at 8am:
1. Pull data from:
- Sales CRM (deals, pipeline)
- Support system (tickets, satisfaction)
- Analytics (traffic, signups, activation)
- Finance system (revenue, costs)
2. Calculate key metrics:
- WoW changes
- MTD progress
- Goal completion %
3. Generate formatted report (PDF and HTML)
4. Email to leadership team
5. Post summary to #updates Slack channel
5. Inventory Management
The problem: Manual inventory tracking leads to stockouts and overorders.
The solution:
Create inventory monitoring system:
Continuous monitoring:
1. Track stock levels across all products
2. When stock falls below threshold:
- Create PO draft for review
- Notify purchasing team
- Add to reorder queue
Weekly:
1. Analyze sales velocity
2. Predict stockouts
3. Generate optimization recommendations
4. Update safety stock levels
Monthly:
1. Full inventory reconciliation
2. Identify slow-moving items
3. Generate markdown recommendations
Building Automations with Claude Code
Step 1: Define the Trigger
What starts the automation?
- Webhook (external event)
- Schedule (time-based)
- Database change (record updated)
- File upload (new document)
- Email received
This automation triggers when a new order
is created in our Shopify store (via webhook).
Step 2: Define the Actions
What should happen?
When triggered:
1. Fetch full order details from Shopify
2. Check inventory in our warehouse system
3. If in stock:
- Create shipment in ShipStation
- Update order status
- Send confirmation email
4. If out of stock:
- Alert customer
- Create backorder
- Notify purchasing
Step 3: Define Error Handling
What if something fails?
Error handling:
- If Shopify API fails: retry 3 times with backoff
- If inventory check fails: flag for manual review
- If email fails: queue for retry, log error
- All errors: send Slack alert to #ops-alerts
Step 4: Define Logging
What should we track?
Log everything to database:
- Trigger time
- Each step status
- Processing duration
- Any errors
- Final outcome
Real Implementation Example
The Task
Automate new customer onboarding for a B2B SaaS.
The Prompt
Create a customer onboarding automation in Node.js:
Trigger: Stripe webhook "checkout.session.completed"
Actions:
1. Extract customer email, name, and plan from Stripe event
2. Create user in our database:
- Email, name, plan type
- Generate random password
- Set status to "pending_activation"
3. Create Stripe customer link (if not exists)
4. Send to Intercom:
- Create contact
- Add tag for plan type
- Add to "new customer" segment
5. Send welcome email via SendGrid:
- Use welcome template
- Include login credentials
- Include getting started link
6. Notify team:
- Post to #new-customers Slack channel
- Include customer details and plan
7. Schedule follow-up:
- Day 3: Check-in email
- Day 7: Feature tips email
- Day 14: Feedback request
Error handling:
- Retry failed API calls up to 3 times
- If critical failure, alert #ops-alerts
- Log all operations to database
What Claude Code Creates
- Express server with webhook endpoint
- Stripe webhook verification
- Database operations (Prisma)
- Intercom API integration
- SendGrid email sending
- Slack notifications
- Scheduled job system
- Error handling and retry logic
- Logging infrastructure
All in one session.
Best Practices
1. One Automation Per File
Keep automations modular. Each automation in its own file makes debugging easier.
2. Idempotency
Handle duplicate triggers gracefully:
Check if this order has already been processed
before creating a new shipment.
3. Logging
Always log comprehensively:
Log each step with:
- Timestamp
- Step name
- Input data
- Output/result
- Duration
4. Monitoring
Add health checks:
Create a /health endpoint that returns:
- Last successful run time
- Error count in last hour
- Queue depth
- System status
5. Graceful Degradation
Handle partial failures:
If Intercom fails but Stripe succeeds:
- Complete critical path
- Queue Intercom for retry
- Continue onboarding
Maintenance with Claude Code
Debugging
The invoice automation sometimes creates
duplicate invoices. Here's an example log.
Find and fix the issue.
Extending
Add a step to the onboarding automation:
After creating the user, check if they were
referred. If yes, trigger the referral credit
for the referrer.
Optimizing
The lead processing automation is slow.
It takes 30 seconds per lead. Identify
bottlenecks and optimize for speed.
Cost Comparison
Manual Process
- 2 hours/day × $30/hour = $60/day
- Monthly: $1,320
- Errors: Regular
- Scale: Doesn't
Zapier/Make
- $299/month (high-volume plan)
- Limited complexity
- Per-execution costs add up
Claude Code Custom
- $20/month (Claude Pro)
- Build time: 2-4 hours once
- Running cost: ~$5-20/month (server)
- Unlimited executions
- Any complexity
The Bottom Line
Business automation shouldn't require expensive developers or limited no-code tools.
Claude Code lets you build custom automations that:
- Do exactly what you need
- Handle any complexity
- Connect to any service
- Run at any scale
- Cost almost nothing
Start with one painful manual process. Automate it with Claude Code. Feel the difference.
Need help automating your business operations? Cedar Operations specializes in building custom automation solutions. Book a consultation →
Related reading:
CEDAR OPERATIONS