Work a production order

7 min read Updated 2026-08-30 WindoorERP 19.0

What this does

Production › Production Orders is the factory's order book: one order per job released from a production survey, carrying the items to build, the material list generated from their designs, the cutting plans, the work orders and the finished units. This article is the screen tour — the states, the tabs, the smart buttons and the wizards that reshape an order.

Launching an order from a sale is its own subject, covered in Launch production from a sales order; here we assume the order exists and you have to work it.

Before you start

A production role. Most buttons are open to production users; approvals, if enabled, gate release.
An order created from a completed production survey — orders are not typed in by hand.

Steps

The Production Orders list with references, customers, scheduled dates and state badges

The same orders as a kanban board grouped by state

A production order form: smart buttons, order details and scheduling, source surveys, and the Items tab

01
Open Production › Production Orders. The list opens unfiltered; the kanban groups by state, and a calendar view shows the schedule.
02
Open an order and read its header: the sale order, customer, responsible person, scheduled start and end, product family and production line.
03
Work the tabs: Items (one line per opening, with design and analysis), Material (the generated material list, cutting plans and print buttons), Costing (actual material, labour, subcontract and energy costs) and Notes.
04
Drive the state from the header: Confirm → Planning, optional Mark Ready → Ready, Start Production → Under Production, then Mark as Done. Quality Hold and Release Hold park and resume the whole order.
05
Use the rest of the header when the job needs it: Generate Work Orders, Schedule, Schedule (Finite Capacity), Create Delivery Order and Request Release Approval. Mind the scope of the second scheduling button — Schedule (Finite Capacity) re-levels every ready and under-production order in the shop, not only this one, so pressing it here moves other orders' work-order times too.
06
Use the smart buttons to reach everything the order produced: cut plans, glass plans, inspections, open NCRs, work orders, units, transfers, packages, glass purchase orders and offcuts.
07
Reshape when the job changes: Split Order (items into a new order), the list's Merge action, or Request Change to send items back to the technical team as a change-request survey.

The states

State	What it means
Draft	Editable. Splitting and merging are realistically possible only here — Confirm creates transfers and cutting plans, which the restructure guard then protects.
Planning	Confirmed: cutting plans generated if none existed, production and installation transfers created, reserved offcuts committed.
Ready	Optional staging between planning and start.
Under Production	Started. With the Scanning feature on, one serialized piece per unit exists and its label job is queued — best-effort: the step is wrapped so that it never blocks production start, so the units and labels may simply not exist with no visible error. Check the chatter.
Quality Hold	Whole-order hold, toggled from the header.
Done	Finished; with the Finished-Goods feature on, units are received into stock with a serial each and a delivery can be created. The receipt is best-effort — a stock error is swallowed into the chatter as "Finished-goods receipt could not complete automatically: …", and it can be skipped outright with "Finished-goods receipt skipped: no finished-good product could be resolved. Reinstall/upgrade the module." or "Finished-goods receipt skipped: no warehouse configured." The order still shows Done either way.
Cancelled	Open transfers cancelled and reserved offcuts released. Reset to Draft reopens it.

The wizards

Wizard	What it really does
Split Order	Moves the ticked items to a brand-new draft order and deletes the material list of both — regenerate on each afterwards. It refuses to move every item.
Merge (list action)	Moves all items into a target order, cancels the sources and wipes the target's material list. Draft or planning only, and the restructure guard means it works in practice on untouched orders.
Request Change	Creates a change-request survey for the selected items. Approving it writes the new designs back — and posts a reminder that the material list must be regenerated by hand.
Order Extra Material	Creates a separate extra transfer for a product and quantity; the reason field is required and lands in the chatter and on the transfer.
Create Glass PO	Turns the order's glass into draft purchase orders — one per selected vendor, with the glass cutting PDF attached. It also opens itself automatically at Confirm when that setting is on.
Production Report in Batches	Prints the production report in item ranges, for orders too large to print at once.

Important

Confirm does more than change a badge. It generates cutting plans if none exist, creates the production and installation transfers, commits reserved offcuts, and may open the Glass PO wizard. If plan generation fails the order still confirms — the chatter says so, and profiles are then issued as cut pieces rather than whole bars. Read the chatter after confirming; it is where every silent fallback is recorded.

Troubleshooting

"Generate the material list before confirming the following order(s): …"	Press Generate / Refresh on the Material tab first.
"Release to production requires approval for: …"	Approvals are enabled: press Request Release Approval and have it signed.
"Cannot mark … done — … work order(s) are still open. Finish or cancel them first."	With the Work Orders feature on, routing must be closed out before Done.
Split or Merge is refused	The restructure guard: the order already produced work orders, units, packages, transfers, plans or offcuts. Restructure in draft, or cancel those documents first.
Cancel does nothing on a finished order	Done orders cannot be cancelled — the button disappears once the order is Done.
The material list came back with items missing	Those items have no design analysis yet; the toast and chatter name them. Analyse the designs and regenerate.
"This order is large, so bar optimization is running in the background. You'll see the cutting plans appear shortly."	Above roughly 8000 distinct cuts, Optimize Bars hands the job to a background task instead of running it in front of you. The plans appear when it finishes. There is no progress field on any screen — success and failure are both reported in the chatter only, so that is where to look if the plans never arrive.
The quantity or unit price on an Items line went grey	Expected: Quantity and Unit Price become read-only once that item has been released by quality.

Common mistakes

Editing the material list by hand and then pressing Generate / Refresh, which discards every manual edit after one confirmation dialog.
Restructuring after Confirm and being surprised by the guard — the transfers and plans it created are exactly what it protects.
Approving a change request and assuming the floor now has the new design: the material list must be regenerated deliberately.
Ignoring the chatter. Fallbacks — reused analyses, non-pass items copied, plans that failed to generate — are recorded there and nowhere else.

Was this article helpful?

Running a window or door factory?

Ask for a demo