I’m Brandon, co-founder and CTO at Nexvia. A few weeks ago we added something to Vendor ERP that we’d had in mind for a long time: VendIA, an AI assistant that lives inside the system. You write to it the way you’d write to someone on your team, and it answers with your business’s numbers.

In this article I go over what you can ask it, what it can do for you and, since it’s my job, what we do to make sure it doesn’t do what it shouldn’t.

Why we built it

Vendor already had almost every answer: the Dashboard, the Reports Center, the Price Panel, the stock movements of each item. The problem was getting to them. You had to know which report had what you were after, pick the right dates, filter by branch and sometimes cross two screens to reach a conclusion.

An owner who’s working the counter has no time for that. They want to know if they sold more than last month, why yesterday’s register closed short, or how much to raise prices after a supplier went up 8%. That’s what VendIA is for: you ask in plain language, it looks it up in the system and answers.

What you can ask it

Some real examples of what it answers today:

Sales"Did I sell more than last month?"It compares against the same stretch of the previous month, up to the same time of day, and can break it down by cashier, hour, day or payment method.
Cash"Why did yesterday's register close short?"It separates what looks like a payment recorded under the wrong method (cash missing, extra in digital) from what needs an explanation.
Prices"If my supplier goes up 8%, how much do I raise?"It simulates the increase without changing anything: how much to raise to keep your margin, how many items would sell at a loss and how the month's profit changes.
Stock"Why do I have 40 units of this item?"It goes through the stock movements and points to the one that explains it: a purchase entered twice, an adjustment, a transfer.
Purchases"How much has this supplier raised prices?"How much you bought, how costs are trending and which items have jumps that look like data entry mistakes.
Promotions"What should I put on sale?"It suggests items with the reason, the discount and the margin you keep after applying it.

It also tells you who changed an item’s price and when, which customers owe you the most, which supplier invoices are due, what to restock, how much money you have tied up in stock and why ARCA (the Argentine tax agency) rejected an invoice. And if you don’t know where something is in the system, it takes you to the screen.

The numbers come from your system

This was the first thing we defined and the one we care about most. An AI model, if you let it, will hand you a number that sounds reasonable. For a business, that’s worse than no answer at all.

That’s why VendIA doesn’t “know” your sales by heart. Every time it needs a figure, it runs a query against the system, just like a report would, and answers with what that query returns. If it has no way to get a figure, it tells you so.

Every amount, quantity or price VendIA shows you comes from a query to your system. If it can't get it, it says so instead of estimating.

It also uses the same calculations as the rest of Vendor. VendIA’s sales figures are calculated exactly like the Dashboard’s: point of sale, invoices and receipts, minus credit notes. If the Dashboard and VendIA ever disagree, that’s a bug on our side and we want to hear about it.

And so you don’t have to take its word for it, it tells you which period it compared against and, when the answer comes from a report, gives you the link to open it. It can misread a question, like anyone can, and this way you spot it right away.

It can take action, but only when you confirm

VendIA doesn’t stop at answering. It can also:

  • Adjust sale prices by a percentage: “raise Coca-Cola soft drinks 10%”, “lower cookies 5%”, with rounding if you ask for it.
  • Add a customer.
  • Draft a purchase order for a supplier with what needs restocking. It stays as a draft for you to review.
  • Read a purchase invoice you send as a photo or PDF and leave it ready in the purchases form. It only gets recorded when you review and save it, just like with AI invoice loading.

None of these actions run on their own. With a price adjustment, for example, it goes like this:

  1. You ask for something"Raise Coca-Cola soft drinks 10%."
  2. VendIA prepares the proposalIt finds the items that match. If a name is ambiguous (a brand that also shows up in other products' names, for example), it asks which one you mean.
  3. You see a card with a previewHow many items change and examples of the new prices. That's also where you choose whether it applies only to the base price or to your price lists too.
  4. You confirm or cancelNothing changes until you hit confirm. And if you change your mind later, you ask it to undo it.

Adjustments always apply to the sale price, never to the cost. Costs are still changed from a purchase invoice or from the Price Panel, which is where that belongs.

How we keep it safe

As the person in charge of security, this is the part I looked at most closely:

  • It respects each user's permissions. Every query checks what the person asking is allowed to see, using the same rules as the system's screen. If a cashier has cash balances hidden, VendIA won't tell them either.
  • Actions are checked twice. Permission is checked when the proposal is prepared and again when you hit confirm.
  • It doesn't follow instructions hidden in your data. If an item name or a customer note contains text that looks like a command, VendIA treats it as just more data. And its rules don't change even if someone insists or claims they have authorization.
  • Your conversations stay in your company's database. In Vendor every company has its own database, and VendIA's history lives there, separate from everyone else's.
  • It sends only what's needed. VendIA runs on Claude, Anthropic's AI model, through its business API. Each question sends the question, any attachments and the results of the queries needed to answer it, not your whole database.
  • We test it before every change. We have 46 test questions we run against the real model, plus deliberate attempts to trick it into showing what it shouldn't, before adding anything new.

What VendIA doesn’t do yet

I’d rather you know before you use it:

  • It doesn’t create promotions. It suggests which ones and takes you to the Promotions screen to set them up.
  • It doesn’t change costs. That still goes through the purchase invoice or the Price Panel.
  • It doesn’t record invoices on its own. It leaves them ready for you to review.
  • For “how do I do this” questions it relies on the Knowledge Center guides, which we’re still filling in. If it can’t find a guide that covers it, it tells you and takes you to the section, instead of making up steps or buttons that don’t exist.
  • It can misunderstand what you asked. That’s why it tells you what it looked at and links to the report.

How to start using it

VendIA shows up in Vendor ERP as a chat window you open from the top bar, on any screen. You can type to it, send a photo or a PDF, and pick up a conversation from another day from the history.

We’re rolling it out gradually to businesses that already use Vendor, so we can stay close during the first few weeks. If you work with Vendor ERP and want to try it, get in touch and we’ll enable it on your account. If you don’t use Vendor yet, we’ll show you the full system, VendIA included, in a demo.

Frequently asked questions

What is VendIA? It’s Vendor ERP’s AI assistant: a chat window inside the system. You ask in plain language about your sales, cash register, purchases, prices, stock, customers or suppliers, and it answers with your business data.

Can VendIA make up numbers? It’s built not to. Every amount, quantity or price it shows you comes from a query to your system, and if it has no way to get a figure, it tells you so. Sales are calculated exactly like on the Dashboard. What can happen is that it misreads a question, which is why it tells you which period it looked at and links to the report so you can check.

Can it change prices or data without me knowing? No. Actions (adjusting prices, adding a customer, drafting a purchase order) show up as a card with a preview and are not applied until you hit confirm. A confirmed price adjustment can also be undone by asking for it.

Can an employee use VendIA to see something they’re not allowed to? VendIA works with the permissions of the user asking, using the same rules as the matching screen in the system. If a cashier has cash balances hidden, VendIA won’t tell them either: it replies that they don’t have permission.

Where does my business data go? VendIA runs on Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, through its business API. Each question sends the question, any attachments and the results of the queries needed to answer it, not your whole database. The conversation history is stored in your company’s own database.

How do I turn it on? We’re rolling it out gradually to businesses that already use Vendor ERP. If you work with Vendor and want to try it, get in touch and we’ll enable it on your account.

Try it with your own business questions

The best way to find out if VendIA works for you is to ask it the questions that take you ten minutes of reports today. If you already use Vendor ERP, we’ll enable it on your account. If not, we’ll go through it together in a demo of the full system.

Get in touch and let’s set it up.