Your first order

This is the end-to-end walkthrough: one order, from the first product record to the shipped goods and the invoice. We’ll follow a single example all the way through — a women’s quilted jacket your customer wants for the autumn season — so each step builds on the last exactly as it will in your own workspace. Every step links to the module guide that covers it in depth. Follow those links when you want the detail; this page keeps to the through-line.

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Step 1 — Set up your masters

Every order draws on shared reference data, so this goes in first. Your customers, vendors, fabrics, trims, colors, and units are the building blocks the rest of the system references. If you’re an administrator on a fresh workspace, work through setting up your tenant and, to load lists in bulk, importing master data. If you’ve joined an existing workspace, this is already done — pick up at step 2. For our jacket you’ll need the customer on file, the shell fabric and the zip in your material catalogs, and at least one color.

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Step 2 — Create the style

The style is the reusable product record everything else hangs off. The jacket becomes a style once and is reused every season it returns. In the Styles module, choose “Create style”. The style number is generated for you. Fill in the jacket’s details — the Brand, the Customer style no. and name your buyer uses, the Season, and Gender — and save. The style opens on its detail page, organized into seven tabs. See the Styles module guide.

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Step 3 — Build the BOM

The BOM lists what the jacket is made from — everything downstream reads it. Open the BOM tab. Add a fabric line for the shell and a trim line for the zip, record each line’s supplier and details, and assign the vendor. Save. Saving captures the BOM as its first artifact version, so later changes never overwrite this one. More in the Styles guide.

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Step 4 — Complete the cost sheet

The cost sheet turns the BOM into a costed price — what you’ll quote from. On the Cost Sheet tab, use “Copy from BOM” to seed the cost lines, then set each unit cost. Set the customer multiplier and GarmentFlow derives the customer price and shows your margin, so you quote on real numbers. The cost sheet is the costing tool you’ll keep open when you quote. See BOM, cost sheet, and artifact versions.

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Step 5 — Validate the jacket through fitting

Fitting proves the jacket is right before any bulk commitment. In the Fitting module, start a record for the jacket and work it through its stages, recording comments, measurements, and photos at each. Each fitting round refines the sample until it’s right. When the pre-production sample is signed off, the style is validated and ready to commit to an order. See samples and fitting.

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Step 6 — Create the quotation

The quotation puts a price in front of the customer. In the Quotations module, choose “Create quotation”, pick the customer, and add a line for the jacket — its colorways, sizes, quantities, and the unit price from your cost sheet. Export the quotation as a PDF, branded as your own document, and send it. When the customer accepts, mark it accepted. See Quotations.

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Step 7 — Convert to a PI, then to an order

The accepted quote carries forward, so nothing is retyped. From the accepted quotation, generate a proforma invoice for the customer to arrange payment — a step your administrator enables — then convert the quotation into an order. Both conversions carry the line items, colorways, quantities, and prices forward. On the new order, set the Ship date, Trade term, and Destination. See the Orders module guide and the documents and conversion chain.

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Step 8 — Read the backward schedule

Once the ship date is set, every milestone gets a deadline. Open the order’s schedule. GarmentFlow works backward from your ship date — through inspection, materials received, documents issued, fabric shipped, and order confirmed — and shows each milestone with its target date on a Gantt-style timeline. The readiness engine compares progress against those targets and flags anything slipping. See the readiness engine. Confirm the order to turn the commitment into production work, and approve the jacket’s BOM for this order so production can read it as final.

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Step 9 — Outsource production and buy materials

The jacket is made at a factory from purchased materials — and production shouldn’t start until those materials arrive. In the Production hub, raise a factory order on the 委外 tab for the factory making the jacket, then raise purchase orders on the 採購 tab for the shell fabric and the zip. As materials arrive, record each receipt against its purchase order. When the materials are in, the material-arrival gate clears and production can start. See the Production module guide.

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Step 10 — Issue the manufacturing order

With the BOM approved and materials in, the factory needs one frozen production document. On the jacket’s MO tab, issue the manufacturing order. It pulls together the current BOM, cost, fitting, packing, and QC and pins the versions it’s built from; issuing freezes the content so production always works from a stable copy, even if a source document changes later. See the Styles guide.

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Step 11 — Ship and invoice

The finished jackets go to the customer, and the sale is billed and tracked to payment. Record the shipment of the finished goods to the order’s shipping destination, raise the customer invoice, and track the receipt of payment against the order — its payment-progress bar fills as money comes in. The jacket order is complete. See Shipments and Finance.

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What’s next

You’ve taken one jacket from a product record to a paid, shipped order. Each step has a module guide with the full detail: Styles, Quotations, Orders, Samples and fitting, Production, Shipments, and Finance. The next time this jacket comes back, you start at step 6 — the style is already built.

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Related pages

• Styles module guide
• Orders module guide
• Quotations
• Production module guide
• The readiness engine and AI