The Build Lab · Case study · Suppliers

The Supplier Update Machine

Every week each maker gets their sales by email, and every month a proper report. Nobody types a thing.

Try it yourself Watch it in action ↓
Screenshot of The Supplier Update Machine

The problem

A gift shop stocks 32 local makers and spends Monday mornings working out who sold what, then writing to each of them.

What I built

A workflow that reads the week's till sales, splits them by maker, emails each one what sold and what is running low, and sends a monthly report with totals, best sellers and what they are owed.

What it replaces

Monday mornings of spreadsheets and 32 separate emails.

Who it's for

Gift shops, galleries, farm shops and concept stores that sell stock from lots of small makers or on consignment.

How it works

  1. Every Monday the workflow reads last week's sales from the till system.
  2. Sales are matched to each maker using the product list, so every supplier's items are grouped together.
  3. Claude writes each maker a short, friendly email with what sold, what is running low and anything to note, and queues them for approval.
  4. On the first of the month each maker gets a report with units sold, revenue, best sellers, stock left and what they are owed.

The result

Every maker kept in the loop without the Monday spreadsheet, and month-end payouts that are already worked out.

Connects to

  • Square POS
  • Google Sheets
  • Gmail
  • Xero

Demo video

Watch it work

Live demo

Try it yourself

Everything below works. The business and data are made up; the real version is built around your business and your tools.

Wren & Willow Hebden Bridge
Sample data EH

Automations

Supplier updates Active

Weekly sales to 32 makers every Monday at 07:00 · Monthly report on the 1st · Owner: Esme Hart

Weekly Every Monday

Monthly branch 1st of the month

Every Monday 7:00

Schedule · Europe/London

Fired 07:00:00

Get last week’s sales

Square POS · 21 to 27 Sep

526 items · £8,458.50

Match items to makers

Google Sheets · 1,146 products

32 makers · 0 unmatched

Draft one email per maker

Claude · sales, stock, a note

32 drafts

Queue for approval

Gmail · makers inbox

32 waiting

1st of the month 7:00

Next: Thu 1 Oct

Month of matched sales

Build a report for each maker

Claude · PDF, payout from Xero

One PDF per maker

Email report

Gmail · PDF attached

How I built this

I built this demo with Claude to show what supplier admin can look like when the till, the product list and the inbox talk to each other.

The real version reads sales from the till every Monday, uses the shop's own product list to work out whose item is whose, and asks Claude to write each maker a short note in the owner's voice. Nothing goes out until she has had a look and pressed approve.

On the 1st of the month it builds each maker a proper report with their totals, best sellers, stock left and what they are owed, and takes the payout date from Xero.

This demo runs on sample data for a made-up gift shop.

Questions

Frequently asked

How can I automatically email suppliers their weekly sales?

Export last week's sales from your till, group them by supplier, then send each supplier a short email with their figures. The simplest version is a Google Sheet that pulls a weekly sales export, a column that maps every product to its maker, and a mail merge. The automated version runs on a schedule: Zapier or Make reads the sales from your till system, Claude writes each email in your tone, and the drafts wait in Gmail or Outlook for you to approve. The one thing you must get right first is the product-to-maker list, because every report depends on it.

What should a monthly consignment report for makers include?

A good consignment report shows units sold, sales value, your commission, the amount owed to the maker, current stock left and the date they will be paid. Adding best sellers and slow lines turns it from a statement into something useful, because it tells the maker what to restock and what to rethink. In the demo each maker gets a PDF on the first of the month with sales by week and a payout figure taken from the accounts. Keep the layout identical every month so makers can compare at a glance and questions drop off.

Which till and accounts systems does this work with?

It works with any till system that can export sales by product, which covers most of them. The demo uses Square, and the same approach suits Shopify POS, SumUp, Lightspeed, Epos Now and Zettle. Square and Shopify have well-documented APIs that Zapier and Make connect to directly; for others a scheduled CSV export into Google Sheets or Google Drive works fine. For the payout side, Xero, FreeAgent and Sage can all hold the supplier bills. If your till only exports a spreadsheet, start there. It is slower to set up but costs nothing extra.

How much does it cost to automate supplier sales updates?

The cheapest route costs nothing extra: a weekly till export, a Google Sheet with formulas and a Gmail mail merge add-on, which takes an afternoon to set up. Adding Claude to write friendlier emails and spot low stock usually means a Claude Pro plan at around £20 a month. Fully hands-off, where the sales are pulled for you each week, usually adds Zapier or Make. Both have free plans, and paid tiers depend on how many makers and steps you run. Setup time is typically a few days, most of it spent tidying the product list.

Is it safe to let AI email my suppliers?

Yes, as long as drafts wait for your approval before anything is sent, which is how the demo works. Each maker should only ever see their own figures, so test the grouping carefully before switching anything on; one wrong mapping could send one maker's sales to another. Supplier contact details are personal data under UK GDPR when makers are sole traders, so keep them in your own accounts, use tools with a proper data processing agreement, and give Claude only the access the job needs, such as sending from one shop inbox.

What can go wrong with automated supplier reports?

The usual problems are data problems, not AI problems. A product added to the till without a maker tag, a refund processed on a different week, or a maker who changes their commission rate will all make the figures wrong. Build in a quick weekly check of anything untagged, and have the monthly totals reconciled against your accounts before payouts go out. If you pay makers against your statements rather than their invoices, ask your accountant whether you need a self-billing agreement. AI can draft the numbers, but you still sign off what gets paid.

Can I get help setting this up?

Yes. My 1:1 AI implementation is done-with-you support over six weeks: we build the supplier workflow together around the tools you already use, so you understand every step and can keep it running without me. It is not a done-for-you service, and it suits people who want to learn the skill rather than hand it off. If you would rather go it alone, the answers on this page are enough to get a first version working, and starting small is the right call either way.

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