Alongside your work orders, the Manufacturing section includes three supporting areas: reusable work-order Templates, a production Insights dashboard, and a Maintenance area for your machines. This guide walks through each one.
The Manufacturing suite requires a plan with Raw-Material Tracking (Pro and above) and is rolling out in early access, so it may need to be enabled for your organization. Access can also be controlled per role or per user through the "Manufacturing" permission.
Work-order templates
A template is a reusable setup for work orders. Instead of filling in the same steps, tags, and settings every time, you save them once and let each new work order start pre-filled. Find them at Manufacturing → Templates.
What a template can hold
Name and description , so you can tell your templates apart.
A steps checklist : an ordered list of steps (each with an optional description) that is copied onto every new work order created from the template.
Default tags and default notes that seed onto new work orders.
Default inventory behavior : leave it on "Smart default (decide per work order)" to choose at creation time, or preset it to "No inventory effect", "Add finished goods", or "Consume components and add finished goods".
A default assembly (optional): a convenience product to pre-select. It is only a default, so an explicit product on a work order always wins.
A default location and workstation (optional) to seed onto new work orders.
Create a template
Go to Manufacturing → Templates.
Click New Template .
Enter a name (and an optional description).
Add your steps in the Steps section, in the order you want them worked.
Set any optional defaults (tags, notes, inventory behavior, assembly, location and workstation).
Click Create Template .
To change a template later, open it from the list, edit it, and click Save Template.
Tip: Editing a template's steps never changes work orders that already exist. The checklist is copied onto a work order at the moment it is created, so past work stays exactly as it was worked.
Bind a template to a product
You can attach a template to a specific product variant from the variant's Materials tab, in its Manufacturing card. Once bound, that template drives work orders that are auto-created for that variant (for example, when a work order is created automatically on a sale). The Templates list shows a Bound variants count for each template so you can see how widely it is used.
Deleting a template does not affect existing work orders. If any variants are bound to it, deleting the template simply unbinds them, and the confirmation dialog tells you how many bindings will be cleared.
Note: A "consume components" or "add finished goods" default is ignored for variants whose inventory is derived from their components (their sales already move component stock). For those, work orders fall back to no inventory effect to avoid double-counting.
Insights
Manufacturing → Insights is a read-only production dashboard. Its headline numbers summarize your completed work orders over a window you choose. Use the date-range control in the top right to switch the window between the last 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, or 1 year (it defaults to 30 days).
The KPI strip
Four headline numbers sit across the top, each with a coverage line underneath so a partial figure never reads as the whole picture:
Units built : total finished units, with the number of work orders completed in the window.
On time : the percentage of dated work orders finished on or before their due date, noting how many completed work orders had no due date.
Avg cycle time : average active production time, alongside the median and how many timed work orders it is based on.
Cost variance : actual material cost versus the planned estimate, for priced consume-mode builds.
The panels
Below the KPIs, the dashboard lays out several panels: a throughput trend chart over the selected window, a status mix breakdown of your work orders, a cost variance panel comparing planned and actual material cost (including the share from untracked parts), a labor and waste panel, and a work-in-progress and close-short panel showing how long open work has been aging and where work was closed short.
Each panel manages its own empty and coverage state, so a newer or partial account degrades gracefully panel by panel. Until you have production to show, the page displays a friendly "your production story starts here" prompt instead.
Per-assembly production stats
For metrics scoped to a single product rather than the whole shop, open an assembly from Manufacturing → Bill of Materials. Its detail view carries a Production stats card that rolls up that product's completed work orders: how many work orders and units were built, average and median cycle time, total labor time, and average labor time and cost per unit. Standalone work orders (those not linked to a product) are excluded by design.
Maintenance and machines
The Maintenance area helps you keep your equipment running. It is organized into three tabs: Jobs, Machines, and Schedules. Opening Manufacturing → Maintenance lands you on the Jobs tab, the day-to-day view.
Machines
The Machines tab is your registry of equipment. Each machine record holds a name and optional asset code, a location (and optionally a workstation within it), and optional manufacturer, serial number, purchase date, and notes.
To register equipment, open the Machines tab and click Add machine. (A machine has to belong to a store location, so create a location first if you do not have one yet.) You can search machines by name or code and filter by status, location, or workstation.
Every machine has a status: Active, Down (for repair), or Retired. Change it from the status control on the machine's detail page. Retiring a machine is a confirmed, non-destructive step: the machine and its history are kept, it simply leaves the pickers used when creating schedules and jobs. You can Reactivate a retired machine at any time.
A machine's detail page has three tabs: Details (the registry fields, editable), Files (attach manuals and warranties up to 30 MB each, preview PDFs, or remove them), and History (the maintenance jobs run against this machine).
Schedules
The Schedules tab is where you set up recurring preventive maintenance. Organizely generates the maintenance jobs for you on the cadence you choose. Click Add schedule and set:
A name and optional description .
The machine the schedule maintains. (The machine cannot be changed after the schedule is created; create a new schedule to point maintenance at a different machine.)
A cadence , for example every week on Monday, or every 2 months on the 15th.
An optional lead time (0 to 90 days) controlling how many days before the due date the job is created.
An optional steps template : an ordered checklist copied onto each generated job.
Optional default assignees .
An Active toggle. Pausing a schedule stops it generating new jobs but keeps its history.
Each schedule row shows its cadence, when the next job is due, and when it last generated a job.
Jobs
The Jobs tab is the operator's day-to-day list of maintenance work. Jobs appear here automatically once a schedule starts generating them. Each job is tagged Scheduled or Ad-hoc, carries a type of Preventive or Repair, and shows an auto-assigned number, its machine, a due date, assignees, and a status.
Jobs follow this lifecycle: Open → In progress → Completed, or Cancelled. Open or in-progress jobs past their due date are flagged Overdue. You can view the list as a table or switch to a board view (drag a card to make a legal status change), and filter by status, type, machine, or assignee.
Open a job to work it: use the action bar to Start, Complete, or Cancel it (only legal steps are offered); edit assignees, the due date, and notes while it is open or in progress; work the Checklist, ticking off each step with a per-step note; and review the History timeline. Once a job is completed or cancelled it becomes read-only.
Need help?
Still have questions? Reach out to our support team and we will be glad to help.