Production 🏭

Do you make or assemble the things you sell? TSync Production helps you turn raw materials into finished goods — and keeps your stock and your costs accurate while you do it.

You start by writing down your recipes (what goes into each product), then you create production orders when you actually want to make something. As you produce, TSync takes the ingredients out of stock, puts the finished product in, and works out exactly what each unit cost you to make. No spreadsheets, no manual stock adjustments.

💡 Production sits on top of your Warehouse, because making things moves stock in and out. So have Warehouse switched on too.

What would you like to do?

📖 Write a recipe for something I make

A recipe (sometimes called a bill of materials, or BOM) is just the list of ingredients for one of your products: what goes in, and how much. Once it's written, you never have to remember it again.

Create a recipe (menu Production → Bills of Materials (BOM)):

1. Open the Production menu and start a new recipe.
2. Give it a name (for example, "Margherita Pizza").
3. Choose the finished product it makes, and how many units one batch produces (say, 1 pizza).
4. Add the ingredients, one line each:
   • the ingredient,
   • how much goes in,
   • an optional waste allowance — a small extra percentage for what gets lost or trimmed away (for example 5% for dough), so TSync plans for a little more than the bare minimum.
5. Save.

As you build it, TSync shows you a running estimated cost of the recipe, so you can see roughly what each batch will cost to make.

Say what each line is: raw material or labour

Every recipe line has a Type column with two values: Raw material and Labour. The distinction is not cosmetic — how VAT is calculated depends on it.

Many workshops hold raw materials at the amount actually paid, VAT included. That is normal practice, not a data-entry mistake. Labour, on the other hand, is payment to people and never carries VAT. If a recipe mixes the two — and it usually does — then no percentage applied to the total is correct: apply the rate to everything and you invent tax on wages; apply none and you overvalue your stock by 20%.

So:

• tick Incl. VAT only on material lines whose price really contains the tax (the tick-box is not even offered on a labour line);
• the rate comes from Settings → Production process → VAT rate for BOM prices;
• the recipe total shows you three numbers: materials base, materials VAT and labour. A single "total incl. VAT" would hide exactly the figure your accountant needs.

Write the line in the unit you work in, not the one stock is kept in

Very often these are two different units. You buy boards by the square metre and keep stock that way, but the recipe consumes them in sheets. You buy glue by the box, but the recipe asks for kilograms.

Every recipe line now has a UoM column. Pick the unit you want to write the line in, and underneath the quantity you will see, in small print, what that means in the unit stock is kept in:

0.5 sheet → = 2.898 base

Stock itself does not change — it is still kept and valued in the base unit. What changes is how you write the recipe: you give the quantity in the unit that makes sense to you, and the system removes the matching amount from stock.

The units offered are the ones configured for that item, under Warehouse → Units per item. If an item has no alternative units, the list holds only "base unit" and nothing changes from before.

Recipes written before this version are untouched: they stay in the base unit, exactly as they were. And the value of the recipe does not change — the unit cost is given in the same unit as the quantity, so the line total is the same whichever unit you wrote it in.

The total cost stays net of VAT. Purchase VAT is deductible, so it is not part of the stock value — you see what you paid, the accounts see the base.

Recipes created before this version do not change: all their lines stay "raw material, not VAT-inclusive", exactly as they were, until you tick something yourself.

Keep a history with recipe versions

Every time you save a recipe, TSync quietly keeps a snapshot. Open Versions on any recipe to:

• see every past version — who saved it, when, and an optional note;
• compare two versions — pick two and hit Compare for a side-by-side diff that highlights exactly what changed (the older version in red, the newer in green);
• restore an old version — bring back an earlier recipe; TSync snapshots the current one first, so you never lose anything.

Handy when you tweak a recipe over time and later want to remember — or undo — how something used to be made.

Build products from sub-assemblies

Some products are made from parts that you also make yourself. A recipe line can point to another recipe instead of a raw ingredient — so you can describe things in layers.

For example, a bicycle is built from a frame and wheels, and each of those is built from its own parts. When you produce the bicycle, TSync automatically works its way down through all the sub-recipes to the raw materials, so nothing is missed (it follows the chain many levels deep).

🛠️ Create a production order to make a batch

A production order (PO) is your instruction to actually produce something: make this many of this product.

Open Production → Production orders (PO) and:

1. Start a new production order.
2. Pick the recipe you want to make.
3. Enter how many finished units you want.
4. Choose the warehouse — where the ingredients come from, and where the finished goods go.
5. Set your planned start and finish dates.
6. Save it as a draft.

A draft is fully editable. Nothing moves in stock and nothing is booked until you start working through the order's lifecycle below.

✅ Check you have enough materials first

Before you commit to making anything, it's worth knowing: do we actually have the ingredients? TSync answers that for you.

Once you've saved a production order, it shows a materials check: for every ingredient, you see how much the order needs, how much you have in stock, and a clear green tick if you're fine — or a red flag if you're short.

That way you can see at a glance whether you can go ahead, or whether you need to buy more first. (When you do need to buy, the Purchases module is right there to order from your suppliers.)

The order lifecycle: from draft to done

A production order moves through clear, distinct stages. Each one is its own button — you're never guessing what "save and produce" did.

Draft → Released → (in progress, with consumption recorded) → Completed, with Reopen to back out, and Cancel to stop.

▶️ 1. Release the order

When the plan is ready, click Release for execution. This is the moment the order leaves draft and becomes live:

• the order changes from Draft to Released;
• if you use detailed steps (routing), TSync creates the work orders for each operation;
• if you've turned on automatic backflush, the materials are pulled from stock right now (see Backflush below);
• if an approval threshold applies, the order may go to pending approval instead of releasing straight away (see Manager approval below).

⚙️ 2. Execute — record what you consumed

Execute production is where TSync records the materials actually used and adds the finished goods. You can make the whole batch at once, or part of it now and the rest later — produce 60 of 100 today, the other 40 tomorrow.

1. Open the released order.
2. Enter how many you're making now (it suggests the amount still to go).
3. Confirm.

TSync then does the bookkeeping:

• It can stop you if you're short on any ingredient (a safety check you can turn off — see Settings).
• It takes the ingredients out of stock at their current average cost.
• It works out what the finished product cost to make from the ingredients used.
• It puts the finished goods into stock at that cost, so your stock value stays accurate.
• It keeps a record of exactly what was consumed each time.

A run is all-or-nothing. If anything fails part-way, stock is left exactly as it was: the ingredients are not deducted and the finished goods are not added, and the message says plainly that the run was rolled back completely. You cannot end up with the materials gone and no product.

• The order moves to In progress while there's more to make, or to Completed once the full quantity is done.

✔️ 3. Complete the order

Complete order finishes the order — the whole thing, not half of it:

• it makes whatever is still outstanding first. If you released the order and the materials were already taken (by backflush, say) but nothing was produced yet, completing it produces the goods now. Materials are never taken twice — TSync notices they already left stock and reuses their cost.
• it marks the order Completed (done) and stamps the finish time;
• it works out the full cost of one unit — materials plus labour and machine time — and writes that back onto the product as its cost price (see Full cost below);
• it creates a finished-goods lot so you can trace each piece (see Lots below);
• if you've enabled accounting, it posts the finished goods to your books (see Accounting below).

✅ Either button finishes the order properly. Execute and Complete order are not two things you must remember to do in the right sequence. Execute the full quantity and the order is completed for you — cost, lot and accounting included. Complete an order that hasn't been executed and it produces the goods for you. You cannot end up with goods that your books don't know about, or a posting for goods that were never made.

⚠️ If it can't make the goods, it won't close the order. Short of a material with the safety check switched on? TSync says which one and leaves the order open, rather than marking it finished with nothing to show for it. And if you press Complete twice, the second press changes nothing — it tells you the order was already finished.

↩️ Reopen or cancel

• Reopen for adjustments takes a completed order back to In progress if you need to fix something — and if accounting posted an entry, that entry is reversed automatically so your books stay correct. Reopening is also what lets you adjust consumption and add extra materials (below).
• Cancel stops an order you're no longer making. (Drafts and cancelled orders can also be deleted.)

💡 A quick example. Say a pizza recipe uses dough, sauce and cheese, and once you add up what they cost, one pizza works out at about 10.31 in your currency. Execute a batch of 50, and TSync records the batch as costing around 515.50, with each pizza valued at 10.31 in your finished-goods stock. You didn't calculate any of that by hand — TSync did it from the real cost of the ingredients you used.

Fine-tuning what you consumed

Real production rarely matches the recipe to the gram. Production lets you correct the record after the fact — honestly, with a trail of what changed.

✏️ Adjust consumption

After the order is reopened, you can adjust how much of any material was actually consumed — up or down. TSync updates stock to match and writes the change to a consumption change log (what it was before, what it is now, who changed it, when, and why), so the history is always clear.

➕ Add extra (unplanned) material

Sometimes a job needs something the recipe didn't list. On a reopened order you can add extra material — pick the item, the quantity, the cost, and a reason. It's consumed from stock and recorded alongside the planned materials, again logged in the consumption change log.

Backflush: pull materials automatically

Backflush means TSync deducts the recipe's components from stock for you, instead of you logging each one. You control how eager it is, in Settings:

• Enable backflush — the master switch.
• Backflush automatically on release — pull the materials the moment you release the order (off = you trigger it yourself when you're ready).
• Allow partial backflush — when stock is short, consume only what's actually there and flag the shortfall, instead of blocking. Leave it off for strict, all-or-nothing consumption.

There's also a "stop if short" safety toggle (Settings → Block execution if components are short): keep it on and TSync won't let you consume more than you have. When you do trigger backflush by hand, you can also allow a partial run just for that one time.

Backflush is idempotent — if the materials for an order have already been pulled, running it again won't double-count.

Going further: planning the work itself

If you run a more involved operation, Production has extra tools for planning the work, not just the materials. These are optional; switch on detailed steps when you need them.

🏗️ Work centers — your machines and workstations

Open Production → Work centers to list your workstations — a hand-assembly bench, a machine, a line. For each one you record its hourly cost, how much it can do per hour (capacity), its working hours per day and an efficiency %. When you produce, TSync folds that cost into the price of the finished product, so your costs reflect labour and machine time, not just raw materials. A couple of common ones come ready-made so you can start quickly.

📋 Routings — the sequence of steps

Open Production → Routings to describe a sequence of operations for making a product: the order of the steps, which work center each one uses, the setup time, and the cycle time per unit. You can link a routing to a recipe. TSync uses this to estimate time and cost more accurately, and adds the work time on top of the material cost.

Each operation can also carry a fixed cost — a flat amount paid per unit produced, rather than by the clock. The routing list shows the total of those fixed costs per routing, so you can compare the labour cost of several products at a glance without opening each one; and while you edit a routing, a total row under the table adds the column up as you type, including rows you have just added or removed. A routing with no operations yet shows a dash rather than zero — the two mean different things.

Besides time, each operation has four more fields — most useful when your shop does not work in a straight line:

• Label — a short name for the operation (1, 2a, 7b). It is the name the next column refers to.
• Depends on — the labels of the operations that must finish before this one, comma-separated (1,2a). Leave it empty if the step can start at any time. This matters: if cutting the fabric, cutting the timber and cutting the foam happen at the same time in your shop, leave them without dependencies. Otherwise the system counts them one after another and inflates your promised date for no reason.
• Unit — the unit the step is paid in (set, piece). Some stations are paid per set, others per piece.
• Fixed cost — the amount paid for the operation, if the work is paid per operation rather than by the minute. Leave it at 0 to have the cost computed from time.

The row order on screen is only the display order — what runs before what is what the Depends on column says.

If you make upholstered furniture, the module ships the trade's usual eleven work points ready-made (cutting, sewing, filling cushions, cutting timber, frame, cutting foam, mattress, upholstering, sides, assembly, packing). They arrive switched off, so they do not clutter your lists if you make nothing upholstered — open Work centers and activate the ones you run.

🔧 Work orders — one job per step

When detailed steps are on, releasing an order turns each routing operation into a work order — a single job your team can track. Open Work orders from the order and, for each step:

• Start it when work begins;
• Stop it when the step is done (TSync records the time worked, which feeds the labour cost);
• Block it with a reason if it's stuck (waiting on a part, a machine down).

Tasks and quality checks attach to the work order — the individual step — not the whole production order, so responsibility and results stay precise.

👤 Turn a step into a task for your team

From the work-orders list, each step has a "+ Task" button: quickly create a task tied to that step, with a due date and an assignee, linked back to the order. Everyone knows what they're responsible for, and you can follow progress.

🔍 Check the quality of each step

Each work order has a "Quality" button that opens a quality checklist. Add the checks you want to run, choosing a type:

• Visual inspection
• Dimension
• Weight
• Electrical
• Functional
• Other

Give each check a name and an optional expected value (e.g. "10 ± 0.1 mm"). The operator then records the measured value and marks the result Pass / Fail / N/A. TSync stamps who checked it and when, and the results stay recorded next to that step — handy for your quality records and for handling complaints.

🏷️ Track finished-goods lots

When you complete an order, TSync automatically creates a lot for the finished product, with a number derived from the order number (for example LOT-MO-0042) and an optional expiry date. The lot enters your Warehouse as a real lot, so from then on you can trace exactly which production run each piece came from — and "first to expire, first out" rules and expiry alerts work for things you manufacture too, not just for what you buy.

Planning ahead: capacity and the planning console

📐 Capacity planning

Open Production → Capacity planning for a snapshot of how busy each work center is right now: how many hours it has available versus how many your open work orders need, shown as a utilization % with a colour bar (green when comfortable, amber when tight, red and flagged OVERCAPACITY when overloaded). It's the quick "are my machines overbooked?" view.

📊 The planning console

Open Production → Planning for a single screen that answers the three questions you ask before committing to a plan:

• How much can a finished product cost — and how long will it take? Pick a recipe and a quantity, and the estimator rolls it all up: the material cost (working down through every sub-assembly to the raw materials, at your real stock cost), the labour cost (the steps times each work center's hourly rate), the total and unit cost, and the lead time in hours and days. If a component has no known cost yet, TSync tells you instead of pretending it's free — so you know the estimate is partial.
• Are my work centers overloaded? The load board shows, for a date window you choose, how many hours each work center has available versus how many the open orders need.
• What's the plan? The schedule lists your open orders in priority and date order, each with its estimated cost and lead time, so you can sequence the work.

Both the capacity page and the planning console are read-only — they help you decide; they never change an order or your stock on their own. (The difference: Capacity planning is a quick current-load snapshot per machine; the Planning console is the forward-looking estimator + load board + schedule.)

🧮 MRP — what do I need to buy?

Open Production → MRP (Material Requirements Planning) to look ahead across your open orders and find out what you'll run short of. Set a horizon (how many days ahead to look) and click Run MRP. TSync compares the materials your planned and released orders need against what's in stock and already on order, and lists every shortage: the component, the warehouse, how much is needed, how much you have, what's on order, the gap, a suggested quantity to buy, the cost, when it's needed by, and the preferred supplier.

ℹ️ Convert to RFQ is coming. A button to turn shortages straight into a request-for-quote is present but not active yet — it will work once the Purchases module exposes the right link. For now, MRP logs the request and you order through Purchases.

🔒 Require a manager's approval

If you'd like a second pair of eyes before production starts, set an approval threshold in Settings (a total-cost amount). Any order that costs at or above the threshold can't be released straight away — instead it goes through TSync's central Approvals console: the order becomes pending approval, and the people you nominate are notified. Once it's approved there, you can release it; if it's rejected, it stays blocked. Leave the threshold at 0 to switch approval off.

Setting things up your way

Open Production → Settings. The page is grouped into sections:

💡 Detailed steps & tasks. Using routings/work centers and creating a task per step are controlled behind the scenes (they default to off for routing and on for tasks). Turn detailed steps on when you want the per-operation work orders, quality checks and tasks described above.

Full cost and the product's price

When you complete an order, TSync works out the real full cost of one piece: the materials consumed (at their stock cost) plus labour and work-center time (the actual time worked at each work center × that work center's cost per hour). That unit cost is then written back onto the product as its purchase (cost) price, separate from your sale price — so stock-value and margin reports use the real cost to make it, not a stale catalogue price. The completion message shows you the breakdown: total cost = material + labour, and the cost per unit.

📈 The production cost report

For a list view of how your runs performed, the Production cost report (in the Reports console, alongside your other reports) shows each order with its planned quantity, produced quantity, total cost and unit cost in your base currency — and exports to CSV/Excel like the other reports.

Keeping the accountants happy

If you use TSync's accounting, you can have it record finished goods on your books automatically when a production order is completed — putting the value (the full cost above) into the right accounts (finished goods on debit, stock variation on credit), and undoing it neatly if you ever reopen the order. You can switch this on and configure it right from Production settings (tick auto-posting and pick the finished-goods and variance accounts) — no editing the database. Off by default, so your bookkeeping stays in step with what you produce, without anyone re-keying figures.

See your production at a glance

Production comes with a clean dashboard showing the things you'll want to keep an eye on: open production orders, the value of work currently in progress, where you're short on materials, your top products by output, and your most recent orders.

Who can do what

You can decide which team members handle each part:

• View — anyone involved in production (recipes, orders, MRP).
• Create — the person who sets up recipes and raises production orders.
• Execute / Produce — the operators who release, execute and run the work (and work orders).
• Manage — a manager who can cancel, delete, run MRP, manage work centers and routings, and change the settings.

Getting started

Turn the module on from Setup → Modules → TSync Production → Install. Because production moves stock, switch on the Warehouse module too.

Where to go next

• 📦 See and value your stock → Warehouse guide
• 🛒 Order the raw materials you need → Purchases guide
• 🏠 Lost? Head back to Getting started with TSync