AI Store Copilot - Sales, Inventory, Customers & Actions

Ask your store anything in plain English and get real answers — and safe, confirmed actions — right inside your CS-Cart admin

Description

The AI Store Copilot puts a chat window inside your CS-Cart admin panel (and vendor panel, if you turn that on). You type any question the way you’d ask a helpful employee, and the AI answers using your real store numbers.

No filters to click, no dropdowns to fill in, no jumping between reports just to find one number. You just ask:

• “What were my top 10 sellers last month?”
• “How many orders are still Processed and older than a week?”
• “Where are my customers coming from this year?”

…and you get a real answer in seconds, straight from your store’s live data. The AI reads your question, decides what to look up, gets the numbers from your store, and writes a clean answer. Behind the scenes it works from a fixed list of safe, ready-made lookups that use your store’s own built-in reports, so every safety rule and access limit you already have stays exactly the same.

The Copilot can also do things for you: change prices in bulk, create discount coupons, mark old orders as Completed — but only after showing you a preview and getting your “yes, go ahead” first. You decide if vendors get to use it (off by default), and you choose which of 8 AI services powers it, switchable any time without reinstalling.

Key Features

• Ask Anything in Plain English — no filters, no special commands, no need to know how any of it works
• Safe by Design — the AI can only use a fixed list of ready-made lookups and actions built on your store’s own reports; it never invents its own way to read your data
• Eight AI Services to Choose From — Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, Google Gemini, Mistral AI, DeepSeek, OpenRouter, Groq, and xAI Grok; switch any time without reinstalling
• Simple Setup Page — pick a provider and only its fields show, with a “How to get your API key” panel and sign-up link at the top, so you never hunt through the settings
• You Choose Who Can Use It — the “Enable AI Copilot for vendors” checkbox turns vendor access on or off (off by default)
• Take Actions With Confirmation — bulk price/stock changes, mark orders complete, create coupons — always previewed and confirmed before anything changes
• Build Sales Reports by Chat — describe a report, preview the real data, then save it as a normal CS-Cart Sales Report
• Read-Only Mode — one switch blocks every action that would change your store
• Chat History Sidebar — every conversation saved and grouped by time, with smart short titles, pinning, and one-click delete; export any chat to CSV
• Monthly Spending Cap & Cost Warnings — a dollar budget that stops chat when reached and resets on the 1st, with 80% / 90% warnings and a per-user daily limit
• Usage Browser & Full History Log — filter past chats by date, admin, vendor, provider, action, or result; see every question, action, duration, and cost
• See What Happened — open any answer to review which lookups ran, how much they found, and how long each step took; a stop button cancels a slow question
• Marketplace-Safe — each vendor only sees their own products, orders, and customers, enforced in the store’s own data queries
• Multi-Storefront Ready — filter answers to a single storefront at a time
• Nicely Formatted, In Your Language — headings, tables, bullet lists and code blocks; answers are written in your admin panel language
• Privacy First — customer names, emails, and phone numbers are hidden by default and only shown when you specifically ask for them

Supported AI Providers

You need an account with at least one of these AI services. Sign up, generate an API key, paste it into the addon settings, and you’re ready to go. The AI service bills you directly for what you use, usually less than a cent per question.

How It Works

1. You pick an AI service in the addon settings and paste your API key from that service
2. You open the AI Copilot from the admin sidebar and type any question in plain English
3. The AI picks the right lookups from its safe list, runs them against your live store data, and writes back a plain-English answer with real numbers
4. Every question and answer is saved to the sidebar so you can go back to old chats any time
5. The AI service bills you directly (pay-as-you-go); the addon shows a monthly cap so you never get a surprise bill
6. If a question isn’t something it can look up, it politely says what it CAN help with; if it’s missing a detail like a date range, it asks a quick follow-up

A typical question costs a fraction of a cent; a complex one that needs several lookups can cost up to about ten cents.

What You Can Ask

Ask any question you’d ask a smart helper who knows your store. A few examples:

• Sales, money & revenue — “How’s this month vs last month?” · “Revenue by category last 90 days?” · “How much tax did I collect by state last quarter?” · “Top countries by sales?”
• Customers — “Top spenders this quarter?” · “Are new customers coming back to order again?” · “Average lifetime value by signup year?”
• Inventory & products — “What’s running low?” · “When will SKU JE-529 run out at the current sales speed?” · “What do people usually buy together with product Y?”
• Orders & shipping — “How are my orders split by status this month?” · “How fast are we shipping, by vendor?” · “What abandoned carts do I have this week and how much are they worth?”
• Returns & refunds (needs the built-in RMA addon) — “What’s my refund rate this quarter?” · “Which products come back the most?”
• Payments & shipping methods — “Which payment methods are used the most?” · “Revenue by shipping method?”
• Multi-Vendor — “How much do I owe each vendor right now?” · “Cross-vendor sales summary” · “Per-vendor performance”
• Search insights — “What are customers searching for the most?”

Build CS-Cart Sales Reports by Conversation

Describe the report you want in plain English — e.g. “revenue by category for Q1, only Completed orders, grouped by month” — and the Copilot builds a preview with the actual data first. If it looks right, say “save it” and it becomes a normal CS-Cart Sales Report you can re-open and re-run from the standard Reports page. The Copilot can also list, run with a different date range, update, or delete saved reports — all with confirmation.

Take Actions on Your Store (With Your Confirmation)

Nothing ever changes right away. The Copilot shows what it’s about to do — five example rows plus the total number of things it will change — and asks you to reply “yes” before it makes the change. When it’s done, the answer links back to your admin so you can view or undo.

• Bulk price adjust — raise, lower, or set prices across a category or a list of SKUs
• Bulk stock adjust — set or add stock across a category or a list of SKUs
• Mark orders complete — specific orders, or all orders in a status for a date range
• Create a discount coupon — a cart discount with a code you pick
• Create a Sales Report — preview the real data, then save it as a standard CS-Cart Sales Report

What the AI Can Do Behind the Scenes

You never see these names and never have to word a question in any special way — the AI picks what to use on its own. Every tool uses your store’s own built-in reports, so all your access limits stay in place automatically.

Who It’s For

• Store owners & admins — full access to everything: ask anything about sales, stock, customers, or orders, and use the change-your-store actions to make lots of changes at once without clicking through screen after screen
• Vendors (Multi-Vendor, admin-controlled) — off by default; when you enable it, each vendor gets their own Copilot scoped to only their products, orders, and customers, using their own provider key and budget. Vendors can’t use the change-your-store actions or Sales Report tools — those stay admin-only. Turn the checkbox off and vendors lose access right away

Requirements

• CS-Cart Store Builder or Multi-Vendor (single or multiple storefronts) 4.6.3 or higher
• PHP 7.4 or higher (tested up to PHP 8.3)
• An API key from at least one supported provider (Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, Google Gemini, Mistral AI, DeepSeek, OpenRouter, Groq, or xAI Grok)
• Your server must be able to make outgoing HTTPS calls to the AI provider you choose

Works With Standard CS-Cart Only

The Copilot works with your store’s default CS-Cart data — products, orders, customers, categories, and the built-in Sales Reports — plus a few standard add-ons like RMA and vendor payouts. It does not know about custom changes your developers may have added, such as:

• Custom product or order fields added outside CS-Cart’s standard features
• Custom order tables or custom checkout flows
• Custom sales reports built with code the AI hasn’t been taught about
• Data from third-party add-ons that don’t follow CS-Cart’s standard data structure

If you want the Copilot to work with your custom data too, a custom version can be built for your store — get in touch.

Installation

1. Go to Add-ons > Manage add-ons, click Manual installation, and upload the addon zip file
2. Activate the addon and enter the license key
3. Open the addon settings, pick your AI service from the AI provider dropdown, and paste that service’s API key — the “How to get your API key” panel shows step-by-step instructions and a sign-up link for whichever service you picked
4. Save, then open AI Copilot from the admin sidebar, type a question, and press send

Configuration Options

General Settings

Cost Controls

Access and Trust

Per-Vendor Settings (when vendor access is on)

Turning on “Enable AI Copilot for vendors” adds an AI Copilot tab to every vendor’s company edit page. From there you (or the vendor, if they can edit their own company) can pick which of the 8 AI services that vendor uses, paste that service’s API key (stored hidden), set a per-vendor monthly budget in USD (0 = use the store-wide budget), and turn the Copilot on or off just for that vendor. Every service also has a “How to get your API key” panel right on the settings page, so you don’t need to hunt through provider docs.

Sample Questions to Try

• “What were my top 5 sellers last month?”
• “Show me my 10 newest customers who signed up this month with their names, emails, and phone numbers.”
• “What’s running low in stock? Sort by days-until-empty.”
• “When will SKU JE-529 run out at the current sales speed?”
• “Which categories are growing fastest this quarter?”
• “How many abandoned carts do I have this week and how much are they worth?”
• “What’s my refund rate this month and which products come back most?” (needs the RMA addon)
• “Which customers spent the most this quarter?” (contact info hidden unless you add “with their names and emails”)
• “Where are sales coming from? Top 10 countries this year?”
• “How fast are we shipping orders, broken down by vendor?”
• “Show me my saved reports.” · “Run my monthly sales report with last week’s dates instead.”
• “Show me details for order #38.” · “What’s the status of orders 42, 50, and 61?”
• “Raise all prices in Men’s Clothing by 10%.” (the Copilot will preview and ask you to confirm)
• “Create a 10% off cart-wide coupon called LASTCALL that expires next Friday.”
• “Mark all Processed orders older than 14 days as Completed.”

Privacy and Security

• The AI provider only receives your question plus the numbers and short text needed to answer it — never your admin/database passwords, payment or bank details, or saved API keys and system settings
• Customer names, emails, phone numbers, and addresses are masked with stand-ins before your question leaves your server; real values are only sent (and logged) when you explicitly ask for them, and downloads/sidebar titles are always cleaned
• The AI can only use a fixed safe list of lookups and actions — all data lookups are read-only, and all your existing access rules stay in force; per-question caps (at most 10 lookups, no exact lookup repeated more than 3 times) stop loops
• Anything that changes data always asks first; Read-only mode switches off all changes at once
• On Multi-Vendor, every lookup is scoped so a vendor can only ever see their own data; report and change actions stay admin-only; vendor access is off by default
• Off-topic questions are blocked on your own server before reaching the AI; chats are private to the person who started them

Compatibility

Works with CS-Cart Multi-Vendor and Store Builder editions, Single Storefront and Multiple Storefronts, version 4.6.3 or higher.

Support

For support, updates, and feature requests, contact us at www.cartmodules.com.