Omnichannel Sales Agent

What is the Omnichannel Sales Agent?

Selling the same products on Shopify, WooCommerce, eBay and BigCommerce means every sale has to reach one stock count — or the next customer buys a unit that is already gone. The Omnichannel Sales Agent reads the orders of your sales channels, takes each sale off your master store's stock exactly once, and then has your Inventory Stock Sync push the new quantity to every channel.

You choose a master store and the channels whose sales should reach it. Every 5 minutes, for every order line that changed, the agent works out how many units the line holds out of stock, compares that with what it already applied, and — depending on the mode — reports the difference, proposes it, or writes it to the master and reads it back.

The rule for one order line is deliberately simple:

difference owed = units the line holds now × units per item − units already applied

A sale takes units off, a cancellation puts them back, and a line seen again that has not changed owes nothing.

The master stays the only stock of record

LinkyFlow does not become your stock system. The master store holds the only stock that counts. LinkyFlow keeps a journal of the order lines it applied, the movements it wrote and where each channel's reading stands — never a quantity of its own. Every movement is computed from a fresh reading of the master, and every write is read back from it.

The agent never creates an order in the master: an eBay sale does not become a Shopify order, so your master's sales, revenue, taxes, payments and fulfilment stay exactly as they were. It only moves the stock.

How a sale reaches the master

1. The channels are read — the orders changed since the previous read, oldest change first, with a five-minute overlap so that an order indexed late is not missed. A Shopify order notification starts a read at once; the other platforms are read on the 5-minute schedule.
2. Each order line is journaled, keyed by the channel, the order and the line. Reading the same order twice lands on the same row.
3. The differences are grouped per master SKU — one movement per SKU, so a sale and a cancellation of the same SKU net out.
4. Each movement is handled by the mode — reported, proposed, or written.
5. The write is read back. A movement counts as applied only when the quantity read back is the one wanted.
6. Only then is the change announced. The agent publishes inventory.master_changed for the confirmed SKUs, and your linked Inventory Stock Sync runs on those SKUs alone.

A run reads at most six hours of orders per channel: after a downtime, the backlog is caught up over the next runs, and a channel's reading moves forward only once a window has been read and journaled to its end. Nothing is lost while LinkyFlow is unreachable.

Never counted twice

• The same order read again — the overlap between runs, a notification and the schedule seeing the same change, an order modified later — applies only the part of the line that changed.
• The master's own sales are already on its stock: they are observed as COUNTED_BY_MASTER and never applied.
• A channel the master already records — an app or an OMS that imports its orders into the master — is set as such on that channel, and its sales are observed, never applied.
• A channel you have not stated, whose orders the master seems to record (an order on the master that came from that channel's platform), is held as DOUBLE_COUNT_SUSPECTED until you say which it is.
• One channel, one agent. Two agents that write cannot apply the same channel's sales to the same master: the second configuration is refused, naming the first.

Orders placed before the agent started

The first time the agent reads a channel, it notes the moment: orders placed before it are observed as BASELINE and never applied, whatever happens to them later — a cancellation of a sale the agent never took off must not put stock back. There is no backfill of past sales.

The same holds when you switch modes: sales watched in Monitor mode are not applied later. When you switch to Approval or Auto, the agent applies the orders placed from then on — if the master missed some before, correct it there.

Which stores are supported?

The same platform can be used for several channels — two eBay accounts, say. A channel cannot be the master itself, and a channel cannot be listed twice.

A master with several locations holding stock must be told which one the agent writes; the agent never sums locations and never picks one for you.

Three modes

Every agent starts in Monitor. Switching to Auto is the one setting that lets the agent change your master's stock on its own.

An approval is for the exact movement you were shown: before writing, the agent reads the master again and writes the movement exactly as Auto mode would. If another order changed the SKU since, nothing is written and a fresh proposal replaces it. Approving the same proposal twice writes nothing the second time, and a rejection stands as long as the orders behind it do not change.

Safe writes and guard-rails

• One movement, at most 50 units per SKU by default. A larger one — a channel pointed at the wrong store, a quantity typed 200 instead of 2 — is WRITE_BLOCKED and waits for you. You can change the limit per agent.
• A sale during the write. On Shopify the write carries the quantity just read and is refused if it moved; the agent reads again and retries, up to three times. On BigCommerce the difference is applied to whatever the location holds when it arrives.
• A write the master refused, or a master that could not be read first, is WRITE_FAILED: nothing was applied, and the next run tries again.
• A write whose outcome nobody can know — a timeout, an answer lost — is settled by reading the master back. When even that cannot tell, the movement is WRITE_UNCONFIRMED and is never sent again on its own, since a second write could take the sale off twice: you say whether it landed.
• Nothing is announced before it is confirmed. A movement proposed, blocked, failed or unconfirmed starts no Stock Sync.

Cancellations, returns and refunds

What a line holds out of stock follows the order's state, as each platform states it:

A refund is not a return. Money going back says nothing about the goods: units go back to the master only when the order is cancelled or the store states they were restocked.

Packs and bundles

A channel may sell a pack that the master stocks as separate units. Tell the agent with a SKU mapping — the channel SKU and the master SKUs one unit of it takes, each with a quantity — and a sale of the pack takes those units off. Nothing is inferred: without a mapping, a SKU the master does not hold is SKU_NOT_FOUND, and nothing is written.

Then the Stock Sync

Link the agent to the Inventory Stock Sync that replicates this master — the same store, at the same location; any other is refused, and so is a link that would make agents trigger one another in a loop. Each time the master is confirmed, the agent announces the SKUs that moved, and the Stock Sync runs on those SKUs alone — reading them fresh at the master and every target, with its own guard-rails and read-back — rather than walking 100,000 SKUs for one sale.

Announcements are grouped, so a hundred orders of a few SKUs start a few targeted runs, not a hundred full ones. A Stock Sync that is busy or unreachable is retried after 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 1 hour and 3 hours; after six attempts the agent opens a SYNC_TRIGGER_FAILED case. The hourly full Stock Sync stays in any case, as a safety net. In Auto mode, a sale the master counted itself also starts the Stock Sync on that SKU, so the channels hear of it sooner.

Without a linked Stock Sync, the master is still kept exact, and your hourly Stock Sync propagates it.

Overselling, honestly

Reading an order after it was placed can never make two sales of the last unit impossible. This agent shortens the window in which it can happen — from an hour to minutes — but it does not reserve stock, and a safety stock on the Stock Sync is a buffer, not a reservation. When it happens, the master goes below zero and the agent reports OVERSOLD, so you can act on it.

Exceptions are cases, not alerts

Every result that needs you is a case about one thing: a master SKU (not found, ambiguous, a write that failed or was blocked, an oversell), an order line with no SKU, a channel held for double counting, or a Stock Sync that could not be started. A thousand orders of an unknown SKU are one case with a count, and a case closes itself when a later run finds the problem gone.

What a run did, later

What one run decided — every order line it saw, how it was accounted for, the movement it went out in, the master quantity before and after, and the announcement it was part of — is kept as that run's own record for 30 days, and does not change afterwards.

Reviewing results in Excel and on the web

Four live views are available, in the web workspace and as a connected Excel workbook:

• Current sales — one row per order line and master SKU: the channel, the order, the quantities, whether the master or the agent accounts for it, what it moved the master by, and the result.
• Open exceptions — the cases that need you.
• Runs — one row per run: lines read, lines applied, movements by result, units moved, and the Stock Sync runs started.
• Historical run detail — the rows of one specific run, kept for 30 days.

Asking ChatGPT or Claude

With LinkyFlow connected to ChatGPT, Claude or any MCP client:

Set up omnichannel sales: master "EU boutique", channels my eBay account and "Outlet", linked to my stock sync, in monitor mode.

Which sales are waiting to be applied to the master?

Show me the order lines that could not be applied, and why.

Approve the proposed master movements for MUG-1.

Switch omnichannel sales to auto mode.

The last one lets the agent change your master's stock on its own, and the assistant tells you so before it is made.

Current limitations

• The master is written on Shopify and BigCommerce only. A WooCommerce or eBay master is monitored, never written.
• Notifications from Shopify only. WooCommerce, eBay and BigCommerce orders are read every 5 minutes.
• No backfill. Orders placed before the agent first read a channel, or before it was allowed to write, are never applied.
• Exact SKU only. Packs and bundles through explicit mappings; no matching by title, barcode or similarity.
• One location per master. Locations are never summed.
• The only write is the master's stock quantity. No order, refund, price, product or listing is touched, and the channels' stock is the Stock Sync's job.
• It does not reserve stock. It shortens the overselling window; it cannot close it.
• Detailed run data is kept for 30 days. Run summaries and the current sales stay.

Next steps

• Inventory Stock Sync Agent
• Connect Shopify
• Connect WooCommerce
• Connect eBay
• Connect BigCommerce