Using Ask James AI
Ask questions about your finances in plain English, generate executive summaries, and get AI-powered recommendations — powered by Claude, built for financial analysis.
Overview
What Ask James Can Do
Ask James is an AI-powered financial analyst built directly into the James Analytics platform. Powered by Anthropic's Claude, it has full context of your connected financial data — your income statement, balance sheet, cash flow, KPIs, budgets, and forecasts. You can ask questions in plain English and get specific, data-backed answers in seconds.
Think of Ask James as a CFO who has perfect recall of every number in your business and is available 24/7. It can answer factual questions ("What was our gross margin last quarter?"), analyze trends ("How has our burn rate changed over the past 6 months?"), generate summaries ("Give me a financial overview for the board"), and suggest actions ("Where should we cut costs to extend runway by 3 months?").
Unlike generic AI chatbots, Ask James is not working from general knowledge alone. It queries your actual financial data in real time, performs calculations, and grounds every response in your specific numbers. When it tells you your gross margin is 72%, that number comes directly from your Income Statement — not from an estimate or a hallucination.
Answer Questions
- Point-in-time metrics
- Period comparisons
- Ratio calculations
- Account-level detail
Analyze Trends
- Revenue trajectory
- Expense patterns
- Margin evolution
- Seasonal patterns
Generate Summaries
- Weekly highlights
- Monthly overviews
- Board-ready briefings
- Investor updates
Suggest Actions
- Cost reduction areas
- Runway extension tactics
- Pricing optimization
- Resource allocation
Getting Started
How to Ask Questions
There is no special syntax or query language to learn. Just type your question the way you would ask a human CFO. Ask James understands natural language and can interpret a wide range of financial questions — from simple lookups to complex analytical requests.
The key to getting great answers is being specific. Compare these two questions: "How are we doing?" versus "What was our net margin in Q1 2026 compared to Q1 2025?" The first question is vague and will produce a generic overview. The second question is specific and will return a precise comparison with context. Both are valid, but the specific question produces a much more actionable response.
You can also ask follow-up questions in the same conversation. If Ask James tells you that operating expenses increased 18% last quarter, you can immediately ask "Which expense categories drove that increase?" and it will drill down into the detail. The conversation context is maintained, so you do not need to repeat information or re-explain what you are looking at.
// Good questions (specific)
"What was our gross margin each month in Q4?"
"How much did we spend on marketing in 2025 vs 2024?"
"What is our current cash runway at the current burn rate?"
// Vague questions (still work, but less actionable)
"How are our finances?"
"Are we spending too much?"
"Tell me about revenue."
By Category
Example Questions
Here are examples of questions Ask James handles well, organized by category. Use these as starting points and adapt them to your specific business.
Performance
- "What was our gross margin last quarter?"
- "How much revenue did we generate in February?"
- "What are our top 5 expense categories?"
- "What is our current net profit margin?"
Trends
- "Show me our revenue trend over the past 12 months."
- "How has our burn rate changed since last quarter?"
- "Is our gross margin improving or declining?"
- "What is the trend in our accounts receivable?"
Scenarios
- "What if we hire 2 more engineers next month?"
- "How would a 10% price increase affect margins?"
- "What happens to runway if we cut marketing by half?"
- "If we lose our largest customer, what is the impact?"
Comparisons
- "How did Q1 compare to Q4 on revenue and expenses?"
- "Compare our operating margin this year vs last year."
- "Which month had the highest net income in 2025?"
- "How does our gross margin compare to SaaS benchmarks?"
Automated Reports
Executive Summaries
One of the most powerful features of Ask James is its ability to generate executive summaries automatically. Instead of spending hours compiling numbers for a board meeting or investor update, you can ask James to generate a comprehensive financial overview — and it will pull the key highlights, watch items, and recommendations into a structured summary.
Executive summaries are organized into three sections. Key Highlights cover the most important positive developments — revenue milestones, margin improvements, expense reductions, or runway extensions. Watch Items flag metrics that are trending in the wrong direction or approaching concerning thresholds — declining margins, increasing burn, or approaching budget limits. Recommendations suggest specific actions based on the data — areas to investigate, costs to review, or strategies to consider.
You can configure Ask James to generate these summaries on a schedule — weekly for operational awareness, or monthly for formal reporting. Scheduled summaries are delivered via email and also saved in the platform for reference. You can customize the focus areas (for example, always include runway metrics and revenue trends) and the level of detail (high-level for board summaries, detailed for internal reviews).
For ad-hoc summaries, simply ask: "Generate an executive summary for January" or "Give me a board-ready financial update for Q4." Ask James will produce a structured document that you can export, copy, or refine with follow-up instructions.
Best Practices
Tips for Better Prompts
Ask James gets smarter the more context you provide. Here are five practices that consistently produce better, more actionable results.
Be specific about time ranges. Instead of "How is revenue?" ask "What was our monthly revenue from October through March?" Explicit time ranges eliminate ambiguity and produce cleaner answers. If you do not specify a time range, Ask James will default to the most recent completed period, which may not be what you intended.
Ask follow-up questions. Conversations with Ask James build on each other. Start with a broad question ("Give me a P&L overview for Q1"), then drill down ("Why did operating expenses increase?"), then drill further ("Which specific marketing line items drove that?"). Each follow-up inherits the context of the previous exchange, so you do not need to re-specify time ranges or metrics.
Provide context when asking for advice. If you ask "Should we hire?" the answer will be generic. But if you ask "We are considering hiring two engineers at $150K each. We have 14 months of runway. Is this a good idea?" Ask James can factor in the specific cost impact, runway reduction, and whether your current growth rate supports the expense.
Pro Tip
Start broad, then drill down. Begin each session with a high-level question like "What are the three most important financial changes this month?" This gives you a map of what to explore. Then follow up on the most interesting or concerning items. This approach mirrors how an experienced CFO reviews financials — scan the landscape first, then investigate the anomalies. You will cover more ground and uncover insights you might not have thought to ask about directly.
Good to Know
What It Cannot Do
Ask James is powerful, but it has clear boundaries. Understanding what it cannot do is just as important as knowing what it can do — it helps you use it appropriately and avoid over-reliance on any single tool.
It cannot access external data. Ask James only knows about the data in your James Analytics account — your connected accounting data, budgets, and forecasts. It cannot look up competitor financials, check current interest rates, pull market data, or access information from systems you have not connected. If you ask a question that requires external data, it will tell you so rather than guessing.
It does not predict the future. Ask James can project forward based on assumptions (that is what forecasting is), but it cannot tell you what will actually happen. When it says "at current burn rates, you have 11 months of runway," that is a calculation, not a prediction. If your burn rate changes — because you win a big deal or lose a key customer — the actual runway will be different. Treat all forward-looking outputs as projections based on current data, not guarantees.
Its recommendations are not financial advice. Ask James can suggest areas to investigate, highlight potential cost savings, and flag concerning trends. But it is an analytical tool, not a licensed financial advisor, accountant, or tax professional. Significant financial decisions — restructuring debt, changing entity types, tax strategy, or fundraising terms — should always be reviewed by qualified professionals. Use Ask James to prepare for those conversations, not to replace them.
Try Ask James AI
Connect your data and start asking questions about your finances in plain English. No SQL, no spreadsheets, no waiting.