Ask Nabu

Where to find it

Ask Nabu opens as a side panel from any page in Nabu, and as a full page under Intelligence in the left sidebar. The full page keeps your conversations so you can come back to one later.

Ask Nabu answers for the location you have selected. If your business has several locations, switch location first, then ask.

What you can ask

Ask in plain language. You do not need to know the name of a report.

• A figure. "What was revenue last month?" "How many Botox appointments did we do in August?"
• A comparison. "Compare August to July." "How did Nicole do against last quarter?"
• A breakdown. "Revenue by service this quarter." "Which provider had the highest contribution?"
• A trend. "Show me revenue by month this year." "Revenue by week this quarter." "Is Botox growing?" Nabu works out the direction, the change from the first to the last bucket and the peak and the trough; the answer uses those words and figures, never its own reading of the chart. "Compared with last year" sets the same window a year earlier beside it.
• The calendar ahead. "How booked is Nicole next week?" "Who has the most open hours next month?" "What is our open capacity costing us for the rest of the month?" These read the appointments already on the calendar against each provider's availability, up to two months ahead. The context line and every card say "on the calendar". For a time of day that is free, ask "When is Nicole free on Tuesday?", which reads open slots.
• The forecast. "What is revenue projected to be next month?" "What does the forecast say for the next three months?" "What is our runway?" These are the Forecasting page's own projection, on the same settings the page opens with, so the page and the answer are one number. The context line and every card say "projected", and the answer says so too. "How accurate have our forecasts been?" reads the record of past forecasts against what happened, which is not a projection.
• A why. "Why was August down?" Nabu looks at what moved, by service, provider, and volume against price, and tells you where the change came from.
• A calculation over your own setup. "What is revenue per treatment room?" uses the room count you entered in Setup.
• Product help. "How do I connect Zenoti?" "Where do I enter payroll?" These are answered from this documentation and are always free.

How an answer is built

Every analytical answer starts with a short context line: the subject, the location, the period, and the date your records run through. Read that line first. If Nabu chose a period because you did not name one, the line says which.

The figures in the answer come from the same definitions your Financials and Profitability pages use, so an answer and a page never disagree about the same number for the same dates.

Days follow your business time zone. Once it is confirmed in Settings → Business Profile, "today", "this month" and every other period are your clinic's days in Nabu and on every page alike. Until it is confirmed, the pages count days in UTC while Nabu reads "today" in your location's time zone, so for a US clinic the pages move to the next day during your evening while Nabu is still on yours.

When an answer has several rows, Nabu draws a chart or a table under it and keeps the prose short: the shape, the peak, and the change that matters. When you ask for a full account (to reconcile two figures, to break down every adjustment, or to see the underlying transactions), Nabu writes out the whole walk instead: each step with its amount, in order, and the transactions behind the ones that matter.

When a figure is derived rather than recorded, Nabu says so once. For example, room revenue is allocated through the services you have mapped to each room, and the answer tells you that.

A figure is a record, a booking or a projection, and the page always says which. A figure of what happened carries no extra word. A figure from the calendar ahead carries "on the calendar" after its window. A figure from the forecast carries "projected". Nabu never calls a record a projection, and never quotes a projection as a fact.

From a client question to a plan

Ask about clients who stopped returning, repeat clients who have not returned, first-to-second visit retention, or completed consultations without later treatment. Nabu states the visit definition, location, complete reporting dates and important exclusions. Future bookings remain in the historical analytical count; they are checked separately before preparing outreach.

For first-to-second retention, “first” means the first visit observed in the available records. Recent clients without a complete follow-up period are reported separately. Consultation conversion distinguishes completed treatment from a future booking and does not invent a revenue opportunity.

You can specify the calendar dates when those first visits occurred, including a month or year to date. Nabu keeps that enrollment window and checks each client's follow-up separately through the last complete date your records cover. Choosing dates does not count clients with incomplete follow-up as failures.

An actionable cohort answer offers Create Action Plan. The normal Action Center planning modal opens inside Ask Nabu. You can also type “create an action plan” immediately after that answer. Review the strategy, current eligible group, employee assignment and prepared work before approving. Approval creates the same plan and tasks you can reopen in Action Center.

The original analytical group stays fixed. Bookings, returns, consent and existing work can reduce the group eligible for action. Large groups have an explicit prepared subset. An expired observation asks you to evaluate the question again.

You can ask for historical recognized revenue or contribution profit from that exact group. Both are separate from estimated future opportunity. Relative cohort windows end at the complete reporting-data boundary; arbitrary calendar enrollment windows are not currently supported by this cohort calculation.

From any answer to a plan

Any answer built on your governed figures can become an Action Plan, whatever it looks like: a table, a chart, a worked calculation such as provider capacity, or an investigation. Under the answer, Create action plan asks once, then saves the answer to Action Center and opens planning. You can also just say so: “turn this into a plan”, “let's act on this” or “what should we do about this?”. Nabu works out which answer you mean from the conversation and asks you to confirm. Nothing is created until you do, and offering the plan does not use an Ask Nabu credit.

The plan starts from the same verified figures you saw. When the answer is about one provider or service, the plan is about them too: planning sees their figures by name, the work is linked to them, and the outcome is later measured on their own records, with the whole clinic's figure shown alongside for context.

When an answer names specific clients, it offers Plan for these clients instead, so the plan keeps exactly those people and each of them is checked again before work is approved. To plan for only some of them, name them, for example “create an action plan for Zoe Adams and Ana Brooks”.

Some answers cannot become a plan: how-to answers, clarifying questions, lists of Action Center findings (open the finding in Action Center instead), answers that already offer plan options, answers covering more than one clinic, and answers more than 7 days old. Ask the question again for current figures.

Asking about memberships

Nabu answers membership questions from the same membership record your Financials and Profitability pages use, with the same definitions: Active Members, Suspended, New Members, Cancelled memberships, Membership Exits, Member Churn, Churned Members and Monthly Membership Billing. Memberships explains each one. Three of them, in brief:

• New members: Clients who joined a membership during the period. Blank while enrollment dates are unconfirmed.

• Churned members: Members at the start of the period who held no membership by its end. Blank while any membership's status is still unconfirmed.

• Monthly membership billing: What the memberships being collected bill each month, added up as of the end of the period. It is what members are committed to pay, not revenue earned.

• "How many active members did we have at the end of August?"

• "What was member churn this quarter?"

• "How many members did the Glow plan lose last month?" This is answered with the plan's exits, which include clients who switched to another plan.

When a membership figure can't be stated for the period you asked about, Nabu tells you why. It might be a membership whose status is unknown on that date, a change with no date, or dues whose collection state isn't recorded. You get the reason instead of a guess. That includes Monthly Membership Billing: when the Financials page leaves it off, ask Nabu why and it will say what's missing. Membership accounting, such as recognized membership revenue or the value still owed to members, is not calculated yet, and Nabu says so.

When Nabu asks you something

If a question could mean two things, and the answer would change, Nabu asks one question and offers the choices. Two providers with the same first name is the usual case. Pick one and the conversation continues with everything else you had already established.

If Nabu picks the wrong one, say so: "No, I meant the other Nicole." The next answer keeps your period, location, and measure, and changes only the person.

When Nabu says no

Nabu declines in a few specific situations, and it tells you which one.

• Your records do not cover that period. Nabu says which dates they do cover. Ask again inside that window.
• That has not happened yet. A figure of what happened cannot be read for a window after today: "Revenue is a record of what happened; November 2026 has not happened yet." Ask for the forecast or the calendar ahead instead. The calendar is read up to two months ahead and the forecast up to three; a window past that is refused by name.
• The name did not match anything. Check the spelling, or ask for the list of services or providers.
• Nabu does not calculate that yet. Nabu names the concept and suggests what it can work out instead. If Nabu ever refuses something you can see on a page in Nabu, let us know from Getting help. That is a defect, not a limit.
• The question is not about your business or about Nabu. Ask Nabu stays on your clinic.
• Something did not finish. Occasionally Nabu cannot complete a turn in time. Your conversation is kept. Ask the same question again.

What Nabu will not tell you

Nabu never shows client contact details in an answer, and never shows record identifiers. It never types a number that did not come from your records. And it never acts on anything from a conversation without an approval step; see Action Center.

Credits and access

Product help is free for everyone who can use Nabu. Analytical questions about your business are part of the Nabu Intelligence add-on. Every organization gets ten complimentary answers each month to try it. A credit is spent only when you receive an answer. A clarifying question, a decline, or a turn that did not finish costs nothing. See Plans and complimentary use.

To ask about a location's business figures, you need permission to view its financials. Owners, Admins, Managers, and Viewers have it; Marketing, Provider, and Front Desk do not. Without it, Ask Nabu still answers questions about how to use Nabu from the documentation, but it does not read your business data, does not use a complimentary answer, and does not show the monthly counter. An Owner or Admin can change your role; see Roles and access.