Insights · v0.7.0

Ask Claude about your business. Get real numbers.

SideQuest already automates inbound POs into QuickBooks. Now it answers questions about them, too. Type a question in Claude Desktop — Insights pulls from your local processed-PO history and your live QuickBooks, then comes back with structured data.

What are my top 10 SKUs by quantity this month?

[calls report_top_items(period="mtd", limit=10, metric="qty")]
Your top 5 this month are BR-ELB-050-NPT (1,240 units), STL-BOLT-050-13-2 (820), W-100 (640), GLV-NIT-L-100 (210), and...

Two pillars, one connector

Order entry → QuickBooks

The original product. Gmail in, QB Estimate out, with a draft you review before submitting.

Insights → Claude Desktop

The new pillar. Eight built-in reports answer the questions distributors actually ask, in plain English.

The eight reports that ship in v0.7.0

Local reports read what the connector has actually processed. QB reports pull live from your QuickBooks. Mix and match.

report_pos_processed Local

"How many POs did we process last month?"

Throughput counter. Returns the count of POs processed, estimates submitted, drafts broken down by status (draft / submitted / discarded), and the total dollar value of submitted estimates in the period.

Params: period · all · today · 7d · 30d · mtd · ytd.

report_top_items Local

"What SKUs are customers ordering the most this quarter?"

The most-ordered SKUs across the POs you've processed. Reflects what's hitting your inbox — useful for spotting items to keep in stock or restock priority.

Params: period, limit (default 10), metric — qty · revenue · line_count.

report_top_customers Local

"Which customers send us the most POs this year?"

Customers ranked by activity. Switch the metric to revenue to rank by the dollar value of submitted estimates, or line_count to spot the customer with the most line-item complexity.

Params: period, limit, metric — po_count · line_count · revenue.

report_match_quality Local

"How's the matcher doing this month? What's tripping it up?"

Automation health. Returns clean-match rate, flagged-for-review rate, and the top reasons lines got flagged. The fastest way to spot which buyer format or part-number convention needs a cross-reference row.

Params: period.

report_time_saved Local

"How much time did SideQuest save me last month at 15 minutes per PO and $35 per hour?"

Time and labor savings at the assumptions you supply. Honest framing: this is an estimate built on your numbers, not a measured ROI.

Params: period, minutes_per_po (default 12), hourly_rate (default 30).

report_qb_top_items QuickBooks

"What are my top-selling items in QuickBooks YTD?"

QB ItemSales — top items by revenue, pulled live from your QuickBooks Online account. Useful for the bigger picture across all sales, not just what the connector processed.

Params: start_date, end_date (ISO YYYY-MM-DD), limit.

report_qb_top_customers QuickBooks

"Who are my top customers by revenue this quarter in QB?"

QB CustomerSales — customer revenue concentration. Live data straight from QuickBooks. Handy for quarterly review or concentration-risk thinking.

Params: start_date, end_date, limit.

list_reports Discovery

"What can SideQuest tell me about my business?"

Returns the catalog of reports above, with example questions and supported parameters. Call this first when you're not sure which report fits — Claude uses it to pick the right tool on your behalf.

How to use it

If you already have SideQuest v0.7.0 installed, there's nothing extra to set up. Insights is built into the connector. Just open Claude Desktop and ask:

Which customers send us the most POs?

3 customers in the last 30 days. Acme Plumbing Supply leads with 11 POs (45 lines, $4,820 submitted). BuildCo Contractors second at 7 POs. Riverside Maintenance third at 4. Want me to break that out by week?

How's the matcher doing this month — anything tripping it up?

Clean-match rate is 88% (123 of 140 lines matched without review). Top review reasons: description_fuzzy (9 lines, mostly from Acme's PO format), customer_part_not_found (5 lines, BuildCo), short_description (3 lines). Want me to add cross-reference rows for the Acme part numbers?

Top SKUs by revenue YTD across our processed POs.

Across 487 POs processed this year, top 5 by revenue: BR-ELB-050-NPT ($18,420), Z-9000 industrial valve ($12,800), STL-BOLT-050-13-2 ($8,360), GLV-NIT-L-100 ($6,250), CON-ELL-100-CU ($4,780). The full list has 142 distinct SKUs.

If you'd rather call the tools directly (for scripting or a CRM integration), every report is exposed as a regular MCP tool. See the operator runbook for the full surface and parameter shapes.

Local data vs. QuickBooks data — when to use which

Two of the reports go live to QuickBooks (the ones tagged QuickBooks above). The other five read your local SQLite stores — ~/.qb-distributor-mcp/drafts.sqlite and ~/.qb-distributor-mcp/usage.sqlite — that the connector writes to as it processes POs.

Local reports surface things QB doesn't track:

Review-flag rate and the reasons behind them
Which customer formats trip the matcher most often
How much operator time you've saved at your stated labor cost
What's hitting your inbox before it ever becomes an Estimate

QB reports surface what QuickBooks knows that the connector can't: your full sales history (not just the POs we processed), customer revenue concentration, item sales rollups across every channel.

Honest framing. Local reports reflect what the connector has processed since you installed it. They're not a substitute for QB's full financial reports — they're a complementary lens. The first month after install, the local reports will be thin. By month three, they're the most useful view of your PO automation health.

Setting it up

If you're already running SideQuest, bump to v0.7.0 and Insights is live. From the install prompt or the diagnose prompt:

Download the latest sidequest-connector.zip (v0.7.0 or higher).
Unzip, run the install script for your OS — see quick-start if you're new.
In Claude Desktop, ask: "what reports can SideQuest run?" — Claude calls list_reports and tells you.

If you're new to SideQuest, start with the install prompt. Insights ships in the box with no separate setup, no extra credentials, no extra subscription.

Pricing

Insights is included in every paid SideQuest tier and the free tier. There's no separate analytics add-on. Reports cost nothing to run — they read local data and call QB's existing API. See the full pricing page for tier limits on PO throughput; report calls don't count against your monthly PO quota.

What's next

Slow-moving inventory. Cross-reference your QB on-hand quantities with what's selling locally — flag items you have but no one's ordering.
Price-trend report. Track unit-price changes per SKU across the POs we've processed.
Customer-format fingerprint. Per-customer match quality, so you can identify which buyers need the most touch-up before submission.

SideQuest Automation · sidequestautomation.com

See v0.7.0 in the changelog · Questions?