Flow AI Assistant for E-commerce

Flow AI Assistant for E-commerce

Flow AI is MerchantFlow's built-in AI assistant that answers questions about your e-commerce business using your actual store data. It operates in specialized modes -- Marketing, Executive, Finance, and (in agency and partner workspaces) Portfolio -- each with deep knowledge of different aspects of your business performance.

What Is Flow AI?

Flow AI is a conversational analytics tool embedded directly in the MerchantFlow dashboard. Instead of building custom reports or navigating multiple pages, you type a question in plain language and receive a data-backed answer within seconds. Flow AI queries your connected revenue, order, product, ad spend, and profitability data to provide accurate, contextual responses.

How Flow AI Works

When you ask a question, Flow AI:

1. Identifies relevant metrics and data sources for your query
2. Queries your MerchantFlow data including revenue, orders, products, ad spend, and more
3. Analyzes the data in context with historical trends and benchmarks
4. Provides a detailed answer with supporting metrics and visualizations
5. Suggests follow-up questions to help you explore deeper insights

If a question needs detail beyond the summarised figures - for example which products are in an order, or how many units of one product a basket contains - Flow AI looks the detail up directly and shows you a card for each lookup it ran, so you can see exactly what it checked before answering.

Questions about what is inside your orders

Flow AI can filter your orders by basket contents and then break the result down by market, channel, or month. For example:

Look at all orders with two chairs in them across all regions and give me the average shipping cost.

When you name a product in words rather than by SKU, Flow AI first resolves the words to products in your catalog and tells you which ones it matched, so you can correct it if it picked the wrong set.

Shipping charged vs shipping cost

These are two different numbers and Flow AI will always tell you which one it is quoting:

• Shipping charged is what your customer paid at checkout. This is revenue. It is available for every order.
• Fulfilment cost is what shipping actually cost you. This is only recorded when you have connected a 3PL or configured per-product fulfilment costs.

If your fulfilment cost coverage is 0%, Flow AI will say the merchant-side cost is not being tracked rather than reporting it as zero. A missing cost is not the same as free shipping. To start tracking it, connect a 3PL under Settings > Integrations, or set per-product fulfilment costs in COGS.

How to Access Flow AI

There are two ways in:

• Flow AI in the main navigation opens the full page at /dashboard/ai, with the conversation list on the left
• The chat bubble in the bottom-right corner of any dashboard page opens Flow AI as a side drawer. Cmd + K (or Ctrl + K) opens the same drawer from the keyboard

The drawer picks a mode and starter prompts based on the page you are on; the full page remembers the mode you last used.

Four Flow AI Modes

Marketing Mode

Best for questions about:

• Channel performance and traffic sources
• Product metrics and top performers
• Marketing campaign effectiveness
• Customer acquisition and ROAS
• Competitive positioning

Example questions:

• "What were my top performing products last month?"
• "Which marketing channel has the best ROAS?"
• "How has my organic traffic changed over the last quarter?"

Executive Mode

Best for questions about:

• Profit and cash position
• Business health overview
• Burn rate and runway
• Revenue trends and forecasting
• Team and operational metrics

Example questions:

• "What's my current burn rate?"
• "How does this month's profit compare to last month?"
• "What's my projected revenue for next quarter?"

Finance Mode

Best for questions about:

• P&L analysis and cost breakdown
• Expense tracking and budgeting
• COGS and margin analysis
• Funding and repayment status
• Tax and financial planning

Example questions:

• "What's my gross margin trend over the last 6 months?"
• "Which expense category is growing the fastest?"
• "How much of my funding have I repaid?"

Portfolio Mode

Best for questions about:

• Portfolio-level performance across all connected brands
• Cross-brand revenue, profit, and ad spend comparisons
• Client health alerts and attention priorities
• Aggregate ROAS and marketing efficiency

Example questions:

• "Which client has the highest ROAS this month?"
• "Are any brands showing declining revenue?"
• "What's the total ad spend across my portfolio?"

Note: Portfolio mode only appears in agency and partner workspaces, where it is selected by default. It queries data across all connected client brands to provide portfolio-level intelligence.

Flow AI Skills (One-Click Audits)

In addition to free-form chat, Flow AI ships a library of skills - pre-built, parameterised audits and reports that run against your store data and return a structured result. Skills are surfaced as cards in the chat picker and as inline suggestions when your question matches one.

Available Skill Categories

How to Run a Skill

1. Open Flow AI from the navigation
2. Click Skills next to the message box to open the Skills library
3. Browse by category or use the Find a skill search box
4. Pick a skill and run it with the default parameters, or adjust the time window and other inputs first

Skills also fire automatically when your question matches one. There are 23 skills in total, and up to 3 can run at once per workspace. A skill triggered from chat has a 60-second cooldown before the same skill will auto-fire again.

The Sales by Channel skill only appears when attribution is enabled for your workspace.

The result is rendered as a structured card with the data, a short AI summary, and follow-up question chips so you can drill in without leaving the conversation.

Plan Availability

Flow AI - including the skills library - is included on Pro (500k tokens/month) and Plus (2M tokens/month). Starter does not include Flow AI. See Pricing Plans.

How to Manage Conversations

• Create multiple conversations organized by topic, one thread list per mode
• Conversations are saved and searchable across sessions (Search conversations...)
• Switch between conversations in the left-hand list
• Clear a conversation to empty its messages while keeping the thread

Each conversation keeps its most recent 20 messages, and the assistant reads the last 10 when answering. Individual messages are capped at 10,000 characters. There is no way to delete a conversation outright, and no export or download of a transcript.

What Each AI Response Includes

Each Flow AI response includes:

• Confidence badge -- how confident the AI is in its answer based on data availability
• Data Sources -- which data points were analyzed to form the response
• Missing -- any data gaps that could affect accuracy (such as unconfigured COGS), plus Attribution and COGS coverage percentages
• Suggested follow-ups -- up to three clickable question chips for deeper exploration

Answers stream in token by token, and a Stop generating button ends a response early while keeping what has already arrived.

Tips for Getting the Best Results

• Be specific with time periods: "last 30 days" works better than "recently"
• Ask follow-up questions to drill deeper into initial insights
• Use the suggested follow-ups for guided exploration of related metrics
• Switch modes when your questions cross domains (marketing to finance, for example)
• Check confidence levels -- low confidence may indicate missing data connections

Frequently Asked Questions

What data does Flow AI have access to?

Flow AI queries all data connected to your MerchantFlow account, including revenue, orders, products, ad spend from connected platforms, expenses, COGS, and bank balance entries. It reads whatever timeframe the global date selector is set to.

Customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, and postal addresses are stripped from the data before it reaches the model.

How accurate are Flow AI answers?

Accuracy depends on data completeness. Check the confidence badge on each response. Connect all relevant integrations and configure COGS to maximize accuracy.

Can I use Flow AI in an agency workspace?

Yes. Flow AI is available in agency workspaces and can answer questions about portfolio-level performance across all connected brands.

Does Flow AI store my conversation history?

Yes. Conversations are saved to your workspace and can be searched and resumed at any time. You can clear a conversation to empty it; there is no delete action and no transcript export.

What happens if I hit my monthly token allowance?

Flow AI stops answering for the rest of the calendar month and returns a message telling you the cap was reached. The allowance resets on the 1st. There is no in-app usage meter -- if you expect to run out, plan around the Pro (500k) and Plus (2M) limits.

Related Guides

• AI Insights -- deeper look at AI-powered analytics capabilities
• Dashboard Overview -- navigate the full MerchantFlow experience
• P&L Overview -- understand the financial data Flow AI references
• KPI Metrics -- learn about the metrics Flow AI reports on

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Last updated: August 29, 2026