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How to Connect Your AI Assistant to Your Merchant Account

Updated 2 hours ago

A merchant connector lets one AI assistant read across the stores under your merchant account, so multi-store owners and managers can compare locations in a single chat. Connecting at the merchant level takes a little more setup than connecting a single store, because the employee's access is controlled in three places: their Merchant Role, their Merchant Portal employee groups, and their employee groups at each store.

Connecting a single store or a brand instead? See How to Connect Your AI Assistant to Your Store or How to Connect Your AI Assistant to Your Brand.

Work through the steps below in order. Steps 1 through 3 are usually done by a merchant owner or manager.

How Merchant Connector Access Works

Setting	Where It's Set	What It Controls
Merchant Role	Merchant Portal > Settings > Employees	Whether the employee can open the Merchant Portal at all. Without a Merchant Role, they can't create a merchant connector and won't appear in Merchant Portal employee groups.
Merchant Portal employee groups	Merchant Portal > Settings > Employee Groups	What the employee can do in the Merchant Portal, including whether they can open the AI Connectors page and create a connection.
Store employee groups	Each store's Employee Groups settings	Which stores the connector can read and which reports it can run at each one.

Step 1: Give the Employee a Merchant Role

An employee needs a Merchant Role before they can open the Merchant Portal or show up in its employee groups.

Log in to the POSaBIT web portal - https://app.posabit.com
Switch to the Merchant view using the drop-down menu in the top right corner.
Select Settings, then select Employees.
Select the employee's name, then select the green Edit button under Actions.
Set their Access Level (Merchant Role) to Manager, Staff, or Budtender, then save.

Employees set to No Merchant Access can't open the Merchant Portal, don't appear in Merchant Portal employee groups, and can't connect at the merchant level. Employees with a Merchant Role can open the Merchant Portal even if they're assigned to only one store, or to none.

Step 2: Check the Employee's Merchant Portal Employee Groups

Once an employee has a Merchant Role, they appear in the Merchant Portal's employee groups and are placed in a built-in group automatically:

Owners and Managers are placed in the Managers group: Read and Manage access to every Merchant Portal page.
Staff and Budtenders are placed in the Staff group: read-only access across the Merchant Portal, with no Manage access.

To review or change their groups:

In the Merchant view, select Settings, then select Employee Groups.
Open a group and check the box next to each employee who should belong to it. You can also add an employee to a group from their profile under Settings > Employees.
To give someone different access than the built-in groups allow, create a custom group, check Read and/or Manage for each policy, and select Save.

For the connector, check this policy under General Settings:

AI Connectors: Read lets the employee open the AI Connectors page and see who is connected. Manage lets them create and remove AI Connector connections, so an employee who will connect their own assistant needs Manage. The built-in Staff group is read-only, so Staff and Budtenders need a custom group that includes Manage on AI Connectors.

Notice: If an employee belongs to more than one group, their permissions add together. The built-in groups can't be edited, so to narrow what an employee can see, move them out of a built-in group and into a custom group. See Merchant Portal Employee Groups Overview.

Step 3: Check the Employee's Access at Each Store

A merchant connector reads each store according to the employee's employee groups at that store:

At a store where the employee belongs to an employee group, the connector can run the reports that group allows.
A store where the employee has no employee group is left out of every answer. The assistant will say which stores it couldn't read.
Because access is set store by store, an employee can have full reporting at one store and limited or no reporting at another.

To include a store, assign the employee to an employee group at that store. See Merchant Employee Management Overview for adding employees to stores and store employee groups.

Step 4: Copy the Connector Address

In the Merchant view, select Settings, then select AI Connectors.
In the Setup Instructions section, copy the POSaBIT connector address. You will paste this into your AI assistant in the next step.

Step 5: Add the Connector to Your AI Assistant

Claude (individual Pro or Max plan)

In Claude, open Settings and select Connectors.
Select Add custom connector.
Enter a name, such as POSaBIT – [Merchant Name], and paste the connector address from Step 4.
Select Add, then select Connect next to the new connector.

Claude (Team or Enterprise plan)

An owner of your Claude organization must first add the connector under Admin settings > Connectors, using the address from Step 4.
Once it has been added, each team member opens Settings > Connectors and selects Connect next to the POSaBIT connector.
If the connector doesn't appear after your admin adds it, log out of Claude and log back in, or fully restart the Claude desktop app.

ChatGPT and other AI assistants

Look for the option to add a custom connector or MCP server in your assistant's settings, then paste the connector address from Step 4.
Your assistant must support custom MCP connectors. Some assistants only offer this on certain plans or require an admin to enable it.

Step 6: Sign In and Choose Your Merchant

After you select Connect, your assistant opens a POSaBIT sign-in page.
Sign in with your normal POSaBIT web portal login. Your assistant never sees or stores your password.
Choose your merchant as the account to connect. Choosing a single store instead limits the connector to that store.
Confirm to finish. You will be returned to your assistant, and the connector will show as connected.

Start a new chat and ask your assistant "Which stores can you read, and what can you see at each?" to confirm the connector is set up the way you expect. See AI Connector Example Prompts for multi-store prompts.

Troubleshooting

Issue	What to Check
The employee doesn't appear in Merchant Portal employee groups	Their Merchant Role is set to No Merchant Access. Complete Step 1.
The merchant isn't an option when signing in	The employee doesn't have a Merchant Role. Complete Step 1, then sign in again.
The AI Connectors page doesn't appear in the Merchant Portal	None of the employee's Merchant Portal employee groups include AI Connectors. Complete Step 2.
The employee can see AI Connectors but can't create a connection	Their groups have Read but not Manage on AI Connectors. Add them to a group with Manage.
The assistant says it can't read some stores	The employee has no employee group at those stores. Complete Step 3 for each store.
The assistant can't run a report at a store	The employee's employee group at that store doesn't allow it. Update their group at that store.

Good to Know

Merchant connectors are read-only, like all AI Connectors. Even an employee with Manage access can't change anything in POSaBIT through their assistant.
Your connection stays signed in for two days at a time and renews automatically while you use it. A connector unused for 15 days is disconnected automatically.
Changes to a Merchant Role or employee group apply on the assistant's next request. Start a new chat after making changes.
Customer names, contact details, and demographics, card data, and employee contact details are never shared with any connector.

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