One AI agent across your business apps, run from WhatsApp.

An AI agent with business integrations is one assistant that can read from and act inside the apps you already pay for, such as Gmail, Google Calendar, QuickBooks or Stripe, from a single conversation. With Flann that conversation happens on WhatsApp: you ask in plain words or a voice note, it looks things up immediately, and anything that creates, changes, sends or deletes comes to you as an approval card first.

That is the whole idea. The rest of this page explains what connecting an app actually involves, where the line between reading and writing sits, and how to decide which apps to connect first.

The problem is not the apps. It is the tabs.

Most businesses do not lack software. They have too much of it, and none of it talks to the rest.

A customer asks whether their order has shipped. To answer properly you open the inbox to find their email, the payments app to check they paid, the spreadsheet where you track dispatch, and then WhatsApp to reply. Four apps. One sentence back to the customer.

Multiply that by every enquiry, every booking change and every "can you resend that invoice?" and the day disappears into switching. Each app is fine on its own. The cost sits in the gaps between them, and you are the only thing that joins them up.

This is true whatever you run. A café checking a catering order against a Stripe deposit. A distributor matching a purchase order to an unpaid invoice. An agency pulling last month's figures for a client call. Different trades, the same shape of problem.

Why another dashboard does not fix it

The usual answer is a new tool that pulls everything into one screen. That is one more login, one more place to check, and it still leaves the doing to you. Seeing the unpaid invoice is not the same as chasing it.

An agent works the other way round. You do not go to it to look at your apps; you tell it what you want done and it goes into the apps for you.

Side by side, the three ways of dealing with scattered apps look like this.

What "connecting an app to an agent" actually means

The phrase sounds technical. It is not complicated, and it is worth knowing exactly what happens, because it is your data.

Connecting an app gives the agent permission to use that app on your behalf, within the access you granted. It does not copy your whole account into somewhere new. It does not hand the agent free rein. It means that when you ask a question or request a job, the agent can choose the right action inside that app, such as "find invoices for this customer" or "create a calendar event", and carry it out under the rules you have set.

Flann can work inside more than 1,400 business apps. The full list is on the integrations page, and it includes the everyday ones: Gmail, Google Sheets, Google Calendar, Canva, Stripe, Square, Mailchimp, QuickBooks, HubSpot and Odoo.

How connecting an app works

1. Open the Connectors screen in Flann and pick the app you want.
2. Connect it in one of three ways. For about 120 apps you simply sign in, one click. For most others you paste your own API key, which you copy from that app's settings. A few need no login at all.
3. Go back to WhatsApp and ask. "Which invoices are still unpaid this month?" Flann works out which action in which app answers that, and runs it.
4. Look-ups come back straight away. Reading invoices, calendars, orders and emails happens without a prompt, because nothing changes.
5. Changes come to you first. Anything that creates, changes, sends or deletes arrives as an approval card. You approve it, edit it or reject it.
6. Disconnect whenever you like. Remove an app from the Connectors screen and Flann can no longer reach it.

Odoo is the one exception to the pattern. It has its own connection, where you enter your Odoo address, your database name, your login email and an API key.

Reads and writes: where the line sits

Every action an agent can take falls on one side of a simple line. Either it reads something, or it changes something.

Reads are safe to run immediately. "What have I got on Thursday?" "Has the Henderson order been paid?" "Show me the last email from the supplier." Nothing in your business moves when the agent answers. Making you approve every look-up would only slow you down.

Writes are different. Sending an email, creating an invoice, moving a booking, refunding a payment, posting to Instagram, deleting a contact. These have consequences, and some cannot be undone. So by default, every one of them comes to you as an approval card before it happens.

The card shows exactly what Flann intends to do. The email text, the invoice lines, the new appointment time. You read it in WhatsApp, tap approve, or tell it what to change: "make it Friday instead" or "drop the second line". It is the same discipline a careful business applies to a new member of staff, just written into the software.

Letting trusted jobs run on their own

Approval first is the default, not a cage. Once a particular job has been right often enough that checking it feels like a formality, you can let that individual job run on its own. A routine confirmation email, for instance. If anything about it starts to bother you, switch it back to approval. The choice is per job, and it stays yours.

Doing it by hand versus asking the agent

Here is the same set of jobs, done the usual way and done by asking on WhatsApp.

Three cross-app jobs, start to finish

Single-app tasks are useful. Cross-app tasks are where an agent earns its place, because those are the ones that eat your time.

1. A customer wants to move an appointment

A client of a physiotherapy clinic messages on WhatsApp: "Can I come Wednesday afternoon instead of Tuesday?" Flann checks Google Calendar and sees that Wednesday at 3pm is free. It drafts three things: a calendar change moving the booking, a confirmation email from Gmail with the new time, and a WhatsApp reply. Each arrives as an approval card. You approve. The calendar updates, the email goes, and the customer hears they are booked in.

You did not open the diary. You did not write the email. You made one decision, which is the part that needed you.

2. An overdue invoice and an awkward question

A wholesale customer writes: "Before we place the next order, are we all square?" Flann looks up their account in QuickBooks and finds one invoice still open from last month. It replies to you first, not the customer: "They have one unpaid invoice from last month. Want me to send it again with a polite reminder, and tell them the new order can go ahead once it is settled?"

You answer with a voice note: "Yes, but keep it friendly, they are a good customer." Flann drafts the reply in that tone and shows you the card. Nothing reaches them until you say so.

3. The Monday question

You send "How are we doing?" and get a report card in the chat. Facebook and Instagram reach. Loyalty visits and how many customers came back. Sales from Odoo, if you have connected it. And a suggested next action.

Say that action is to bring back customers who have gone quiet. You ask Flann to draft a short, personal note to them. Then you ask it to make a matching Instagram post in Canva. Each piece arrives for approval, one card at a time. A morning's admin becomes a short conversation over coffee.

Why WhatsApp makes a good control panel

An agent needs somewhere to take instructions. Most products give it a new app with a new login. We think that misses the point.

You already have WhatsApp open. It is where your customers write to you, where your suppliers send updates, and where you spend much of the working day anyway. Running your apps from there means no new habit to form.

It also suits the way owners actually work: in short bursts, between other things, often on the move. A voice note sent from the stockroom is as good an instruction as a typed one. An approval card is a single tap. Everything Flann did, and everything you approved, sits in one thread you can scroll back through.

And the same agent is already talking to your customers. Flann answers on WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok messages and comments, and Google Business reviews, in the customer's own language, including Arabic dialects, English and Polish. When a customer question needs an answer from your calendar or your invoices, there is no handover. The agent replying is the agent with access. If you want the customer side explained in detail, see how Flann works with WhatsApp.

Flann links to the WhatsApp Business number you already use with a QR scan, so customers keep writing to the number they know. You can also talk to it in the Flann app if you prefer.

Security and control

Giving any software access to your accounts deserves a hard look. Here is how control works in Flann, plainly.

• You choose what is connected. Flann can only reach the apps you connect on the Connectors screen. Nothing else.
• Access follows what you granted. Signing in or pasting an API key gives the access that app allows for that login or key, and no more.
• Writes wait for you. By default every message, post and change needs your approval before it happens.
• Autonomy is per job and reversible. You can let a single trusted job run on its own and switch it back whenever you like.
• You can disconnect at any time. Remove an app and Flann's access to it ends.

A sensible habit is to connect apps with the narrowest access that still lets the job get done. If an app lets you create an API key limited to certain areas, use that. You lose nothing, and you know exactly what the agent can touch.

Which apps to connect first

You do not need to connect everything on day one. Start where the pain is.

Start with the questions you get asked most

Look at the last week of customer messages. If most are about bookings, connect your calendar. If they are about orders and payments, connect your payment app or your accounting software. The first app you connect should answer the question you are tired of answering.

Then connect the place you reply from

Many jobs end with an email. Connecting Gmail early means Flann can draft the follow-up as part of the same job, instead of leaving you to write it separately.

Then the place the money is recorded

QuickBooks, Odoo, Stripe or Square. Once the agent can see invoices and payments, questions like "are they up to date?" stop needing you at a desk.

Leave the occasional apps until later

An app you open twice a year can wait. Add it when a real job needs it. Because connecting takes a sign-in or a pasted key, adding one later is not a project.

A good rule of thumb: connect two or three apps, use them for a week, and watch which approval cards you find yourself approving without edits. Those are the jobs you might later let run on their own.

Getting started

Flann is live within 24 hours. Every plan includes every channel and every app, so you are not choosing which integrations you can afford. See the plans, connect the app that answers your most common question, and ask Flann something on WhatsApp.

Flann is a product of MSTRMND LTD, London.