How We Saved a Scaling Brand 20h/Week by Automating Inventory Forecasting

The Client: A high-growth Shopify fashion brand (US-based). The Stack: Shopify, Google Sheets, n8n, OpenAI.

The Agony: "Spreadsheet Hell" and Stockouts

Scaling a brand is great until your operations break. Our client was hitting $100k/month, but their backend was collapsing.

Their Operations Manager was spending 15+ hours every week manually downloading sales reports from Shopify, pasting them into a giant "Master Excel," and trying to guess how much stock to reorder from suppliers in China.

The result?

• Human Error: Typos in the spreadsheet led to ordering the wrong variants.

• Stockouts: Top-selling items went out of stock for weeks because they reacted too late.

• Burnout: Key talent was wasting time on data entry instead of strategy.

They tried standard Shopify apps (like Stocky), but the apps were too rigid. They needed custom logic based on their specific lead times and seasonality.

The Logic Gap

The client didn't need another SaaS subscription; they needed a custom infrastructure. They needed a system that could "think" like their best inventory manager but work 24/7 without coffee breaks.

The Architecture: Building the "Invisible Ops Manager"

We bypassed the manual work completely by building a custom automation workflow using n8n (a powerful workflow automation tool) and AI.

Here is the exact logic we implemented:

1. Real-Time Data Extraction

Instead of manual downloads, our n8n workflow connects directly to the Shopify API every night at 12:00 AM. It pulls sales velocity, current stock levels, and incoming shipments for every SKU.

2. The AI Forecast Model

We pipe this data into a custom Python script (integrated via n8n) that analyzes sales trends over the last 30, 60, and 90 days. We also use OpenAI to analyze qualitative data (like upcoming marketing campaigns) to adjust the forecast.

3. Automatic Reorder Triggers

The system calculates the exact "Reorder Point" for each SKU.

• If stock is healthy: Nothing happens.

• If stock is low: The system automatically drafts a Purchase Order (PO) PDF and sends a Slack alert to the COO for one-click approval.

Visual Note: (Aquí, si puedes, inserta una captura de pantalla de un workflow de n8n aunque sea genérica, para mostrar complejidad técnica).

The Result: 100% Accuracy, Zero Manual Work

Within 30 days of deploying this MakeSense Systems architecture, the transformation was clear:

• 20 Hours Saved Per Week: The Ops Manager no longer touches spreadsheets.

• Stockouts Reduced by 90%: The system predicts demand before it becomes a problem.

• Scalability: The workflow handles 10 orders or 10,000 orders seamlessly.

Conclusion

You cannot scale a 7-figure brand with manual spreadsheets. If you are still copying and pasting data between Shopify and your ERP/Excel, you are bleeding revenue.

Is your inventory logic holding you back?

We build the custom backend infrastructure so you can focus on growth.

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