An MCP server that connects ChatGPT, Claude and Grok to your apparel ERP
AIMS360 runs its own MCP server, so the AI assistant your team already uses can work with your live ERP data. ChatGPT connects through the AIMS360 plugin in the ChatGPT directory. Claude and Grok connect to the same server as a custom connector. Its 17 tools cover orders, invoices, customers, purchase orders, inventory and inventory adjustments, and four of them create and update orders and customers after you approve a preview. The AI connection launched in the June 2026 release.
Everyone signs in as themselves through AIMS360 Runway, so the assistant can't do anything that person couldn't do by signing in. It's an add-on available on every AIMS360 plan, and as of October 2026 there's no charge for it. Allocation and invoicing from the chat are coming soon, and style setup is planned for version 26.11.02 in November 2026.
Which ERP systems connect to ChatGPT, Claude and Grok?
A growing number. Microsoft has shipped MCP servers for Dynamics 365 finance and operations and for Business Central, and other vendors have followed, including some that sell to apparel and consumer brands. So ask each vendor what its AI connection can read and do, which plan it needs, and what it costs. Our ERP MCP server comparison checks 16 systems, including ApparelMagic, Sync, NetSuite and Business Central, against each vendor's own documentation. AIMS360 runs its own MCP server, ChatGPT, Claude and Grok all connect to live AIMS360 data, and AIMS360 is listed in the ChatGPT plugin directory.
The three connections differ in how you get them, not in what they can see.
| Assistant | How the connection works | How you get it |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | The AIMS360 plugin, published in the ChatGPT plugin directory and reviewed by OpenAI, signed in against your own AIMS360 tenant | Search for AIMS360 under Plugins in ChatGPT, install it, and sign in on the AIMS360 Runway login page |
| Claude | The AIMS360 MCP server, added as a custom connector | AIMS360's implementation team issues the connector URL and OAuth client ID. You add it under Customize, then Connectors, and sign in through Runway |
| Grok | The same AIMS360 MCP server that serves Claude | AIMS360 provisions it for your tenant |
Using a different assistant? The server is built on the open MCP standard. Ask us and we'll confirm whether your assistant works with it before you roll it out.
Back to top ↑The 17 tools on the AIMS360 MCP server
Every connection exposes the same defined set of tools. Thirteen only read. Four create or update records, and those always show a preview and wait for approval before they save. Each person sees only the tools their organization gave them.
| Tool | Type | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Get Connection Details | Read | Shows which AIMS360 company and login the chat is connected as, and that user's role. The access token is never returned. |
| Orders Analysis | Read | Totals, rankings and trends on booked orders: open backlog, units booked and cancelled, by customer, style, color, size, season, rep or date. Built-in shortcuts for overdue and unallocated orders. |
| Get Orders Details | Read | One order with its lines and allocations, or a filtered list such as open orders on hold. |
| Invoices Analysis | Read | Sales, units shipped, net sales, gross margin, margin percent and average unit retail, by customer, style, color, size, channel, Shopify store or date. Shortcuts for overdue invoices and outstanding balance. |
| Get Invoices Details | Read | One invoice with its lines by size, or a filtered list such as invoices due next week. |
| Customers Analysis | Read | The customer master: accounts by classification, state, rep or terms, credit limits, and A/R aging from not yet due to more than 90 days past due. |
| Get Customers Details | Read | One customer account record, or a filtered list such as accounts on NET 30. |
| Purchase Orders Analysis | Read | What you've ordered from vendors, finished goods or raw materials: units and value ordered, open, received and cancelled, by vendor, warehouse, status, issued date or in-warehouse date. |
| Get Purchase Orders Details | Read | One purchase order, or a filtered list such as purchase orders landing in November. |
| Inventory Analysis | Read | Stock as it stands right now by warehouse, bin, style, color and size: available, on hand, allocated, picked and packed. |
| Search Inventory | Read | Finds stock rows, such as which bins hold a style or what one warehouse has of it. |
| Style Inventory Adjustments Analysis | Read | The ledger of stock movements over a period: net change by transaction type, style, warehouse, bin or the user who entered it. |
| Search Style Inventory Adjustments | Read | Lists individual stock movements, such as every adjustment to one style last week. |
| Create Order | Create / update | Creates a sales order with lines and sizes. Previews every line plus the unit and dollar totals first, and saves on Hold unless you ask for Open. See AI order entry from email. |
| Update Order | Create / update | Changes an Open or Hold order: header fields, quantities by size, or a new line. Previews each change as current and new value first. |
| Create Customer | Create / update | Creates a customer account with the five-character account code you give it. Refuses a code that's already in use. |
| Update Customer | Create / update | Changes fields on an existing customer account. Previews each change as current and new value first. |
Tool names as they appear in ChatGPT and Claude, October 2026. There's no delete tool.
Back to top ↑What you can ask, in the words you'd actually use
These aren't canned reports. They're examples of wording that works, because AIMS360 resolves business language to the right fields behind the scenes. Reporting in most ERPs is a skill: you need to know which report, which filters, which date field. Here anyone who can type a sentence can get the number.
“What did we sell last month, by customer?” “Which open orders have no allocation?” “Margin by style for the spring line.” “Which customers are more than 60 days past due, and by how much?” “Which purchase orders land in the warehouse next month?” “How many units of style 1042 are available in each warehouse?” “Show inventory adjustments by transaction type for last month.” “Create an order for this customer: style 1042 in black, 12 medium and 12 large, spring season.” “Move the complete date on order 1000114 to November 15.” Back to top ↑What an AI assistant can actually see
Orders cover the booked side of the business. Invoices cover what shipped and sold. Booked and shipped are kept separate, so the word sales is never ambiguous. Customers, purchase orders and inventory round out the picture.
| Area | Break it down by | Measure it in |
|---|---|---|
| Orders Booked and open backlog |
Customer, style, color, size, season, division, sales rep, ship-to state, order source, payment terms, carrier, buyer, vendor, cancellation reason, created, start and complete date | Ordered amount, open amount, shipped amount, cancelled amount, order count, units booked, open and cancelled |
| Invoices Shipped, sold and billed |
Customer, style, color, size, season, division, sales rep, bill-to and ship-to state, order source, Shopify store, retail or DTC, payment terms, carrier, invoice date, due date | Total amount, merchandise, balance, invoice count, units shipped, units back-ordered, net sales, gross margin, margin percent, average unit retail |
| Customers Accounts and receivables |
Customer, classification, status, sales rep, state, country, payment terms, carrier, division, preferred warehouse, region | Account count, credit limit, total A/R with aging: not yet due, 1 to 30, 31 to 60, 61 to 90 and over 90 days past due |
| Purchase orders What you've bought from vendors |
Vendor, PO status, PO type (style or material), division, warehouse, country of origin, issued date, in-warehouse date | Units and value ordered, open, received, cancelled and damaged, units allocated and in WIP |
| Inventory Stock right now |
Warehouse, bin, bin category, style, color, size, SKU | Available, on hand, allocated, picked and packed units, outbound transfers |
| Inventory adjustments Stock movements over time |
Transaction type, style, color, size, warehouse, bin, the user who entered it | Net change in units, number of adjustments |
| Record lookup One order, invoice, customer or PO |
Order, invoice, account or PO number, with line and size detail | Full header and line detail, allocations, back-order position |
Built-in shortcuts cover what operators ask most: overdue orders, orders with no allocation, overdue invoices and outstanding balance. Period-over-period comparison is built in too, up to twelve periods, so this month against last, or the same month across three years, doesn't need a new report.
Next up: version 26.11.02, planned for November 2026.
- Style setup from the chat. Create a new style with its colors and size scale, or add colors to a style you already have. The AI shows a preview and saves nothing until you confirm.
- Style color lookups. Inventory and availability, prices, costs and product attributes for any style color, with filters and export.
- More lookups. Pick tickets, RMAs, cut tickets, purchase orders and raw material purchasing.
- Easier sign-in. Connect ChatGPT and Claude without typing in client credentials.
Allocation and invoicing from the chat are still coming soon. See what's coming on What's New.
Back to top ↑How sign-in, permissions and approvals work
- Sign-in happens on AIMS360 Runway. ChatGPT and Claude open the AIMS360 Runway login page, where each person enters your five-character account code, their AIMS360 operator email and their password. The password never goes into the chat.
- It's bounded by role. The connection works as that AIMS360 user, so it can see and change only what their role allows. A rep with limited access in AIMS360 doesn't get more through the chat.
- Every change previews first. Create and update tools run in two steps. The first step saves nothing and shows the exact order or customer, or each field's current and new value. Nothing is written until the person approves. In Claude, keep the four write tools set to Needs approval.
- New orders save on Hold. An order created from the chat lands on Hold unless the person asks for Open. AIMS360 also refuses a duplicate customer PO number, and asks for a PO first when the customer requires one.
- Nothing is deleted from a chat. There's no delete tool. A saved change is corrected in AIMS360 itself.
- Turning someone off is one step. Disable their operator in AIMS360 and their AI access ends with it.
- Card numbers are never accepted. An order update can only pick one of the customer's saved cards by its last four digits.
- Only the rows a question needs. A question about five styles moves five rows, not the whole invoice table. AIMS360 runs on Microsoft Azure with the same controls that protect the rest of the ERP. See data security.
Works next to the connectors you already use
AIMS360 doesn't add another AI app or another screen to learn. It's an MCP connector inside the ChatGPT, Claude or Grok your team already pays for, so it sits next to the other connectors you've set up there, like email, calendar, CRM and file storage. One conversation can use them together.
“Read the order in this buyer's email and create it in AIMS360.” “Pull this customer's past-due invoices from AIMS360 and draft a reminder email.” “Which of this rep's open orders have no allocation? Put a follow-up on my calendar for each one.”Nothing moves between those systems on its own. The assistant reads each connector when you ask, and AIMS360 data changes only when you approve a create or update. Your Shopify, EDI, 3PL and accounting integrations keep syncing exactly as before. The email example needs your email connected in the same assistant.
Back to top ↑Plans and pricing
The AI connection is an add-on available on every AIMS360 plan: Bronze, Silver and Gold. As of October 2026 there's no charge for it. Every plan already includes the full AIMS360 feature set, so nothing about the connection is limited by tier.
Your team also needs its own assistant plan. ChatGPT needs permission to install plugins in your workspace. Claude needs a plan that supports custom connectors. See AIMS360 pricing.
Back to top ↑How AI improves inventory management in an ERP
Two different things get called AI in ERP, and they're worth keeping separate, because they solve different problems.
AI automations
Run on rules you set, and they act. Allocating inventory to orders by customer priority, ship date and channel. Triggering replenishment. Optimizing warehouse work and picking.
AI automations in AIMS360AI assistants
Answer and act on request. A planner asks which open orders have no allocation, or what's available by size in each warehouse, and gets the list without building a report or waiting on anyone.
The AIMS360 plugin for ChatGPTStyle, color and size
Neither is useful if the data model treats every variant as a disconnected SKU. AIMS360 holds inventory as a style, color and size matrix, which is what makes an answer about size curves possible at all.
Style, color and size inventoryA brand running 500 styles across three warehouses usually wants both. The automations keep allocation and replenishment moving without anyone touching them. The assistant is how a person checks the automations are doing the right thing.
Back to top ↑What MCP is, and why it matters for an ERP
Model Context Protocol is an open standard for connecting AI assistants to outside systems. Anthropic created it in November 2024, and it's now governed by the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation. Before MCP, every assistant needed its own integration for every tool. With MCP, AIMS360 builds the connection once and it works wherever MCP is supported, which is why Claude and Grok use the same server.
For an ERP the practical consequence is this. An assistant with no connection to your system will produce a confident, plausible, wrong number. A connected one retrieves the figure from AIMS360 and can show you the rows behind it. And a scoped connection sends only the rows the question needs, not the full export you'd otherwise paste into a chat window.
Back to top ↑What it can do, and what bounds it
- It reads live data. Orders, invoices, customers, purchase orders, inventory and inventory adjustments, answered in plain English as a summary, a table, a chart or an Excel export.
- It acts on request. It creates and updates orders and customers after a preview and approval. Allocation and invoicing from the chat are coming soon.
- It's bounded by each person's role. Everyone signs in as themselves, so the assistant can't do anything that person couldn't do by signing in to AIMS360 directly.
- ChatGPT is self-serve. Claude and Grok are provisioned. You install the ChatGPT plugin yourself. AIMS360 provisions the Claude and Grok connection against your tenant, which keeps it scoped to your company data.
- It doesn't replace scheduled reporting. For recurring output on a timetable, AIMS360 reporting is still the right tool.
AI assistants, MCP and AIMS360, answered
Yes. AIMS360 builds and runs its own Model Context Protocol server. Claude and Grok connect to it as a custom connector that AIMS360 provisions for your company, and the AIMS360 plugin in the ChatGPT directory runs on the same tools. It isn't a public download. Request a connection and the implementation team sends you the connector details.
Three. ChatGPT connects through the AIMS360 plugin, which you find and install yourself from the ChatGPT plugin directory. Claude and Grok connect to the AIMS360 MCP server, which AIMS360 provisions for your tenant. All three use the same 17 tools and the same live AIMS360 data.
Seventeen. Thirteen only read: Get Connection Details, Orders Analysis, Get Orders Details, Invoices Analysis, Get Invoices Details, Customers Analysis, Get Customers Details, Purchase Orders Analysis, Get Purchase Orders Details, Inventory Analysis, Search Inventory, Style Inventory Adjustments Analysis and Search Style Inventory Adjustments. Four create or update records: Create Order, Update Order, Create Customer and Update Customer. Each person sees only the tools their organization gave them.
Yes, for orders and customers. It can create a sales order with lines and sizes, change an Open or Hold order, create a customer account and update one. Every change previews first and waits for approval. Allocation and invoicing from the chat are coming soon, and style setup is planned for version 26.11.02 in November 2026. Everyone signs in as themselves, so the assistant is bounded by the role based access that person already has and can't do anything they couldn't do by signing in.
No. Every create and update runs in two steps. The first step saves nothing. It shows the exact order or customer it would create, or each field's current and new value, and the person approves before anything is written. New orders save on Hold unless you ask for Open. There's no delete tool, so a saved change is corrected in AIMS360 itself.
Disable their operator in AIMS360. The connection signs in as that operator, so their AI access ends with it. Each person can also disconnect the AIMS360 connector in their own ChatGPT or Claude settings.
It's an add-on available on every AIMS360 plan: Bronze, Silver and Gold. As of October 2026 there's no charge for it. Your team also needs its own ChatGPT, Claude or Grok plan. See AIMS360 pricing.
No. Those integrations keep syncing data on their own schedule. The MCP connection is how a person asks questions and makes approved changes from a chat. It doesn't import data from other systems into AIMS360. See all AIMS360 integrations.
The server is built on the open MCP standard, so other MCP clients may work with it. ChatGPT, Claude and Grok are the three AIMS360 supports today. Tell us which assistant your team uses and we'll confirm it before you roll it out. Ask us.
Anything that maps to orders, invoices, customers, purchase orders or inventory. Sales last month by customer, margin by style, open backlog, orders with no allocation, overdue invoices, A/R aging, purchase orders landing next month, stock by warehouse and bin, and inventory adjustments by transaction type. Any of those can be compared to the prior period or the same period last year, up to twelve periods.
Version 26.11.02, planned for November 2026, adds style setup from the chat, with a preview before anything saves, plus style color lookups for stock, price and cost, and questions about pick tickets, RMAs, cut tickets, purchase orders and raw material purchasing. ChatGPT and Claude also get sign-in without typing client credentials. See Coming soon on What's New.
Two different ways, and they're worth keeping separate. AI automations run inside AIMS360 on rules you set: allocating inventory to orders by customer priority and ship date, triggering replenishment and optimizing warehouse work. AI assistants sit outside the ERP and work on request, so a planner can ask which open orders have no allocation, or what's available by size in each warehouse, without building a report first.
No. A dashboard answers the questions someone anticipated when they built it. An AI assistant connected to AIMS360 answers the question you have right now, including the follow-up, with no report request and no filter set to rebuild. For scheduled recurring output, AIMS360 reporting still does that job better.
That's set by your workspace settings with the assistant provider and by your agreement with AIMS360. Business and enterprise workspaces are generally not used to train models by default. Confirm the specifics for your plan before rolling it out company-wide. See how AIMS360 handles data security.
Every channel. The data behind it is your AIMS360 ERP, which already runs DTC, wholesale, retail and EDI dropship to major retailers in one system, so the answers span all of them rather than one storefront.
Where to go next
Ask your own numbers a question
Book a demo and we'll run it against your catalog and your channels: a question in plain English, an answer straight out of AIMS360, the rows behind it, and an order created from an email.
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