How to ask about stock, suppliers and marketing

The Agent reaches well past today's sales. This page covers what to ask it about each area of the business and what has to be true for it to answer. See What is the Agent? for the Agent itself and How to ask the Agent a question for how to ask.

For questions about tasks, chat, documents and outreach, see How to ask the Agent about your tasks, chat and documents.

What can you ask about sales?

Revenue, orders and average order value for today, the last 7 days and the last 30 days, each against the period before. Day-by-day figures go back up to 90 days, so "is this trending up?" gets a series rather than a single number.

For anything longer or more finely split, ask a Reports question, covered next.

Can it answer the same questions as Selling › Reports?

Yes. It runs your question through the same reports as Selling › Reports, so its figures match that page. The step shows as "Running a report". See How to build, save and schedule a report.

You can ask for:

• Sales: net sales, gross sales, discounts, returns and units sold.
• Stock: units in stock, and what that stock is worth at cost and at retail.
• On order and received: units, cost and retail value.
• Splits: by category, brand, product, variant, month or location, or by purchase order for on-order figures.
• Comparisons: against the previous period or the same period last year, over any range up to two years.

"Net sales by brand for the last 30 days against last year, top 10" is a typical one. These questions need the Reports module on, and the permission row on Settings › Permissions that lets someone see your store's sales, inventory and reports. On-order figures also need View purchase orders and the buying calendar.

What can you ask about stock?

What is running out, with stock per location and days of cover. Which products sell fastest and slowest across the catalogue over roughly the last 30 days, and how one named product sold over any date range.

It also knows how many paid orders are still waiting to be fully fulfilled.

Worth asking:

• "What is about to run out that is also a strong seller?" The pairing is what matters, because a slow product running low is not urgent.
• "How has the merino quarter-zip sold over the last 90 days compared with the 90 before?"
• "Which products are barely moving this month?"

What can you ask about demand?

How many of a kind of product you are likely to sell, such as "how many polos will we sell before the autumn order lands?" or "how many size medium polos will we sell in the next 90 days?". A category has far more history than any single product, so its forecast holds up better.

The answer says how many weeks of history it averaged over. When you name no period, it forecasts over the buying horizon set on Settings › Forecasting, covered in How to read demand and set your forecast.

Ask "why is the forecast for this product what it is?" about one product variant, and it explains the method it chose, how much history it used, any weeks left out for stockouts, and what the same period sold last year.

What can you ask about suppliers and purchase orders?

Which purchase orders are open or late, what stage each has reached, what is on it, and how much has been received. Anyone who can use the Agent can ask these.

Who supplies a given brand, and a supplier's lead time, minimum order, payment terms, currency, rep and on-time delivery record. And what a delivery cost landed, with goods, freight and duty together.

Worth asking:

• "Which purchase orders are late, and what stock are they covering?"
• "What is Portside Mills' on-time record and how many deliveries is that based on?" The sample size decides whether it is worth raising, per How to record new terms and read a supplier's performance.
• "What did the last delivery from Kaimen Knitwear cost landed?"

The Agent knows a supplier's rep by name. For the rep's email and phone, open the supplier's own page, per How to add and set up a supplier.

Which permissions do supplier and purchase order questions need?

Two rows on Settings › Permissions decide how much of the answer you get:

• View suppliers for supplier details, who supplies a brand and on-time records.
• View purchase orders and the buying calendar for order values, unit costs and what a delivery cost landed.

The orders themselves, with their stage, dates, lines and quantities, need neither. Without a row, the answer goes ahead and leaves that part out, and money you may not see is never shown as zero. Ask an admin for the row, per How to set who can do what.

Can it advise on one purchase order?

Yes. Open a draft purchase order and ask "are these quantities right?". With the order open, the Agent reads the same suggested quantities the purchase order page shows, the supplier's on-time record, and how much of the season's budget the order uses.

This needs View purchase orders and the buying calendar, and the on-time record also needs View suppliers. The suggested quantities also need Edit purchase orders and the buying calendar, See sales, inventory, reports and the daily brief, and your owned locations confirmed on Buying › Data feeds › Open to buy.

With the Brain module on, ask it to change the quantities and it suggests the change for someone to approve, per How to approve, refuse or undo a suggested change. Writing the order is covered in How to write a purchase order.

What can you ask about marketing?

Your Klaviyo audience segments, with their name, size and rough week-over-week trend, and your flows, with their name, trigger and status. Asking the Agent is how you see them without opening Klaviyo.

Email & SMS check is a ready-made version of this question, in the / menu of the message box, per How to reuse a question: starters, skills, digests and saved prompts.

Connect Klaviyo first, per How to connect Klaviyo. Until it is connected, the Agent tells you so rather than guessing.

Can it read your own Objects?

Yes. It reads the records of the Objects your workspace built, newest first, with their status and field values. Ask "how many Repairs are still open?" See What is an Object?.

Each Object follows its own row on Settings › Permissions, such as Repairs · View. To ask about an Object you cannot open, ask an admin for its View row, per How to set who can see and edit an Object.

What can you ask about decisions?

What your business has recorded: what was decided, why, what was rejected, who decided and when, and what the measured outcome was. Ask "What did we decide about Portside Mills last season, and did it work?"

It reports the decision and the outcome side by side and never claims one caused the other. These questions need View decisions. See What are decisions and track records?.

Can you ask about one customer or one order?

About one customer, yes. Open the customer and ask, and the Agent reads their name, lifetime spend and number of orders, when you hold View customers. It never gives an email address or phone number, so open the customer for those, per How to find a customer and read their history.

For one order, open it from the orders list, per How to look up orders and check your fulfilment backlog.

How do you ask about several areas at once?

Ask one area at a time, in the same conversation. Start with stock, then ask about the supplier, then about the marketing.

The conversation remembers what came before, so each follow-up keeps the context of the last answer. You get a fuller answer on each part than from one question that spans them all.