Manufacturing Guide

Manufacturing tracks a product from formula to finished goods — the recipe you produce against, the batch you actually run, and the raw materials that go into it. Every batch is traceable back to an exact, approved formula and the specific lots of material it consumed.

In one sentence: approve a formula once, produce batches against it, and know exactly which raw material lots ended up in which batch.

The four pieces

You'll find Recipes, Batches, and Procurement in the left-hand menu. Lots live on each raw material or packaging item's own dossier.

Recipes and formula versions

A Recipe is the container — its name and the product it belongs to. The actual formula lives on the recipe's versions, so you always know exactly which formula a given batch was produced against, even after the recipe has changed since.

Create a recipe: Recipes → New recipe → pick the product and give the recipe a name → Create recipe.

The version lifecycle

Draft  →  Approved  →  Obsolete

• Draft — your working copy. Add, edit, or remove ingredient lines freely. Only one draft is allowed per recipe at a time.
• Approved — the formula is locked. This is the version batches are produced against. Approving a new version automatically moves the previously-approved one to Obsolete.
• Obsolete — retired. Kept for the record, but no longer available to new batches.

Open a recipe and use New version to start a draft, add ingredient lines with their quantities, then Approve when it's ready for production. Quantities on a version are authored for a stated batch size (e.g. "yields 1000 kg per batch") — every actual batch scales those quantities up or down to its own size automatically.

Only one active formula at a time. Because a batch always pins to a specific, approved version, you can safely keep refining a new draft without disturbing production running against the current approved formula.

Production batches

A Batch is one production run, produced against a recipe's currently-approved version.

Create a batch: Batches → New production batch → select the recipe (the batch automatically pins the recipe's approved formula version — you'll see "Formula version: v{n} (approved) — yields {quantity} {unit} per batch") → enter the batch's own quantity → Create batch.

If a recipe has no approved version yet, it won't be usable for a new batch — approve a version first.

Status: the production stage

Planned  →  In Production  →  Quality Check  →  Released  →  Archived
                    ↘                  ↘
                  Rejected  ───────────→  Archived

A planned batch that turns out to be a mistake can simply be deleted — nothing has been consumed yet.

Product form: bulk, packaged, finished

Separately from the status above, a batch also tracks its physical form:

Bulk  →  Packaged  →  Finished

This runs independently of status — a batch can be In Production and still Bulk, or Released and Packaged. Use Mark as bulk / packaged / finished on the batch page to move it forward as the physical product progresses.

Sending a batch for QC testing

From a batch's page, Create QC lab request raises a lab request for that batch and links it back — click View lab request → any time to jump to it.

Lots — raw material receipts

Every delivery of a raw material or packaging item is recorded as a Lot — a dated pile of stock with a quantity you can draw down, not just a note on the item's details.

You'll find the Lots tab on any raw material or packaging item's dossier.

Status

Quarantine  →  Approved
           ↘
             Rejected

Every lot starts in Quarantine. From there, Approve or Reject it — a one-way step; only approved lots are available for production.

Receive a lot manually: open the item's dossier → Lots tab → Receive lot → fill in quantity received, unit, received date, and optionally expiry date, supplier, and lot numbers → Receive. The lot is added in Quarantine.

Where did the old "lot" field go? Batch number, expiry date, and supplier used to be a single field on the item itself. Because a material can have many deliveries over time, each with its own expiry and supplier, they now live here as real, individually-tracked lots instead.

How lots get consumed

When a batch starts production (Start production), the system automatically draws the required quantity of each raw material from that ingredient's approved lots — soonest expiry first, oldest received as the tiebreaker (FEFO/FIFO). You can see what was drawn from where in the item's stock ledger (Receipt / Consumption / Production / Adjustment entries) on the Lots tab.

Packaging materials are tracked as lots but aren't yet drawn down automatically during production.

Procurement

Procurement tracks an incoming purchase end-to-end, from placing the order to it landing in your warehouse as a lot.

Register one: Procurement → New procurement → pick a catalog item (or just describe it freeform if it isn't in your catalog yet) → quantity, unit, supplier, notes → Register procurement.

Status

Registered  →  In Transit  →  At Border  →  In Warehouse

Move it forward with Mark in transit and Mark at border as the shipment progresses. Once it's At Border, Receive into warehouse becomes available — confirm the actual quantity received, expiry date, and lot numbers, and the system creates the matching Lot (in Quarantine, ready for approval) and links it back to this procurement, all in one step.

Manual receipt still works. Procurement is there for purchases you want to track from order onward — you can always add a lot directly on an item's Lots tab instead if there's no procurement to track (e.g. an internal transfer or a small ad-hoc purchase).

How it all fits together

Recipe → approve a formula Version
              │
              ▼
        create a Batch (pins the approved version)
              │
              ▼
    Start production ──→ draws from approved Lots (FEFO)
              │                         ▲
              ▼                         │
    Quality Check → Released      Procurement → Receive → Lot (Quarantine → Approved)

A released batch is traceable all the way back to the exact formula version it used and the exact material lots it consumed — the full chain a quality record needs.