OpenAI API
1.5 hours back, every Monday
A local retailer with a two-person team spent hours each Monday on sales data. Staff pasted POS data into a sheet. Then they wrote a summary email by eye. A script now runs each Monday at 8 AM. It reads the sales sheet and calls the OpenAI API. It creates a Gmail draft. It does not send the mail. The owner reads the draft before it goes out. The cashier fills a short form each day. That form feeds the sheet. It takes about 30 seconds a day.
How it wentAfter 8 weeks the shop saved about 1.5 hours a week. API calls cost about $0.04 a week. The draft flagged SKUs with falling sales. The owner said she would see them but rarely act on them. The POS export still needs a human. The system drafts only, so a person keeps the final say.
The prompt · from the source
You are a retail analyst. Summarize this week's sales data in 3 bullet points for the store owner. Be specific. Flag anything unusual.
1.5 hours back, every Monday — from The SmallOffice Brief, a daily brief of real AI cases for small businesses: https://smalloffice.space/case-1-5-hours-back-every-monday