Frequently asked questions about StockAI.
What planning and purchasing teams usually ask before uploading their first file: what data is needed, how the forecast is measured, how StockAI is bought, where your data lives and how each supplier’s lead time is learned.
Do I need statistics or programming knowledge to use StockAI?
No. StockAI is built for the people who plan and buy: you open the screen and see how much of each product you will sell, and from that what to order today, how much and from which supplier. There are no models to configure and no code. You upload your data and the system does the rest.
What is actually AI about it?
The forecast. For every product, machine-learning models — gradient-boosted trees (LightGBM and XGBoost), a neural network (LSTM) and a global model that learns from your whole catalogue at once — compete alongside classical statistical models such as ARIMA, SARIMAX, Prophet, ETS and Croston. Each one is tested against stretches of your own history it never saw, and the winner is the one whose mistakes cost least, on a cost where running out weighs three times more than overshooting. On top of that, the AI analyst answers questions about your inventory in plain language. What sets the colour of the signal, on the other hand, is a published rule you can check by hand.
How do I know whether the forecast is any good?
Because it is measured on your own data, not on a marketing figure. Every model is judged on stretches of your history it never saw, and the winner has to beat two naive forecasts: if none does on a product, the run tells you. You see each product’s error on the forecast screen, next to the likely sales range. And if you save and approve a demand plan, once the periods pass it is compared against what really sold and against the plain statistical forecast.
Can I add orders my customers have already placed in advance?
Yes. A large customer who orders months or years ahead does not show up in your history until the sale happens, so it is recorded separately: product, delivery date, quantity, customer and how sure it is. It is added to the statistical forecast as the committed quantity times its probability, and every row says which committed order moved it. If that customer is already inside your history, you mark it so it is not counted twice.
What is the reorder point, and how does StockAI work it out?
It is the stock level at which it is time to order: what you will sell while you wait for the order to arrive, plus a safety buffer. StockAI works it out for every product from the demand the AI forecasts, the supplier’s real lead time and, if you order from them on a fixed cycle, that interval too. The buffer grows when the product’s sales are more variable and when the supplier is irregular in its deliveries, and its size is set by the service level you choose: for the whole company, per supplier, per category or per product. When coverage reaches the reorder point, the product moves to ORDER SOON.
How does StockAI decide how much to order?
It looks at your inventory position — what you have plus what is already on its way, whether from a supplier or a transfer between warehouses — and suggests what is missing to cover the supplier’s lead time with its safety buffer, respecting the minimum order quantity. So it never asks you to order again what you already ordered. The quantity is a suggestion: you can adjust it on the order before sending it.
Can I use StockAI from WhatsApp?
Yes, for the day-to-day. Each person links and verifies their number, and from there they can ask which products are in the red, which orders are still pending and how the forecast looks, with their own account’s figures. The assistant only reads: to approve or receive an order it points you to the screen in the app where that is done. The daily summary of at-risk products and orders to suppliers go out by WhatsApp too.
Does StockAI replace my ERP?
No, it complements it. Your ERP records what happened: sales, stock, purchases. StockAI reads that history, whether you export it as a file or it pulls it straight from your database, forecasts how much you will sell and tells you what to buy, how much and from whom. You keep invoicing and accounting where you always have.
How do I buy StockAI?
You create your account for free and, when you need it bigger, move to Pro ($59 a month) or Max ($199 a month) on the same account, with no data to migrate. For companies that buy months ahead there is the Corporate plan, from $890 a month on an annual contract, quoted. If you would rather install it on your own servers, we also sell the source code for $14,999 USD in a one-time payment.
What format does my sales data need to be in?
StockAI accepts Excel (.xlsx) and CSV. The file needs at least a date column, a product identifier column (SKU or name) and a quantity-sold column. The system works out which column is which.
What if I have products with very little sales history, or incomplete data?
StockAI needs at least 20 periods of history per product to train it. Products below that minimum stay out of the forecast: no projection is invented for them. Before anything runs, the file review tells you how many products are under the threshold, and if none of them clears it the file is stopped with the explanation on screen instead of producing an empty result. Those products still appear in your inventory marked NO DATA — no signal and no suggested quantity — so the decision is yours and not an invented number’s.
Is my data safe? Who has access to it?
The data you upload to StockAI is exclusively yours: it is not sold and it is not used to train models for other companies — every forecast is trained only on your own account’s history, on our server. The one exception is the AI assistant: when you ask it something, that question and the account data it needs to answer are sent to an external language-model provider (DeepSeek) to write the reply. Beyond that, your data only leaves when you ask it to: a purchase order you send by email or WhatsApp, or an alert you chose to receive. Every query is filtered by company and access is controlled by role: administrator, analyst or read-only. Your integration credentials — the user and password of your database — are stored encrypted. Your sales files and trained models are kept on StockAI’s server, in a folder separated per company; disk encryption is a property of the server it runs on, not something the application does. And deletion is genuinely complete: it removes every table and every file tied to your account, not just the main record.
How long does it take to start using StockAI in my company?
In most cases, under a day. If you have a historical sales file you can upload it and see your first list of what to order in under an hour. For ERP or in-house system integrations, the time depends on the complexity.
Can it integrate with our current ERP or inventory system?
Yes, in several ways, and without giving us write access to anything. The simplest is by file: export from your system and upload the CSV or Excel. If your ERP already leaves a file every night in an SFTP folder or an S3 bucket, StockAI reads it by itself; the first stock file shows you what it understood and waits for your confirmation, and one that looks suspicious is held without touching your data. It can also read your database directly (Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle or MongoDB) with a read-only account, or your system can push the data through the API. In the other direction, approved orders go out as CSV or Excel, or in the import layout of SAP, Business Central, NetSuite, Odoo or Oracle; those five are written from each vendor’s documentation and the screen asks you to try them with a small order first. If you need something bespoke, write to us.
How often does what it tells me to order get updated?
Every time you load new sales. You can launch it yourself when you upload the month’s file, or leave the scheduled recalculation running: every Monday at 6, every day, weekdays only, hourly, or the first of each month.
Is StockAI useful if I have more than one warehouse?
Yes. You define routes between warehouses with transit days and cost. When a product is short in one warehouse and long in another, StockAI suggests moving instead of buying, and only suggests it if the lending warehouse keeps at least 30 days of coverage.
Where does StockAI get each supplier’s lead time from?
At first, from the one you type on the supplier’s card. Every time you record a reception, StockAI stores how many days actually passed between the order and the delivery. From that supplier’s third reception it starts using the real average instead of the declared lead time, and shows you which of the two it is using.
How large can the sales file I upload be?
For scale: 3 years of history with 5,000 products selling daily is around 5 million rows, on the order of 200 MB as CSV.
What doesn’t StockAI do?
We would rather tell you before you upload your first file. We do not publish an accuracy percentage on this page: each product’s error is measured on your own history and shown on the forecast screen. The forecast range is not a guarantee: it is where sales will probably fall, and it tells you how far to trust the suggested quantity. It does not guess what never happened: a new promotion or a big new customer is tested in the scenario simulator, not in the history. And it does not buy for you: it suggests what, how much and from whom, and you review, adjust and send the order yourself.
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Sales forecasting made in Costa Rica, for companies across Latin America.