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An AI assistant can take orders in the chat: a restaurant taking food orders on WhatsApp, a shop helping customers pick a size and colour on Instagram. It searches your products, answers questions from what you’ve told DMLY, builds the order as the customer talks, works out the total from your own prices and taxes, and then either hands the order to your team or, if you allow it, confirms it and sends a payment link. It uses your real Products and Orders. There’s no separate menu or cart to maintain. The AI never invents a price, a tax, a fee or a delivery area: when something isn’t set up, the quote stays incomplete and your team takes over.

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How it fits together

1

Set up your products

Prices and taxes live on your products, as they do today. Each product you want the AI to sell also gets ordering rules: the unit it’s sold in, allowed quantities, variants and add-ons.
2

Turn on AI ordering

AI Ordering Settings hold your currency, time zone, fees, fulfilment methods and how far the AI may take an order.
3

Add the assistant

Install the AI Food Ordering Assistant or AI Shopping Assistant template, pick an AI provider and model, and publish.

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Set up your products

Add your products in Offerings → Products with their price, currency and tax. To add many at once, use the AI Catalogue Builder. Then give each product its ordering rules. In Finance, select AI Ordering Settings, scroll to Product ordering rules and choose a product. The rules don’t change its catalogue price.
Blank means unknown, and unknown is never treated as zero. A missing price, tax or add-on price leaves the quote incomplete, so the order goes to your team rather than out at a wrong total. Enter 0 only when something really is free.

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Turn on AI ordering

In Finance, select AI Ordering Settings and turn on Enable AI ordering. Then set:
  • Currency and Time zone. Requested times are read in your time zone.
  • Service fee, Fallback flat delivery fee and Tax on fees (%). Leave a fee blank if you haven’t decided; enter 0 if there isn’t one.
  • Fulfilment and required information: which of pickup, delivery and dine-in you offer, and what the AI must collect for each. For example a delivery address and landmark, a table number, or a requested time.
  • Delivery areas for delivery, or Delivery zones for different fees by area (see below).
  • Response language and Conversation tone, if you want them fixed.
  • Product presentation: Text only, or Allow cards and carousels.
  • Merge identical products with identical selections. Leave it off to keep separate requests on separate lines, for example two portions for two people.
  • Handoff tags, added to the conversation when an order goes to your team.
Select Save ordering settings.

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Delivery zones

A zone has a name, its areas, optional postal codes, a Delivery fee, an optional Minimum order and an optional Free delivery from amount. When you set zones, exactly one must match the customer’s area (and postal code, if you listed any), and its fee replaces the flat delivery fee. If no zone matches, or more than one does, the AI asks the customer to clarify. Matching is by name only: DMLY doesn’t look up maps or measure distance.

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Add the assistant

Go to Start from a template and install AI Food Ordering Assistant or AI Shopping Assistant. Both answer every message, and both arrive with a detailed prompt and the ordering tools switched on. Before you publish:
  1. Open the AI Reply step and choose an AI provider and model.
  2. Read the prompt and adjust it for your business.
  3. Check the tools on the Built-in Tools tab. See AI agent tools for what each one does.
The templates deliberately leave the confirmation and payment tools off, so out of the box every order goes to your team for confirmation. Keep Hand over to a human ticked. Submit for staff confirmation hands the order over, and it refuses to run without it.

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What happens to an order

As soon as the customer adds the first item, a draft order appears in Finance → Orders, and each change the AI makes updates that same order. Its number links to the order’s own page, where your team can check each line, the fulfilment details and anything the quote is missing, and edit it. While a quote is missing something, the Orders list shows Incomplete quote instead of a total. Staff who can view Finance also see the order from the Inbox and the contact’s profile. The AI then finishes the order one of two ways, set under Order completion.

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Capture for staff review (the default)

The AI submits the draft for your team. It pauses the bot, adds your Handoff tags, and leaves a note on the conversation that links to the order. If nobody can be assigned, the conversation waits in the unassigned queue. The order page reads Captured draft awaiting staff confirmation. Stock is not reserved and no payment has been requested. Nothing else happens until your team acts: no stock is taken, no invoice is created and no payment is requested.

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Let the AI confirm the order

Choose Allow order confirmation, and on the AI Reply step tick Confirm customer-approved order. The AI can then confirm an order itself, but only after showing the customer the full quote from DMLY and getting a clear yes. If anything changes afterwards, it has to quote again and ask again. Confirming checks every rule once more and takes tracked stock. Products whose stock is tracked by weight, or that use Available quantity, still go to your team. To let the AI send a payment link too:
  1. Turn on Allow payment links for confirmed orders and choose a Connected payment provider.
  2. On the AI Reply step, tick Create order payment link, and Check recorded payment status if the AI should be able to tell the customer whether their payment arrived.
DMLY raises an invoice for the confirmed order and sends a link from your provider. An order only counts as paid when the payment is recorded in Finance. A screenshot, or a customer saying they’ve paid, doesn’t count.

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Cards and carousels

With Allow cards and carousels on, and Show product cards, Show product carousels or Show collection cards ticked on the AI Reply step, the AI can show products as cards instead of text. What the customer sees depends on the channel: A card only shows products; it doesn’t add anything to the order. Set Presentation mode on the AI Reply step to Always use text only to turn cards off for one assistant.

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Limits worth knowing

  • The AI can’t give discounts. Any discount or coupon goes to your team.
  • A quote is an estimate at that moment. Showing a quote doesn’t hold stock or lock the price.
  • Allergies and dietary needs are handed over when your product details don’t answer them. The food template never promises that something is allergen-free.
  • Changes to a confirmed order, cancellations and refunds go to your team.
  • If a teammate takes over the conversation, the AI stops changing the order.