Live Inventory Tutorial: Let Your WhatsApp AI Answer Stock Questions From Real Data

"Do you have this in stock?" is the one question a knowledge-base AI could never truly answer — the catalog you uploaded last week doesn't know what sold this morning. That boundary is gone: WhatsApp AI Pro now reads stock live from the place you already track it — a spreadsheet on your computer, a Google Sheet, your Shopify store, or your WooCommerce store — and answers availability questions from real numbers.

This tutorial walks through connecting each source, the safety model behind every answer, and the settings that control what customers are told.

What You Get Once It's Connected

Customer asks "is the A-100 still available?" at 2 a.m. → the AI instantly acknowledges ("checking our current stock now") in their language, looks up the live number, and drafts an answer grounded in what it found — never in guesswork.
Every inventory statement is engineering-checked: the AI is only allowed to claim availability it can point to in a lookup result from that very conversation turn. An answer that can't cite its evidence is blocked before it reaches anyone.
When you approve an inventory draft, the app re-checks the live source at that moment. If the item sold out between the customer's question and your tap on Approve, the send is stopped instead of promising stock you no longer have.
Your data stays yours: local files are read on your computer and raw rows are never uploaded to our backend; store credentials are encrypted on-device with your operating system's keychain.

One important behavior to know up front: while an inventory connection is enabled, every AI reply becomes a draft for your review — this is the current safety design, and the app tells you so when you flip the switch. Customers still get the instant acknowledgment; the substantive answer goes out with your approval. For most teams reviewing from Telegram, that's a tap.

Where It Lives

Open AI Nexus → Business Intelligence and scroll to the Business data card. Pick your source:

Option 1: Excel or CSV on Your Computer

The fastest path if your stock lives in a spreadsheet.

Click Connect sheet → Excel / CSV and choose the file (.xlsx or .csv, up to 25 MB / 5,000 rows).
The app reads your headers and a sample of rows, then matches your columns automatically — it recognizes product name, stock quantity, and update-date columns in English, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, and Thai, whatever you actually named them ("库存数量", "Cantidad", "Qty On Hand" all work). You confirm the mapping from dropdowns of your real headers; nothing is guessed silently.
Three columns are required: product name, sellable quantity, and when the stock figure was last updated. SKU and variant columns are optional but make exact-SKU questions much sharper.
Set Maximum data age. If you update the sheet daily, date-only cells like 2026-08-18 are understood as "current for that day" — you don't need timestamps.
Save and test. You'll see a preview of the rows the AI can use, and a warning if your sheet exceeds the 5,000-row window.

Edit the file whenever stock changes — the AI reads the saved file live at question time. No re-upload step.

Option 2: Google Sheets

Same idea, for a sheet your team edits from anywhere.

Click Google Sheets → Authorize Google (read-only access to spreadsheets, nothing else) and approve in the browser.
Paste the sheet's URL and click Read sheet — pick the worksheet tab, confirm the auto-matched columns, save and test.

If the Authorize button reports that Google Sheets isn't configured in your build yet, update the app — this connector is rolling out; a local export of the same sheet works identically in the meantime.

Option 3: Shopify

Live stock straight from your store — no spreadsheet to maintain.

In Shopify admin: Settings → Apps and sales channels → Develop apps → Create an app. Grant it read_products and read_inventory, then copy the Admin API access token (starts with shpat_). Takes about two minutes, no app review.
In WhatsApp AI Pro: Business data → Shopify, paste your store domain (mystore.myshopify.com) and the token. Save and test.

That's the whole setup. Every stock question now queries your store at the moment it's asked — variants, SKUs, oversold items (reported as out of stock), and backorder-enabled products (reported as available on backorder) all behave correctly. The token is encrypted on your device; revoking it is one click in your own Shopify admin.

Option 4: WooCommerce

In WordPress admin: WooCommerce → Settings → Advanced → REST API → Add key with Read permission. Copy the consumer key (ck_…) and secret (cs_…).
In WhatsApp AI Pro: Business data → WooCommerce, paste your store URL (HTTPS; subdirectory installs like mystore.com/shop are fine) and both keys. Save and test.

WooCommerce nuance handled for you: products that track a stock status but not a count ("in stock" with Manage stock off) are answered honestly — the AI says it's available but will never invent a number, and won't pretend to confirm a "can you supply 500?" question the data can't answer. Backordered items are reported as exactly that.

What the Customer Is Told: Your Disclosure Policy

Per connection, you decide how much the AI reveals:

Availability status only (default): "in stock", "low stock", "out of stock", "available on backorder" — never a number. Recommended for most businesses; competitors read your WhatsApp replies too.
Allow exact quantities: the AI may state the actual count when the data has one. Even then, a number only ever comes from a lookup result — if the reply text contains a quantity the data didn't produce, the engineering check blocks it, in every language ("we have 500 units", "还有500件", "tenemos 500 unidades" are all caught).

You also set a low-stock threshold (default 5) — at or below it, answers become "only a few left," which nudges hesitant buyers without disclosing your position.

How Fresh Is "Fresh"?

Shopify / WooCommerce: every answer is a query at that moment. Freshness is not your problem.
Spreadsheets: the stock updated at column is the source of truth, and your Maximum data age setting decides how old is too old. A date-only stamp counts as current for that whole calendar day. When data is older than your limit, the AI doesn't guess — it tells the customer it's confirming with the team, and the conversation lands in your review queue.

That last behavior is the design philosophy in one sentence: when the data can't support an answer, the AI declines to invent one. Stale sheet, ambiguous product match, unknown quantity — all of these degrade to "let me confirm" plus a human handoff, never to a confident wrong answer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does my spreadsheet get uploaded to your servers?

No. Local files are parsed on your computer and stock lookups run on your computer. If our AI helps match your column names, it sees only the header names and statistical summaries (like "this column is 98% numbers") — never your rows. Store API credentials are encrypted with your OS keychain and never leave the device.

Why did all my AI replies turn into drafts after I enabled inventory?

By design, and the app warns you at the moment you enable it. Inventory answers are commitments, so the current release keeps a human tap between the AI and the customer — with the instant acknowledgment covering the response-speed gap. Review from your phone via Telegram remote control and approval is seconds.

What happens if stock changes after the AI drafted the answer but before I approve it?

The approval re-checks the live source at that moment. If the product, its status, or a disclosed quantity changed, the send is blocked and you'll see why. You can regenerate the draft against current data with one tap.

The customer asked for 40 units. Will the AI promise them?

Only if the data shows at least 40. If stock is lower, the answer is "insufficient for that quantity"; if the source only tracks in/out status with no count, the AI says it's in stock but won't confirm the amount — that lands with you.

Can I connect more than one source?

One inventory connection is active at a time — the app enforces this so there's never a question of which number the AI believed. Switch sources whenever you like; test before enabling.

Which should I pick if my stock is in both a spreadsheet and Shopify?

The store. A live API beats a file you have to remember to update. Use the spreadsheet path when the store isn't the source of truth — wholesale stock, a warehouse count, goods that aren't listed online.

Connect your stock in the next ten minutes: download WhatsApp AI Pro, open AI Nexus → Business Intelligence → Business data, and point it at the file or store you already have. $49/month flat, 7-day money-back guarantee.

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