Do our staff need to install or learn anything?
No. They receive a normal WhatsApp message from a verified business number and reply with taps, a photo, or a short form that opens in the chat. There is no app, no login and no training session — which is exactly why it gets used.
Is this an unofficial WhatsApp bot? Will our number get banned?
It is not. We build on Meta's official WhatsApp Business Platform: a verified business sender, message templates submitted for Meta's approval, and conversation charges billed transparently by Meta. Unofficial automation risks the number being cut off — we don't use it.
How accurate is reading figures off a receipt photo?
Each slip is checked several ways before anything is stored: every meal period must be present, the scan must clear a confidence threshold, the header must match a brand that outlet trades, the date must be the right trading day, and gross minus discounts must equal net. If any check fails, the supervisor is told which set and why, and re-sends that one photo. Nothing partial is ever stored.
What if somebody forgets, or a store didn't open?
Whoever hasn't submitted gets one private reminder, and the outstanding list goes to the ops group twice before the report is produced. An outlet that didn't trade simply doesn't submit and shows as missing for the day — we suppress named outlets for a date on request rather than making every supervisor declare a closure.
How many people can be in the ops or management group?
Eight. That is the official WhatsApp platform's limit for a group we can post into, not ours, so the ops and management groups are set up small and senior — the people who act on a missing report rather than everyone who might glance at it. Anyone outside that group reads the same report from the download portal.
Can you automate a workflow that isn't reporting or rostering?
Usually, yes. If it involves asking a distributed team the same thing on a schedule, collecting something back, chasing whoever didn't respond, and turning the result into a report — that is the shape we build. Tell us the current process and we'll tell you honestly whether WhatsApp is the right place for it.
Who administers the system day to day?
We do. There is no admin console for you to staff. Setup, configuration changes, corrections and monitoring sit with us; your side of it is a reporting portal for downloading reports, and a WhatsApp thread when you want something changed.
Where does our data live?
In a dedicated, access-controlled database per deployment, hosted in the cloud with encrypted transport and backups. Submissions, corrections and their history are retained so figures stay auditable. Happy to go through the specifics with your IT team.
How long before we're live?
Typically four to six weeks from kickoff to a pilot outlet running, with Meta's template approval usually the longest single wait. Rollout across the rest of the estate is a matter of days per batch once the pilot is stable.