Making stock: production runs, batches and curing

Production runs are how stock gets made rather than bought. One run is one sentence — "I made 24 lavender candles today" — recorded properly: it takes the materials off the shelf, puts the finished batch on it, and remembers what that batch cost, so a change in the wax price next month never rewrites what this one cost you.

If you make what you sell, this is the page you will use most.

What you need first

A run is built from the item's recipe: the bill of materials that says what one batch takes. So before a first run:

1. The materials are catalog items with Track stock on and a cost — usually from what you have bought.
2. The finished product has Track stock on too, and an active recipe.

Making a batch

Production → New run. Pick what you are making and say how many. The form does the rest:

• It scales the recipe to that quantity — 1200 g of wax a batch of 12 becomes 2520 g for 24 once the 5% waste on that line is counted.
• It shows what this takes beside what is on the shelf, and warns you about anything you are short of.
• It shows buildable now: how many whole units you could make from the material you have, and which material runs out first.

Planning a run moves nothing. It sits on the production list as Planned until you start it (In progress — still nothing has moved) and then complete it.

Completing a run

Complete run is the one action that touches your stock. It asks for the figures that matter and writes them all in one go:

• How many came out. Batches rarely land exactly on the plan; the run records what you actually got.
• What went in, per material, and what was wasted — poured short, cut wrong, spilled.
• How long it took, which is costed at your hourly rate.
• Sellable from — see curing, below.

Completing writes to the stock ledger: one Materials consumed movement per material, a separate Waste adjustment for anything spoiled, and one Production output movement for the finished units, carrying the batch's cost per unit so the product's average cost moves with it.

Then the run's cost freezes: materials at what they were worth going in, labour at your rate, overhead as a percentage of both, and the total divided by what the batch actually produced. Nothing recomputes it afterwards. That is the point — the cost of a batch is a fact about a day, not a live figure.

Waste is not a cost of goods

Wasted material leaves the shelf, but it never leaves in a product. It is booked as an adjustment, so it shows on the Materials usage report on its own line and is deliberately excluded from cost of goods sold. That keeps two different questions apart: what your products cost to make, and how much you are throwing away.

Not enough of something

Being short is a warning, not a locked door: the maker who poured before recording the delivery should not be stopped. The run completes, the material goes negative, and the shortage is named in the run's history.

If you would rather be stopped, turn on Block negative stock in Company Settings → Sales. Then completing a run short of materials fails until you receive the delivery or correct what the run consumed.

Batches and curing

Every run has a batch code — the run number unless you type your own — and it is unique across your workspace, so a jar label always names exactly one batch. Batch label on the run page prints a plain label with the batch code, the product, the date it was made and the date it becomes sellable.

Some things cannot be sold the day they are made. Soap, candles, cheese and spirits cure. Set Curing days on the item and every batch of it gets a sellable from date at completion: today plus that many days.

Curing stock is on hand — it is on your shelf, it is counted, it is worth money and it is in your inventory valuation — but it is not available:

available = on hand − allocated − curing − quarantined

So a fortnight-curing candle poured this morning cannot be promised to a customer this afternoon. The item page, the low-stock list and the production list all show curing stock separately, with the days remaining.

Made to order

Some things are never held on the shelf; they are made when someone orders them. Tick Made to order on the item, and confirming an order for it opens a Planned run against that order line automatically — the work the confirmation just committed you to, on the production list before anyone has to remember it. The order page lists the runs opened for it, and the run page links back.

Cancelling the order cancels its planned runs. A run that has already made something is never cancelled: those candles exist.

Buildable quantity

On any product with a recipe, the item page answers "Buildable now: 31 (limited by Wick)". It is the smallest number of whole units your materials allow:

for each material: floor(available ÷ what one unit takes, waste included) then take the smallest

Whole units, because half a candle is not a candle, and rounding down is the only direction that never promises stock you cannot make. It uses available material, so wax already claimed by another confirmed order is not counted as yours to pour. Make turns the answer straight into a run.

Reports

Two reports come out of production, under Reports:

• Production summary — runs, units, materials, labour and overhead per item over a period, from the costs frozen on each batch.
• Materials usage — what you got through per material, with waste on its own line and its share of the total.

Both export to CSV, and both are available through the API.

On the dashboard

Two widgets: On the bench (runs planned or under way) and Curing stock (finished batches inside their cure window, soonest ready first).