Quick start

From install to your first answer in five minutes.

1. Download and install

Download the latest HISAB installer from your account dashboard. The installer is a .vsto signed by HISAB Labs. Double-click it; Office's ClickOnce installer takes about 30 seconds.

Tip: If you're on a corporate machine with restrictive AV (ReasonLabs, CrowdStrike, etc.), see the EDR-friendly installation section first.

2. Open Excel

Launch Excel. You'll see a new ribbon tab labelled HISAB 360 with a single button: Open Insights. Click it.

The task pane slides in from the right with the HISAB chat panel. The first time it loads, it shows a brief animated splash while WebView2 initialises (about 1 second).

3. Install Claude Code (one time)

Open the Settings tab inside the HISAB panel. Click Install Claude Code CLI. You'll see two instruction cards:

Install: press Win+R, type powershell, paste the command shown, and press Enter. Wait for "Installation complete".
Sign in: open PowerShell again, paste claude /login, complete OAuth in your browser.

Click Done — Verify on each card. HISAB checks disk for the installed binary and wires the MCP entry into Claude's config.

4. Ask your first question

Open any workbook with data — a trial balance, a bank statement, a sales report. Switch to the Chat tab in the HISAB panel and type:

What sheets are in this workbook, and what's in each one?

HISAB sends the workbook structure to the AI, which replies with a summary. From there, the conversation can go anywhere: reconcile these two sheets, draft a journal entry, run a pivot, push results to Zoho Books.

5. Try a built-in skill

Skills are pre-built routines for common tasks. From the chat, type:

/skills

You'll see the catalogue — bank reconciliation, accruals, ageing, audit sampling, variance analysis, more. Pick one to see what it expects as input.

What's next? Once you're comfortable with the basics, read Chat basics for prompt patterns that work well, then ERP connectors to plug HISAB into your books.