Using the LivePlan MCP Connector

4 min. read Updated August 13, 2026

What is an MCP connector?

MCP stands for Model Context Protocol, an open standard that lets AI assistants connect directly to the tools and data they need to help you. Instead of copying and pasting information between your business software and an AI chat window, an MCP connector creates a live link between the two. The AI can read your data, take actions on your behalf, and keep everything in sync — all within the flow of a conversation.

The LivePlan MCP connector gives AI assistants direct access to your company data — your business plan, financial forecast, scenarios, and more. That means you can ask your AI assistant to review your plan, update a revenue line, build out a new scenario, or walk you through where your forecast stands — and it happens in LivePlan, not just in the chat window.

Anthropic — the company behind Claude — created the Model Context Protocol and leads its development as an open standard. As a result, Claude has a built-in connector directory and a particularly accessible setup experience for MCP. The LivePlan connector is designed and tested for use with Claude, and the instructions below reflect that.

Using a different AI assistant?

The LivePlan connector is built on the open MCP standard, so it can work with any MCP-enabled AI client. However, setup outside of Claude tends to be more technical and varies by platform.

If you're using another AI tool, check that platform's documentation for instructions on adding a custom MCP server, and use https://mcp.liveplan.com/mcp as the server URL. The rest of this article covers the Claude experience.

What you can do with the connector

To use the LivePlan connector, you will need:

A LivePlan user profile with access to at least one LivePlan account — as the account owner or a contributor
A Claude account (any paid plan)

About LivePlan account types

LivePlan user profiles can be associated with multiple accounts in different roles. When you connect, the connector works with all of them: you'll be able to see and work with every account and company your LivePlan profile has access to. Your permissions through the connector match your permissions in LivePlan itself — the connector doesn't grant any access you don't already have. Owners and contributors can read and make changes. Here's how the connector handles each situation:

You own an account and are a contributor on others.
You'll see companies from all of those accounts, not just the one you own. When you list your companies, Claude will also see which account each company belongs to, which helps keep things straight.

You only use someone else’s LivePlan account.
This is common for clients of SBDCs, accelerators, or other advisory organizations that manage LivePlan accounts on behalf of the businesses they work with. This is now supported: you can connect the LivePlan connector and work with the companies you access as a contributor.

Premium-only tools

A few of the connector’s tools are only available in Premium accounts. These are typically related to the ability to enter or sync actual results. If you have a Standard account, you will not be able to use those tools.

How to connect

From the Claude Connectors Directory

LivePlan is not yet available in Claude’s directory of connectors. Our submission is under review. Once that process is complete, you'll be able to connect this way:

In Claude, click Customize in the left sidebar

Click Connectors, then click Connect your apps

Find LivePlan in the directory and click the + button.

A browser window will open. Sign in with your LivePlan credentials to authorize the connection

Once authorized, LivePlan will appear in your Connectors list

Adding LivePlan as a custom connector

In the meantime, you can connect LivePlan manually:

In Claude, click Customize in the left sidebar

Click Connectors in the left sidebar, then click the + icon at the top of the Connectors panel

Choose Add custom connector

Enter a name for the connection (just “LivePlan” is fine) and the following URL: https://mcp.liveplan.com/mcp

Click Add.

A browser window will open. Sign in with your LivePlan credentials to authorize the connection.

Once authorized, LivePlan will appear in your Connectors list.

Example prompts

Here's some example prompts to try in the MCP:

"I'm meeting with an investor tomorrow. Pull the key financial highlights from my business plan and summarize the assumptions behind my Year 2 revenue target."
"We just raised our agency retainer rate. Update the 'Agency Services' revenue stream to $15,000 per month starting in July."
"Build a scenario where I bring on two salespeople in Q2 — what does that do to my annual profitability?"
"Compare my base case and optimistic scenarios — where are the biggest differences in assumptions?"
"We're halfway through the year. Are we on track to hit our annual revenue target?"

Available Tools

The following tools are available through the LivePlan connector. Read-only tools retrieve data from your LivePlan company without making any changes. Write tools create, update, or delete data and will prompt you for confirmation depending on your permission settings.

Account

List Accounts (Read-only): Lists all accounts you have access as an owner and contributor.

Select Account (Read-only): Selects a account to work with that you have access to as an account owner and/or contributor.

Company

List Companies (Read-only): Lists all companies on your account so you (or Claude) can pick one to work with.

Select Company (Read-only): Selects a company to work with and returns a summary of its contents, including all forecast line items. Claude typically uses this at the start of a session to orient itself.

Create Company (Write): Creates a new company and business plan on your account.

Update Company (Write): Updates a company's settings, such as its name, fiscal year start, and the number of plan years.

Business plan

Get Plan Outline (Read-only): Returns the chapter and section structure of your business plan — the table of contents without the body text.

Get Plan Content (Read-only): Returns the written content of a specific plan section.

Search Plan Content (Read-only): Searches across the entire business plan for a word or phrase and returns matching snippets with their section names

Get Available Sections (Read-only): Lists standard plan sections from the LivePlan library that aren't yet in your plan and could be added.

Add Chapter (Write): Creates a new top-level chapter in your business plan.

Add Library Section (Write): Adds a pre-built standard section from the LivePlan section library to your plan (for example, "Market Analysis" or "Competition").

Add Custom Section (Write): Creates a new section with a custom title inside an existing chapter, for content that doesn't match a standard library section.

Update Plan Content (Write) Replaces the written content of an existing plan section.

Milestones

Get Milestones (Read-only): Lists all milestones on your company's plan timeline.

Create Milestone (Write): Adds a new dated goal or target to your plan timeline.

Update Milestone (Write): Updates an existing milestone's title, due date, assignee, or description.

Delete Milestone (Write): Removes a milestone from your plan timeline.

Scenarios

List Scenarios (Read-only): Lists all forecast scenarios available for your company.

Compare Scenarios (Read-only): Returns a side-by-side comparison of two scenarios with key financial metrics and the differences between them.

Create Scenario (Write): Creates a new forecast scenario, optionally copying the data from an existing one as a starting point.

Delete Scenario (Write): Deletes a forecast scenario. The last remaining scenario cannot be deleted.

Forecast line items

Rather than separate tools for each type of forecast item, the connector uses one set of tools that works across all of them: revenue streams, expenses, personnel, direct costs, funding, dividends, and assets.

Get Forecast Items (Read-only): Lists the line items in your forecast — revenue streams, expenses, personnel, direct costs, funding, dividends, or assets — by name and type.

Get Build Schema (Read-only): Retrieves the detailed options available for a given item type — for example, the revenue models a revenue stream supports. Claude uses this behind the scenes to structure items correctly.

Build Forecast Item (Write): Adds a new line item of any type to your forecast — a revenue stream, expense, personnel entry, direct cost, funding item, dividend, or asset.

Update Forecast Item (Write): Modifies an existing forecast line item of any type — for example, changing a revenue stream's pricing, an employee's salary, or a loan's terms.

Delete Forecast Item (Write): Removes a line item of any type from the forecast.

Apply Seasonality (Write): Overlays a seasonal pattern on one or more revenue streams — for example, a summer peak or a December holiday spike — without changing their annual totals.

Forecast summary and financial statements

Get Forecast Summary (Read-only): Returns high-level projected totals — revenue, expenses, net profit, and cash on hand — for a quick overview of how the numbers look.

Get Financial Statements (Read-only): Returns a detailed Profit & Loss, Cash Flow Statement, or Balance Sheet with line items by period.

Get Cash Position (Read-only): Finds your forecast's cash low point — the month where projected cash dips lowest — and, if there's a shortfall, suggests how much financing would cover it.

Get Tax Settings (Read-only) Returns the current income tax and sales tax settings for the forecast.

Update Tax Settings (Write): Sets the income tax rate and sales tax rate for the forecast.

Dashboard and actuals

Get Dashboard Summary (Read-only): Lists the available performance dashboard cards that compare actuals to forecast.

Get Dashboard Data (Read-only): Returns detailed KPI data for a specific dashboard category — such as revenue, expenses, profitability, or cash — comparing actual results to forecast.

Get Actuals (Read-only): Returns the full actuals breakdown: real recorded revenue, expenses, direct costs, payroll, and assets with per-period values.

Get Actuals Manual Entries (Read-only): Lists the manually entered actuals values in your forecast. (Premium accounts only)

Update Actuals Manual Entry (Write): Updates a single manually entered actual value for a specific period. (Premium accounts only)

Guided Prompts

In addition to individual tools, the connector includes a set of guided prompts — structured workflows that combine multiple tools to accomplish a specific task. These are available in Claude as prompt templates.

Analyze Financial Health: Retrieves your financial statements and provides a structured analysis of your business's financial health.
Review Plan Section: Reviews a specific section of your business plan and suggests improvements.
Forecast vs. Actuals Comparison: Compares your actual financial results to your forecast and identifies significant variances.
Import Financial Data: Guides the import of financial data from an external document into your LivePlan forecast, with guidance on how to categorize line items correctly.
Scenario Analysis: Models a "what if" change by walking through the creation of a new scenario and analyzing its impact.

Managing Tool Permissions

Once connected, you can manage how Claude uses LivePlan tools from the Connectors panel under Customize → Connectors → LivePlan. Tools are grouped into read-only and write categories, and you can set each tool or category to Always allow, Ask every time, or Never allow.

Read-only tools (such as Get Forecast Summary, Get Plan Content, and Get Milestones) often default to “Always allow.” (Claude sets those defaults, so you may see different behavior.) These tools let Claude read your LivePlan data but make no changes. Because they're read-only, Claude will use them without asking for confirmation regardless of your permission setting — so don't be surprised if Claude reads your data without prompting even if you've set things to "Ask every time."

Write tools (such as adding or updating revenue streams, expenses, and personnel) are where permission settings matter most. If you're new to the connector, setting write tools to "Ask every time" is a reasonable way to stay in control while you're getting a feel for how it works. Once you're comfortable, you can switch to "Always allow," if you’d like, for a more fluid experience.

Note: If Claude makes a change you didn't intend, you can ask it to reverse the change in the same conversation, and that often works. Or you can edit the data manually in LivePlan.

Troubleshooting

I authorized the connector but can't see any company data

Your LivePlan user profile may not own an account. The connector currently requires that you are the account owner. If you access LivePlan as a contributor on an account owned by an organization (such as an SBDC or business advisor), you will not be able to use the MCP server. We may add contributor support in the future.

Claude says it can't find my company data

Make sure you have at least one company created in LivePlan. If you have multiple companies, you may need to tell Claude which one to work with by name.

Changes I asked Claude to make aren't showing up in LivePlan

Try refreshing your LivePlan browser tab. In some cases the LivePlan interface needs a manual refresh to reflect changes made through the connector.

Claude says it doesn't know how to do something I asked it to do

Try rephrasing your request using different terms — for example, 'show me my expenses' instead of 'list expenses'. If the problem persists, let us know.

Claude says it's lost access to LivePlan or returns authorization errors

Go to Customize → Connectors, click LivePlan, and reconnect. This will reauthorize the LivePlan connector.

Note: Additional troubleshooting guidance will be added as we learn more from early users. If you run into something not covered here, please reach out to our support team.

Disconnecting

To remove the LivePlan connector, go to Customize → Connectors in Claude, click on LivePlan, and click Disconnect. This immediately revokes access to your LivePlan data.

Support and privacy

For help with the LivePlan connector, contact our Customer Advocacy team.

For information about how data is handled when you use the connector, see Section 4.10 of our Privacy Policy.