Work orders are production documents that track what you plan to make and what you actually build. Use them to run a job from draft to finished goods, consume components from a bill of materials, and record production in stages.
Work orders live under Manufacturing → Work Orders and require the Raw-Material Tracking entitlement (available on the Pro and Scale plans). The entitlement is re-checked on the server for every read and action. Sidebar access can also be granted per role or per user through the "Manufacturing" permission, so workers can be granted access to be assigned work orders.
What a work order can track
A work order is catalog-independent. You can create either:
A standalone work order with a free-text title and no catalog link (tracks work only).
A work order linked to any product variant . A variant that has a bill of materials can consume its components when built; a variant without one can still have finished goods added to stock.
Each work order is auto-numbered per organization (WO-00001, WO-00002, and so on) and can carry an optional free-text reference label.
Creating a work order
Go to Manufacturing → Work Orders and choose to create a new work order.
Enter a title and the planned quantity, and pick the location.
Optionally link a product variant (with or without a bill of materials).
Choose the inventory behavior (see below).
Add any optional details: reference label, due date, tags, assignees, notes, and a user-defined assembly-step checklist.
Save the work order. It starts in draft.
The create form is prefilled when you arrive from a sales-order line item, from the Demand Planning overview's "Create Work Order" action, or from an assembly.
Inventory behavior
Every work order has an explicit inventory behavior, chosen when you create it. It controls what a build does to your stock:
No inventory effect : builds track work only and never change stock levels. Standalone work orders are always set to this.
Add finished goods : builds add the linked product to stock; components are not consumed. This is the default for a linked product that has no bill of materials.
Consume components and add finished goods : builds consume the bill of materials and add the finished product to stock. This is the default for a linked product that has a bill of materials.
Builds are the only action that moves inventory, and each build applies the work order's chosen behavior.
The lifecycle
Work orders move through these stages: draft, released, in progress, then completed or cancelled.
Release freezes the bill-of-materials snapshot (component lines and costs), so later catalog edits never change a released work order.
Start moves a released work order into production (in progress).
Cancel is only possible while nothing has been built.
Re-release : you can re-release a released, not-yet-built work order to re-freeze its bill-of-materials snapshot. This is the only sanctioned re-freeze; a custom recipe is re-priced, never re-pulled from the catalog.
On the detail page, the action bar (Release, Start, Build, Close short, Cancel) only offers the transitions that are currently legal.
Building in increments
Record production a bit at a time with the Build action:
From the work order detail, choose Build.
Enter how many units of the planned quantity you are building now (partial builds are supported).
Confirm. The quantity is clamped to whatever remains, and each build is idempotent, so it is safe to retry.
Pausing and resuming
Pause an in-progress work order (put it on hold) with an optional reason note, then resume it later. A paused work order:
Keeps its place in the In-progress board column with a "Paused" badge (it is not a separate stage).
Still creates advisory component demand and is still flagged overdue if it is past due.
Has its held time excluded from active time, so the cycle timer never overstates how long the job actually took.
Closing short
Use Close short to finish a work order early. The units already built are kept (they are never un-built); the remaining planned quantity is simply not produced.
Assembly steps
Add a user-defined step checklist (name, description, and order) to any work order, including standalone ones. While the order is in production, you can mark each step complete to track progress.
Assignees, due dates, and overdue
Assign one or more team members to a work order.
Set a due date.
Any open (non-terminal) work order past its due date is flagged overdue.
Material availability
On consume-mode work orders, each component shows an availability chip:
Available : on hand at the work order's location.
Expected : incoming via open purchase orders or in-transit transfers.
Not available .
These reads are advisory only ("Approximate planned demand, not a hold"). Nothing is reserved, and the numbers are recomputed each time the page renders.
Per-work-order bill of materials
On draft work orders only, the Bill of Materials tab is prefilled from the linked product's recipe and can be edited for one-off jobs.
On "Add finished goods" and "No inventory effect" work orders you have full freedom: change a component's quantity per unit, add or remove component lines, and add, edit, or remove untracked parts.
On "Consume components" work orders the tracked components follow the product's bill of materials and are consumed at build (read-only here). You can still add untracked parts, or switch the inventory mode for full control.
An edited recipe is marked Custom and is frozen verbatim at release, so your per-work-order changes survive and are never re-pulled from the catalog. Untracked-part cost rolls into the work order's estimated material cost the same way it does on the catalog bill of materials.
Cycle time and labor
Cycle-time tracking : a live timer runs while production is active. Pausing freezes it and resuming continues the sum (held spans are never counted). On completion the active cycle time is frozen and shown, and the lifecycle rail also shows total paused time as a sublabel.
Labor recording : record labor time and labor cost on a work order. The time pre-fills from the tracked active time as a suggestion, and the cost pre-fills from that time at your organization's default labor hourly rate (falling back to a built-in rate when unset). This is for reporting only and never changes product cost. To fold labor into cost of goods, set the assembly's labor rate on the variant's Materials tab.
Tags, notes, and history
Every work order supports tags and notes, plus a full status history and audit trail so you can see how the job progressed.
List and board views
The Work Orders page offers two ways to work:
List view : filter by status, linked product (assembly), tags, location, and creation source (manual vs from an order); sort by newest or due date; and search. You can also scan or type a product barcode to filter the list to that product's work orders.
Board view : a kanban-style board with one column per lifecycle status. Drag a card to perform the matching legal transition. Dropping a card on Completed asks the close-short confirmation; cancelling stays a detail-page action.
Need help?
If you have questions or run into anything unexpected, reach out to our support team.