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Giving AI access safely

By Chad Maxwell, Prompt Works Studio, Toowoomba · Published 13 October 2026
Drafted with Claude. Checked and edited by Chad Maxwell.

Picture a Monday morning. You ask an AI tool to chase three unpaid invoices and go and put the kettle on. By the time you're back, it's logged in to your accounts, found the invoices, written three emails and sent them. Nobody checked the wording. Nobody checked it picked the right three customers.

That's a made-up Monday, but it isn't far off. Some AI tools can now click, type and fill in forms for you, using the logins you're already signed in with. That's useful, and it's also the moment to ask a plain question: what is this tool allowed to do without me?

My short answer is to set it up the way you'd onboard a new team member. Start it by introducing it to your business and your business to it. Start it on jobs that you can check, decide what needs your yes, always keeping a backup, and keeping personal information away from them. The rest of this explains why.

Is AI pressing your buttons?

In August, Anthropic made Claude in Chrome available on every paid Claude plan. It can look at the page you're on, read and type text, click links, move between pages and fill out forms, using your existing logins.

Here's the bit that matters. It can now take those actions on its own, instead of asking you to approve each one. Anthropic says a safety check looks at every action before it happens, to make sure it's safe and matches what you asked for.

For a small business that's a big deal. Plenty of the systems you use every day, like a supplier portal or that old booking system, don't connect to Claude. A tool that works in your browser can get into them the same way you do, with your logins.

Who's in control? You or your AI?

Not every tool works like that. In September Anthropic added new ready-made jobs to Claude for Small Business, like a weekly cash brief or drafting next week's posts. By default, it does the work and then waits for your approval before anything sends, posts or pays.

I like how they've set this up:

• Every job starts in approval mode. You can let one run on its own once you're comfortable with it, one job at a time, and switch it back whenever you want.
• Some jobs stop short of the last step on purpose. Payroll, for example, gets set up in Gusto for you to submit yourself.
• Your existing permissions still apply. If a staff member can't see something in QuickBooks or Google Drive today, they can't see it through Claude either.

That's the setting I'd look for in any AI tool before letting it near your accounts.

AI will make mistakes. Are you ready for them?

On 20 September someone in Reddit's Claude forum posted this title: "Code just deleted 48k files". They weren't alone. Between 3 September and 2 October, 52 posts we counted on Reddit had words like "deleted" or "wiped" in the title.

These are people's own reports and nobody has checked them. Going by its title, that one was about Claude Code, a tool for programmers. But the lesson carries over to any tool that can act for you, and it's much easier to learn from someone else's Monday than your own.

What to check before AI gets near your accounts

Here's what I'd go through with whoever looks after your computers, before any AI tool gets near your email, files or accounts.

Give it the first week you'd give a new starter

You wouldn't give a new starter the keys to the bank account on day one. You'd show them around, give them a few jobs you can check, and hand over more as they earn your trust. I'd do the same with an AI tool.

If you'd like a hand with any of this, the free AI check on my website is a good place to start.

Want to know where AI fits in your business? Book a call.