For Art Director (Agency / In-House)s ·
What you'll accomplish
A photographer's or printer's estimate lands, three pages of line items, and the details that matter are the ones you skim. Upload it to a regular Claude chat and ask for a table of every line as written, the lines that are ambiguous, the things your brief asked for that the estimate does not list, and questions for the producer. Claude does the second read. It does not tell you whether the price is right. The producer or account team decides that.
What you'll need
Check before you upload. Estimates often carry the vendor's own confidentiality terms, and they name your client and sometimes talent. Read the vendor's terms and your AI policy first. If policy allows it, replace the vendor and client with codes ("Studio C," "Client A"), remove contact details and talent names, and keep the project code name. Then check Claude's privacy settings for whether chats are used for training and how long they are kept.
Money rule. The numbers belong to the vendor. Never ask Claude what a fair price is or what the market rate would be, and ignore any such comment it makes.
Make a coded copy of the estimate. Open it and confirm the text is selectable. Scanned pages with no text are poorly read.
Open a new chat in Claude. A project is not needed for a one-off read.
Click the + button near the message box, choose Add files or photos, and pick the coded estimate. Anthropic's page also says you can drag a file into the chat.
What you should see: The file name shown in the message box. Troubleshooting: If the upload fails, check the format against the list on Anthropic's page. You can also paste the estimate text in.
Paste the prompt below, with your brief items listed underneath.
Open the estimate beside the table. Tick each row against the document: description, quantity, unit and amount, exactly as written. Check the total by adding the amounts yourself.
What you should see: A table that matches the document row for row. If a row is wrong, reply with the row number and ask for a corrected table.
The questions list goes to the producer or account team. They decide what to accept, push back on or approve.
List every term in the estimate that could be read two ways, and quote the exact words.
Which lines mention revisions or rounds? Quote them and list what is not stated about how many are included.
Write a short email to the producer with my questions, one per line, neutral in tone.
Compare this estimate with the earlier version I am attaching and list the lines that changed, quoting both.