Use Next Horizon in Claude and ChatGPT
Connect Claude or ChatGPT to your Next Horizon account, then ask it about your orders, parcels, returns, stock and shipping costs in plain words, in the chat you already use. When you allow it, the app can also act for you: get live rates, buy and cancel labels, book UPS pickups, create returns and mark parcel alerts as handled, within a daily spending limit you set.
Before you start
- You need to be the account owner. Only the owner of a Next Horizon account can connect an app. Team members cannot.
- Your Claude or ChatGPT plan must let you add a custom connector. On a company workspace, an administrator may have to allow it first.
- The connector link is
https://mcp.horizonlogistics.eu/mcp. You also find it in “Settings”, under “Connected apps”, as the “Connector link”, with “Copy link” beside it.
Connect Claude
- In Claude, open Customize, then Connectors.
- Select Add, then Add custom connector.
- Name it Next Horizon, paste the connector link and select Continue. Keep the sign-in settings Claude finds, then select Add.
- When Claude asks you to sign in, or when you select Connect, it sends you to Next Horizon to approve the connection. See The consent page below.
- In a chat, select +, then Connectors, and turn Next Horizon on.
On a Claude Team or Enterprise plan, an owner of the Claude organisation adds the connector once, under Organization settings, then Connectors. Each person then selects Connect on it under Customize, Connectors, and approves it with their own Next Horizon account.
Connect ChatGPT
ChatGPT adds connectors like this one as a custom MCP server. Its menus change from time to time, so the names below may differ slightly in your version.
- Open ChatGPT’s Plugins page, select the plus button, then Add custom MCP server. In versions that keep these under Apps & Connectors in the settings, first turn on Developer mode under Advanced settings, then create the connector there.
- Name it Next Horizon and paste the connector link as the server address.
- Choose OAuth as the way to sign in. ChatGPT warns you about connecting a server it has not reviewed; select I understand and want to continue, then create it.
- ChatGPT sends you to Next Horizon to approve the connection.
- In a chat, choose Next Horizon from ChatGPT’s tools.
The consent page
Next Horizon shows a page that names the app and the account you are signed in as, and lists what the app will be able to see and, if it asks to act for you, what it will be able to do and, for buying, your daily limit. Check both, then choose “Allow access”, or “Cancel” to refuse. If it is the wrong account, “Not you?” signs you out and sends you back to the app.
Only continue if you started this connection yourself, from your own Claude or ChatGPT, just now. A link to this page sent by someone else would connect their app to your account. The page says so twice: under your account, and again just above “Allow access”.
The page, the messages it can show and how long a request lasts are described in Connected apps.
What the app can read
Once connected, the app can look up, for your account:
- Your account today: your plan, wallet balance, connected stores and carrier accounts, how many orders wait to ship, and how many parcel alerts and returns are open.
- Orders: found by order number, customer email, tracking number or customer name, and one order in full, with its items, totals, payment and fulfilment status, parcels and returns.
- Parcels and tracking: your parcels and their state, one parcel’s carrier scans, and how many parcels shipped, arrived or got stuck in a period, per carrier.
- Parcel alerts: stuck and late parcels, carrier problems, and labels or pickups with a billing problem.
- Returns: your returns, and the figures of the Returns overview.
- Stock levels: per product and location, as on the Stock page.
- Shipping costs: what shipping cost you per carrier and month, and what the checks found on your carrier invoices.
The app reads what Next Horizon has stored. Reading never contacts a carrier and never changes anything.
About your customers, the app sees their names and email addresses, order and tracking numbers, tracking links, the destination city and country, and what a customer wrote in a return request. No answer has a field for a customer’s street address, postcode or phone number. Text that you or a customer wrote goes to the app as written, though, and can hold such details: a customer’s note on a return, for example. A tracking link, the carrier’s public page or the link your store recorded, can also contain the destination postcode.
If the account is suspended or its plan has lapsed, the app gets no data and tells you why.
What the app can do for you
When the app asks for more than reading, the consent page lists what it will be able to do, under “Can act for you”. Settings shows each connected app’s access as “Read”, “Ship and pay” and “Manage”.
With “Ship and pay”, the app can:
- Get live shipping rates for one of your orders, asked from the carriers your account can buy from. The prices stay valid for a short time, and the app says until when.
- Check prices for a parcel without an order: say where it goes and what it weighs, and the app asks the carriers for that parcel’s prices now. It leaves from your default sender address in your default parcel size, unless you name another place or size. Nothing is bought from a price check: a label is bought for an order.
- Buy a label for that order from those rates: any UPS service; GOFO France for a parcel within France; Chronopost’s Chrono 13, Chrono 18, Chrono Classic and Chrono Express International for a parcel that needs no customs declaration. GOFO and Chronopost collect from senders in France only. Other offers are shown to compare: the app says why, and you buy them in Next Horizon. Chronopost prices are shown before VAT, as Next Horizon shows them.
- Cancel a label that has not been used yet, by its tracking number, as “Cancel Shipment” does on the Orders page. Cancelling moves no money: a label paid from your wallet is not refunded automatically.
- Book a UPS pickup for a parcel with a UPS label bought in Next Horizon. You change or cancel a booked pickup on the Orders page, not in the chat.
With “Manage”, the app can:
- Create a return on one of your orders, as you would in Next Horizon. Your return rules run and your customer gets the usual return emails. The app never buys a return label: you buy it in Next Horizon.
- Mark a parcel alert as handled, as the button on the parcel does. Nothing changes at the carrier or in your store.
Each action is recorded in the activity log, under “Connected apps”: for example “Label bought by chat”, “Pickup booked by chat” or “Return created by chat”.
Before the app buys anything
Buying is always two steps. First the app gets the price, which it shows you. Then the purchase names that price, and your wallet is never charged more than the amount it names. If the price went above it in between, Next Horizon buys nothing and the app tells you, so you can look at the new price.
Claude and ChatGPT ask you to approve each action before it runs, unless you told them to allow that tool without asking. Next Horizon does not see that approval: what it checks is the price. Keep the approval on for buying and booking. Claude’s own help also advises turning off tools that change things before you use its Research mode, which can use connectors without asking.
Buying a label by chat has the same effects as buying it in Next Horizon: the order is marked as shipped in your store, your wallet may top up from your saved card if automatic top-up is on, and any label overage on your plan is billed as usual.
The daily spending limit
“Buying by chat”, in “Settings” under “Connected apps”, sets how much connected apps may spend from your wallet in any 24 hours. It shows what was “Spent in the last 24 hours” and what is left. Every account starts with a default limit in your wallet’s currency. The card shows it, and the highest limit you can set, even before you connect an app, and the consent page shows it again before you allow one.
- To change the limit, enter a new amount and choose “Save limit”.
- To stop all buying by chat, choose “Turn off buying by chat”, or set the limit to 0. The app can still get rates, but it cannot buy labels or book pickups, not even on your own carrier account.
- Only the account owner sees and changes the limit. It cannot be changed during a support session.
What counts toward the limit:
- Labels and pickups that a connected app buys and that are paid from your Next Horizon wallet, at what your wallet is charged.
- A label still counts after it is cancelled, since cancelling does not refund your wallet automatically.
- Labels and pickups on your own carrier account count nothing: your carrier bills you for them.
- A purchase that failed counts nothing. Purchases you make in Next Horizon yourself do not count.
The 24 hours are rolling: a purchase stops counting 24 hours after it was made. When a purchase would pass the limit, the app is refused and tells you, and the activity log shows “Daily spend limit reached”.
Disconnecting
In “Settings”, under “Connected apps”, choose “Disconnect” on the app, then confirm. The app loses access right away, and you can connect it again from the app at any time.
Removing Next Horizon from Claude or ChatGPT only removes it there. To be sure the app’s access has ended, disconnect it in Next Horizon too.
Resetting your password or deleting your account also disconnects every connected app.
Your data and privacy
- You choose the app. What the app receives is processed by its provider, Anthropic for Claude or OpenAI for ChatGPT, under your own agreement with them.
- Next Horizon does not see your conversation. It sees only the requests the app makes to it, and answers each with the tool’s result described above.
- What Next Horizon keeps: a record of each request (which tool, when, through which app, whether it worked and how long it took), which never holds what was asked or what was answered; the prices it quoted when the app asked for a label or a pickup (carrier, price, and the order or parcel priced), so that a purchase can be checked against them; the connections, disconnections and actions in the activity log; what was spent by chat, for the daily limit; and the app’s sign-in tokens, stored only in a scrambled form that cannot be read back. A token works for an hour and the app renews it while you use it. If the app goes unused for 30 days, it has to connect again.
The privacy policy has the full details, under “AI assistants you connect”.
Support: write to support@horizonlogistics.eu.