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Asking good questions

Exopen AI answers better when you're specific. Here are four patterns that lead to noticeably better answers — plus a few things the AI can't help with.

Be specific about the time period

"Last quarter" and "last year" work, but "Q3 2024 vs Q3 2023" or "January–March 2025" gives the AI an exact period to compute on.

Worse: "How have sales been recently?"

Better: "Show revenue by month January to October 2024 vs the same period in 2023."

Name the customer, supplier, or project

Use the actual name or number when you have it. The AI won't have to guess which customer or project you mean — and you avoid errors when several records have similar names.

Worse: "How are we doing with that big customer?"

Better: "Show receivables for Volvo Cars Sweden AB broken down by aging bucket."

For single figures, text is fine. But when comparing periods, customers, or products, or showing change over time, a chart makes the answer much easier to read.

Worse: "How has EBITDA developed?"

Better: "Show EBITDA by month for the last 24 months as a line chart."

Drill down with follow-up questions

After the AI answers, you don't need to start over to go deeper. Ask a follow-up in the same conversation — the AI remembers what you just looked at.

Worse: Starting a new conversation and re-explaining the whole context.

Better: "Good. Now break that down by cost centre."

What Exopen AI can't help with

Exopen AI can see your finance data. It cannot see:

  • HR or payroll data
  • Sales pipeline or CRM data
  • Real-time order status, inventory, or logistics
  • External market data or competitors
  • Anything that isn't in your finance database

If you ask about something outside finance data, the AI will say so — it won't make numbers up.

What now?