Connect MerchantFlow to Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop is the official Anthropic desktop app for Claude. It supports MCP natively as of v1.5. Total setup time: about 2 minutes.

Prerequisites

• Claude Desktop v1.5 or newer installed on your Mac or Windows machine
• A MerchantFlow account on the Pro tier
• Logged into MerchantFlow in your browser

Step 1: Open MerchantFlow MCP settings

1. Log in to dashboard.merchantflow.ai
2. Click Settings in the sidebar
3. Click the MCP Server tab

Step 2: Click the Claude Desktop install card

In the "Quick install" section, click the Install in Claude Desktop button. A modal opens showing a pre-filled config snippet.

Step 3: Paste the config into Claude Desktop

Open your Claude Desktop config file:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

If the file doesn't exist, create it. Paste the config snippet from the MerchantFlow modal. It will look something like:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "merchantflow": {
      "url": "https://mcp.merchantflow.ai/mcp",
      "transport": "http"
    }
  }
}

If you already have other MCP servers configured, just add the merchantflow entry to the existing mcpServers object.

Step 4: Restart Claude Desktop

Fully quit Claude Desktop (Cmd+Q on Mac, right-click tray icon -> Quit on Windows) and reopen it.

Step 5: Authorize the connection

The first time Claude Desktop needs to call a MerchantFlow tool, it will open your browser to the MerchantFlow authorization page. You'll see:

• The name of the requesting client ("Claude Desktop")
• A list of permissions it's requesting
• An Allow access button

Click Allow access. The browser will redirect back and Claude Desktop will receive its access token.

Step 6: Try your first prompt

Back in Claude Desktop, try:

Summarise this week's P&L with comparison to last week.

Claude will call the get_pnl_summary tool and return a structured weekly briefing with real numbers from your store.

Make Claude 10x smarter (optional but recommended)

Download the MerchantFlow Skill file and install it as a Claude Project instruction. It teaches Claude how to think about ecommerce data, which tool to pick for each question, and how to format answers. Without it Claude will still work, but responses will be noticeably better with it.

Troubleshooting

"No tools available" in Claude Desktop

• Make sure you fully quit and restarted Claude Desktop after saving the config
• Check the config file is valid JSON (no trailing commas, matching brackets)
• Check the URL in the config matches the one shown in MerchantFlow settings

The browser authorization page shows a warning about an unverified client

• That's expected for clients MerchantFlow hasn't independently verified. As long as you intentionally installed Claude Desktop, you can proceed.

"Rate limit exceeded" errors

• Pro tier allows 60 MCP calls per minute. If you're hitting that, your client is calling tools too aggressively - try asking more focused questions.

Next steps

• Browse the tool reference to see everything Claude can read
• Try the 15 example prompts to learn what MCP makes easy
• Download the Skill file for much better answers

Last updated: April 9, 2026