AI Powered Excel Shop Manager
The Story : From Shop Floor to Smart Floor
A small retail shop was growing fast with more products, more staff, more sales.
But there was one major bottleneck: manual stock and order tracking.
Each invoice was recorded by hand in an Excel sheet. Staff had to cross-check product availability from another sheet. Pricing mismatches, missed items, and out-of-stock orders became daily headaches.
“We're wasting time updating sheets. We need a smarter way to handle this even from our phones.”
The Challenge
- Automate stock and order entry
- Prevent invoicing out-of-stock products
- Keep inventory and orders synced in real-time
- Provide instant feedback on product status
The Solution: A Chat Based Smart Shop System
We built an intelligent assistant using n8n, Google Sheets, and Telegram, powered by logic and AI. Here’s how it works: .
- Staff send a message on Telegram
Example: "Add 2 Shirts, 1 Kurta for Sarath. Phone: 90877777" - The message is parsed by AI → turned into a clean invoice entry
- n8n:
- Checks the Stock Sheet
- Updates quantities accordingly
- Records the invoice in the Order Sheet
- Generates feedback like:
"2 Shirts recorded at ₹600 each. Kurta found at ₹700."
- Instant reply sent back to staff on Telegram.
Live Sheets in Action
- Stock Sheet: Always updated no manual count needed
- Order Sheet: Clean, structured, and instant
- AI Columns: Feedback and validation handled automatically
- GST, Discounts, Summaries: All computed on the fly
The Impact
- 90% time saved on order entry
- 100% staff adoption via simple Telegram chat
- Zero stock mismatch or double entries
- Real-time inventory accuracy
- Cleaner reporting for business insights
Under the Hood:
- n8n: Automation logic & workflows
- OpenAI (GPT): Parsing chat messages into structured orders
- Google Sheets: Live database for orders and stock
- Telegram Bot: Frontline tool for staff communication
Now the shop runs leaner, smarter, and faster and all it takes is a Telegram message.
From chat to checkout, fully automated.