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The commercial side of an order is a chain of documents, each created from the one before it. This page explains that chain — why it exists, what each document is, and what “converting” actually does.

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What the conversion chain is

When you quote a customer, win the business, ship the goods, and bill for them, you produce a sequence of documents that all describe the same deal. In many businesses each one is retyped from scratch — the same styles, colorways, quantities, and prices keyed again and again, with a transposed number or a stale price creeping in every time. GarmentFlow links these documents into a single conversion chain. Each document is converted from the one before it, carrying the shared details forward automatically. You enter the styles and prices once, at the start, and every later document inherits them. The chain exists for three reasons:
  • Consistency. Every document reflects the same figures. The price agreed on the quotation is the price on the invoice — there’s no retyping for an error to slip into.
  • Speed. Converting a document takes a moment. You’re reviewing inherited data, not re-entering it.
  • Traceability. Each document keeps a link back to the one it came from, so you can follow a shipment back to the invoice, the order, and the quotation that started it.

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The four documents

A typical deal moves through four document types:
  1. Quotation. A is the price offer you send a customer before they commit — the styles, colorways, quantities, and unit prices you’re proposing.
  2. Proforma invoice (PI). Once the customer accepts, the quotation converts to a — a preliminary invoice confirming price, quantity, and terms ahead of shipment. It’s what the customer uses to open a letter of credit or arrange payment.
  3. Commercial invoice. When goods ship, the deal is billed on a commercial invoice — the formal demand for payment for what actually left the factory.
  4. Packing list. Alongside the invoice, a packing list details what’s in each carton — the per-size, per-colorway breakdown the customer and customs need to receive the shipment.
Between the proforma invoice and the goods shipping sits the itself — the customer’s confirmed commitment, which an accepted quotation converts into. The order is where production happens; the commercial invoice and packing list are produced from what that order actually ships. For the order’s own journey, see the order lifecycle.

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What “converting” means

Converting does not move or rename a document. It creates a new document of the next type, pre-filled from the source:
  • The line items — styles, colorways, sizes, and quantities — carry forward.
  • The prices and commercial terms carry forward.
  • The customer and currency carry forward.
  • A link back to the source document is recorded.
The source document is unchanged by the conversion — your quotation stays exactly as it was after you generate a proforma invoice from it. You can adjust the new document where the next step legitimately differs — a quantity the customer trimmed, a term that changed — before you finalize it. Nothing is locked to the source; the conversion just saves you from starting blank.

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PDF generation and branding

Every document in the chain renders as a polished PDF you can send straight to the customer. The PDF carries your company’s branding — your logo, your colors, your company name and address, and your bank details where the document needs them — all drawn from your workspace settings, so every document looks like it came from you. Branding is set once by an administrator (see setting up your tenant) and applied to every document automatically. Because the bank and company details are read fresh each time a PDF is generated, updating them in settings updates every future document at once.

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Customer-facing vs internal documents

Some exports have two audiences, and GarmentFlow shows each the columns it should see. The clearest case is the cost sheet behind your pricing: a customer-facing export shows only the quoted prices, while an internal export of the same sheet also shows your factory cost and margin — for the team deciding what to charge. You choose the audience when you export, so you never accidentally send a customer your cost breakdown. The customer-facing documents in the chain — the quotation and the proforma invoice — only ever carry the prices the customer is party to.