Business Assistant Overview

Your AI operations teammate

The Business Assistant is a conversational AI that lives in the top-right of every TrailerBase page. Click the sparkle icon and ask anything about your business — in plain English, not SQL.

It is an Advanced plan feature and combines read access to your data with the ability to take real actions on your behalf.

What you can ask

The assistant understands questions about:

1. Revenue — "How much did I earn last week?" "What's my best month this year?"
2. Bookings — "Show me all upcoming reservations for the Flatbed 18."
3. Renters — "Who are my top ten spenders this year?" "Which renters haven't booked in 6 months?"
4. Maintenance — "Which trailers are overdue for inspection?"
5. Fleet performance — "Which trailer has the highest revenue per day?"
6. Damage claims — "How many open claims do I have and what's the total?"

Ask follow-ups naturally. If the first answer lists trailers, you can say "Now sort by utilization" and the assistant will pick up where you left off.

What actions it can take

Beyond answering questions, the Business Assistant can execute actions when you ask. Each action shows a confirmation card first so nothing happens without your approval. Examples:

• Create a reservation for a returning renter
• Send a payment reminder to overdue invoices
• Send a promo email to a segment of customers
• Schedule a maintenance task
• Draft an SMS to a renter
• Apply a pricing change across your fleet

When an action card appears, review it, click Confirm to execute or Cancel to discard. The action is logged in the audit trail so you can see exactly what the assistant did and when.

How it works under the hood

Every message is sent to a large language model with read-only access to your data (via a secure query layer that enforces your permissions). For actions, the assistant generates a plan, shows it to you, and only calls TrailerBase's APIs after you confirm.

Your data is never used to train external models. See AI Usage and Limits for full privacy details.

Getting good answers

Like any conversation, you get better results with clear questions:

1. Be specific about time — "last month" is better than "recently"
2. Name things — "trailer T-104" is better than "that trailer"
3. Ask one thing at a time — complex compound questions sometimes confuse the model
4. Ask follow-ups — if the first answer is incomplete, say "elaborate" or "what about X?"

When to use it vs. the dashboard

The assistant is best for:

• Exploratory questions where you do not know exactly which report to open
• Quick one-off queries that would take 3-5 clicks in the UI
• Actions that touch multiple things (like a bulk email to a segment)

The dashboard and reports are still best for:

• Repeated daily checks
• Deep drill-downs with many filters
• Work that needs to be exported or shared

Example session

You: "Which renters spent the most last quarter?"

Assistant: Returns a top 10 list with amounts.

You: "Send the top 5 a thank-you email with a 10% discount code."

Assistant: Drafts the email and shows a confirmation card. You click confirm. 5 emails go out.

Two questions, five emails sent, zero reports opened. That is the point.

Plan availability

The Business Assistant is Advanced plan only with unlimited usage. The Launch plan includes 5 assistant messages per day for evaluation.