Production Stages and Work-in-Progress

Production Stages and Work-in-Progress

Complex production processes often involve multiple distinct steps. CrafterBy lets you define stages on a production order to track which step is currently active — giving you better visibility into where in the process a batch sits and making it easier to coordinate across a team.

What are Production Stages?

Stages are named steps within a single production order. You define them when creating or editing the order, and then move the order through them as work progresses. Examples:

• Candle production: Preparation, Wax Melting, Fragrance Blending, Pouring, Cooling and Setting, Quality Control, Labelling
• Jewellery: Design Review, Metal Working, Stone Setting, Polishing, Quality Control, Photography
• Leather goods: Cutting, Edge Finishing, Assembly, Stitching, Dyeing, Quality Control

Stages are optional. If your production is straightforward, you do not need to use them.

Moving Between Stages

To advance a production order to the next stage:

1. Open the production order (status: In Progress).
2. In the Stages section, click Move to Next Stage or select the target stage directly.
3. Each transition is logged with a timestamp and the current user's name.

You can log material consumption, machine hours, and labour against specific stages — useful for pinpointing where the cost and time actually accumulate in your process.

Work-in-Progress (WIP)

Work-in-progress refers to any production that has started but not yet resulted in finished goods. In accounting terms, WIP has value — materials have been consumed, time has been spent — but that value is not yet reflected as a saleable product in stock.

In CrafterBy, a production order is WIP from the moment it moves to In Progress until it is marked Completed.

How WIP Affects Your Inventory

When a production order is In Progress:

• Materials logged as consumed are removed from available stock immediately
• Reserved-but-not-yet-consumed materials remain flagged as reserved
• Finished goods are not added to stock until the production order is marked Completed

This means there is a period where materials have left your raw material inventory but the finished product has not yet appeared in your finished goods inventory. This is the WIP period.

Example: Batch of Resin Jewellery

You start a production order for 30 resin pendants on Monday:

• Monday: You log 500ml resin and 50ml hardener consumed. These are removed from material stock. You are in WIP — no finished pendants in stock yet.
• Tuesday: Curing complete. You log 2.5 hours labour for demolding and sanding.
• Wednesday: QC done. You mark the order Completed with a yield of 28 units (2 had air bubbles). 28 pendants are added to finished goods stock. The actual cost per pendant is calculated.

From Monday to Wednesday, the 500ml of resin was neither in raw materials (consumed) nor in finished goods (not yet complete). That is WIP.

Why WIP Matters

For most small craft businesses, WIP is a short-term state — a batch started and completed within a day or two. But for businesses with longer production cycles (curing times, multi-week custom orders, kiln firings), understanding WIP is important for knowing your true inventory position and cost at any point in time.

CrafterBy's production order view shows all currently In Progress orders, giving you a live view of your WIP portfolio.