What Wave AI does
Wave AI answers questions about your shop from your own figures in Wave POS. Instead of opening a report and setting its filters, you type a question the way you would ask your manager, and it looks up the sales, stock, customers or suppliers it needs to answer.
It lives in the back office, next to your reports, and it is available on the plans that include it. See pricing for which plans those are.
Questions a shop owner might ask
These are the kind of questions it answers:
- “How did we do this week compared with last week?”
- “What were our ten best-selling products in September?”
- “How much did each cashier sell yesterday?”
- “What was our gross profit last month?”
- “How much 2 kg sugar do we have in each branch, and what is its wholesale price?”
- “Which customers owe us money, and how much credit does Mama Akinyi have left?”
- “How much do we owe our sugar supplier, and how much of it is overdue?”
- “What was on receipt 000153, and who sold it?”
For a question like the first one, it can compare the two weeks’ net sales after returns, number of receipts, average basket, gross profit and margin, top products, and money taken by payment method, then tell you in a few sentences what changed.
It reads the same records your sales reports are built from, so a question is often quicker than finding the right report, choosing the dates and reading down the columns. Ask a follow-up, such as “and the week before?”, and it carries on from the last answer.
It prepares changes, and you confirm them
Wave AI can prepare changes as well as answer questions, and each change waits for your confirmation. Ask it to “set the wholesale price of 2 kg sugar to KSh 270 from 10 packets” and it shows you the change it intends to make: the item, the price before and the price after. Nothing changes until you confirm, and if you decline, nothing changes at all.
The changes it can prepare include:
- changing an item’s retail or wholesale price, or its reorder level;
- adding a customer, or recording a payment a customer made;
- adjusting stock for damage or a miscount;
- drafting a purchase from a supplier, or a stock transfer to another branch.
Drafts stay drafts. A purchase it drafts still has to be received by someone checking the delivery, and a transfer still has to be sent. See purchases and suppliers for how receiving works.
It can only do what you are allowed to do
Wave AI works with the permissions of the person asking. A cashier who cannot see reports cannot get the figures by asking it, and a stock clerk who cannot change prices cannot have it change them. A stock adjustment from someone who cannot approve adjustments still waits for a manager’s approval.
Using Wave AI is itself a permission, so you choose which roles have it. Roles and permissions are explained under cashiers and shifts.
Your own AI provider and key
The shop connects its own AI provider and key in settings: Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, Google Gemini, OpenRouter, or a local Ollama model. The account with the provider is yours, so any usage charges are between you and them. Your key is stored encrypted on the server and is never sent to the tills.
What it works from
Wave AI works from what is already recorded in Wave POS: the sales, stock, customers and suppliers your shop has entered. The better your records, the better its answers, so keep receiving purchases and doing stock takes as usual. It is part of the back office, so it needs an internet connection, while the tills keep selling offline either way.
Use it for the quick questions that would otherwise mean finding a report: yesterday’s sales, who to call about an old debt, or which supplier to pay this week.