Predictive Forecasting: Shopify + POS Systems
Can you trust your forecast for next month? askotter reads Shopify and POS Systems together and answers it for your business, by text.
How does predictive forecasting with Shopify and POS Systems work for a small business?
askotter reads Shopify and POS Systems side by side so it can forecast with live numbers from every connected account. Forecasts that update as your numbers change, with a likely range attached.
Read the full answerShow less
The owner asks follow-up questions by text.
- From Shopify
- Orders and revenue, Product performance, Customer profiles and segments.
- From POS Systems
- Transaction data, Product-level sales, Customer identification.
- Status
- POS Systems is on the integration roadmap, so the matching described here starts when that connector ships.
- Not for
- Replacing Shopify or POS Systems. Both keep working exactly as they do now.
Can you trust your forecast for next month?
Most small business forecasts are last year's numbers in a spreadsheet. They miss that your ad spend doubled this quarter or that the busy season started early.
How askotter handles it
askotter reads Shopify and POS Systems side by side, so it can forecast with live numbers from every connected account.
A person checks the result before it reaches you. This is part of our conversion rate optimization work.
How Shopify and POS Systems records line up
Shopify and POS Systems both store the customer's email address. askotter lowercases and trims it on both sides before matching, so the same person shows up as one customer across the two tools.
Both tools can hold a phone number. Numbers are normalised to one international format before matching, which catches customers who never gave an email.
Shared between the two: the customer email address and the phone number.
What predictive forecasting uses from each
Predictive forecasting needs enough history to see the seasonal pattern.
From Shopify that means daily order counts by product and inventory levels. From POS Systems it means daily sales by location and item.
POS Systems is on the integration roadmap, so the matching described here starts when that connector ships.
What each tool sees on its ownShow less
Shopify on its own
Shopify sees the order and the landing page. It has no view of the ad impressions, emails or searches that came before that session.
Timing. Shopify writes each order the moment it is placed, including the landing page and referring site of the session that bought.
Access. Read-only access through the Shopify Admin API, approved from the store admin.
POS Systems on its own
A POS sees the sale at the counter. It only knows who bought when the customer gave a phone number or email for a receipt or loyalty account.
Timing. Many POS systems settle and export transactions in end-of-day batches.
Access. The POS vendor's API where one exists, or a daily export.
Related guides
- Which Integrations Are Worth Connecting. An integration earns its place when it changes a decision. Most of them just move data from one screen you ignore to another.
- How to Track AI Traffic in Google Analytics. It is already in your analytics. It is just filed under Referral with everything else.
Services that use these connections
Other analyses: Shopify + POS Systems
Questions about Shopify + POS Systems
Do I need a developer to connect Shopify and POS Systems?
How is askotter's Predictive Forecasting different from what Shopify shows on its own?
Shopify + POS Systems is coming soon
Talk to us about your timeline, and we will confirm the launch date before you commit.
Self-managed is $99/mo and scales with the compute you use. Our team runs it from $600/mo.