How to Connect Your First Data Source

If you run a market stall, food stand, shop/kiosk, salon or repair business and picked the POS track during onboarding, you can skip this whole article — your sales and stock already live inside your till, nothing external to connect. This guide is for the Business Intelligence track: Courier, Ecommerce, Services, Distributor, Manufacturer, Importer and Exporter businesses connecting an external platform.

AskBiz becomes a genuinely useful AI business analyst when it can see your actual numbers. Without a connected source, it can only answer general questions. With one connected, it answers questions like 'Why did revenue drop last Tuesday?' or 'Which product has the highest margin?' with your real data.

Navigate to /sources from the left sidebar (the plug icon). Connectors are grouped by category:

• E-Commerce — Shopify, Amazon FBA, eBay, Etsy, WooCommerce, Walmart, Jumia
• Accounting — QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, FreeAgent, Wave
• Payments — Stripe, PayPal, GoCardless, Klarna, SumUp
• Marketing & Ads — Meta Ads, Google Ads, Google Analytics, Klaviyo, Mailchimp
• Social Commerce — TikTok Shop, Instagram Shopping, Pinterest
• Inventory & Logistics — Linnworks, Cin7, ShipStation, Royal Mail
• Point of Sale — connect your own AskBiz till directly, if you also use the wider Business Intelligence tools
• Manual — Google Sheets, CSV/Excel upload

New connectors are added regularly — if yours isn't listed yet, CSV upload covers almost anything in the meantime.

Most major platforms — including Shopify, Amazon FBA, eBay, Etsy, QuickBooks, Xero, FreeAgent, PayPal, GoCardless, TikTok Shop, Instagram, and the Google and Meta ad connectors — use one-click OAuth: click Connect, log in to the platform, and grant read-only access. AskBiz never sees or stores your login credentials for these. A handful of others (Stripe, WooCommerce, Walmart, Sage, Wave, Klarna, SumUp, Klaviyo, Pinterest, Cin7, ShipStation, Royal Mail) ask you to paste an API key instead, with on-screen instructions for exactly where to find it. Either way, the connection is:

• Read-only — AskBiz cannot place orders, modify listings, or change settings on your behalf
• Revocable at any time — from /sources or from the platform itself

If your platform isn't listed, or you want to analyse historical data, use the CSV Upload connector. Supported formats: .csv, .xlsx, .xls. Accepted column headers are flexible — AskBiz uses AI to map your columns to the right fields (revenue, date, product, quantity, etc.). For best results, include a date column and at least one numeric column (sales, revenue, or orders).

AskBiz will:

1. Pull your recent data (window varies by connector)

2. Run anomaly detection across the dataset

3. Calculate your Business Pulse score

4. Queue your first Daily Brief for the next morning

You'll see a progress indicator on the /sources page while the initial sync runs.