The order tracker: customers follow a made-to-order job, approve drawings, get certificates
The order tracker lets a customer follow a made-to-order sales order through your shop stage by stage, approve the drawings you ask them to, and get an email as each stage finishes. No prices are shown. A finished work order prints a certificate of conformance with the batch and heat numbers of what went into it.
Where it is
- Sales orders — The Order tracker card: copy the link, choose drawings to approve
- Manufacturing → Orders — Certificate of conformance on a finished order
Settings for this
- Settings → Orders — Turn the tracker on, name the stages, switch on stage emails
- Settings → Portal — "Order again" on the portal's Orders
The tracker is off until you turn it on in Settings → Orders → Order tracker (that needs Edit settings).
The stages
The customer sees Order received, then one row per shop stage that the order's work orders have steps in, then Ready. Each step lands in a stage by its name: cut, laser, plasma or saw is Cutting; fold, bend or press is Folding; weld, fabricate or assemble is Welding; coat, paint, galv or anodise (or any sublet step) is Finishing; QC, inspect or check is Quality check. Anything else is In production. A stage is done when all its steps are, and under way once any step has started. Rename the stages, reorder them or add your own under Stages, in order; the key is what a step is matched by.
Sending the link
On a sales order with the tracker on, Order tracker → Copy tracker link copies a short link to the customer's page. Anyone with the link sees the order number, the stages, the due date and the items with quantities, never prices. Customers signed in to the portal see the same under Orders.
Stage emails
In Settings → Orders → Customer updates, tick Production stages to email the customer as each stage finishes, with the tracker link. Like the other updates, it covers orders that come in after customer updates were first switched on, skips customers who opted out, and shows on the order's email history.
Drawing approval
On the sales order's Order tracker card, tick the drawings from the quote that the customer must approve. The tracker then shows them under Drawings: the customer types their name and approves, or says what needs changing. The owners and admins get a bell either way, and the card shows who decided. The tracker lists the drawing's name only, so send the drawing itself with the quote.
Certificates of conformance
On a completed or closed work order, Certificate of conformance prints what was made, for which customer order, the materials that went into it with their batch and heat number, and each QC step's result and who signed it. Type a batch's heat number from the mill certificate on the product's Tracking tab (edit the batch).
Order again
Turn on Order again in Settings → Portal, and the portal's order page gets a button that opens a new request with the order's items filled in.