AI for small businesses: budgets, price lists, letters and product pictures
Small businesses use Tinkerly for the paperwork around the work: a first-year budget, a price list, a letter to a supplier, a photo for the menu. You describe it once, GPT models make it, and you get a spreadsheet, a document or a picture you can edit and keep. You pay per answer, not per seat.
Updated · By The Tinkerly team
What can a small business make with AI?
The everyday documents a small business needs: budgets and cash-flow sheets with working formulas, price lists and menus, proposals, letters and policies, invoice and stock trackers, and pictures of your products or premises. Each is made in the tool built for it, so a budget is a real spreadsheet, not a table in a chat.
Spreadsheets. “A weekly timesheet with overtime over 40 hours and total pay at an hourly rate”, “an inventory list that flags items to reorder”, “an invoice tracker with days overdue”. AI Sheets builds them with formulas that recalculate when you change a number.
Documents. “A one-page proposal for monthly social media management for a local restaurant”, a remote-work policy, a reply to a complaint. AI Docs lays them out as pages with headings and tables, and also makes designs: an A4 flyer, an invoice, or a social post at the right size.
Pictures. Describe the photo you need, for a menu, a flyer or a product page. Change it by describing the change, or paint over one part and change only that part. Cropping, resizing and brightness are free.
How does it make a café’s budget, price list and menu photo?
This is the home page’s small business example. One message asks for a first-year budget for a café, a one-page price list and a photo for the menu. Each part is made by its own tool, shows its price first, and comes back on its own card to keep, change or discard.
Step 1: Ask for all three
“A first-year budget for my café, a one-page price list and a photo for the menu.”
Step 2: The budget
A spreadsheet preview with rows such as staff $48,000, coffee and milk $16,200, rent $14,400 and equipment $9,800, with totals worked out by formulas. If it needs to know your currency or period first, it asks.
Step 3: The price list
“Corner Café: Price list” comes back as a one-page document. Ask “add a vegan section” or edit the prices yourself.
Step 4: The menu photo
A picture from an image model, saved with your files, ready to put into the price list or download.
The figures in an example like this are the AI’s estimates for a typical café, not advice. Replace them with your own quotes and wages before you rely on the budget. Spreadsheets download as Excel (.xlsx) or CSV, and documents as Word or PDF.
Can it work from my own figures?
Yes. Attach a file, such as a price list or an exported sales report, or paste the numbers into your request, and the spreadsheet is built from them. When your figures leave gaps, you choose whether AI Sheets estimates the missing numbers or leaves them empty for you to fill in.
Well-known public facts, such as countries and their currencies, are filled in for you. Your own numbers never are: the AI either asks, estimates where you allowed it, or leaves the cell for you. With web search on, it can also search the web for public information before it builds the sheet.
How much does Tinkerly cost a small business?
You pay for what the AI makes, not for each person who logs in. Every request costs the chosen model’s price in credits, shown before it starts, and credits you buy never expire. Writing and editing by hand costs nothing, so a busy month costs more and a quiet one less.
The lowest-priced model today is GPT-4o mini, at 1 credit a chat message. With it, an AI request in a spreadsheet or a document costs 1 credit. A picture has its own price, shown before it’s made. A failed answer or picture costs nothing.
Free accounts get 15 credits every day on the models marked Free. On GPT-4o mini, at 1 credit a message, that’s about 15 chat answers a day. New accounts also get 25 trial credits, once, to try any model. AI Sheets works on a free account. See every price on the pricing page.
Can my staff use it on my account?
Not on your login: each person signs in with their own Tinkerly account. On the Team page you invite them by email and give them credits from your balance whenever you like. You see how many credits each one used in the last 30 days, but not what they asked.
A team can have up to 50 people besides you. Credits you give are theirs to spend: nothing is taken back if someone leaves. To work on the same chat or project, invite them to it with a link; whoever sends a message pays for it.
Is my business information private?
Your budgets, documents and pictures are stored in your account, and pictures are shown only to you. Tinkerly doesn’t sell your data or use it for advertising. You can delete any file or chat when you no longer need it, or the whole account in Settings.
The AI company whose model you pick receives what you send it, only to answer you. Nothing you make is shown to anyone else until you invite someone to a chat or project, or make a public link to a chat. You own what you put in and what you get out, as far as the law and the model providers’ terms allow (see the terms and the privacy policy).
Keep reading
Make your first budget
Sign up free with no card, describe your business, and keep the spreadsheet only if it’s useful.