Work Orders
A work order (WO) covers outsourced conversion: you send materials (and sometimes component products) to an external site, they assemble them, and you receive finished products back. The cost you're paying for is the labor — the conversion — because you supplied the inputs yourself.
:::tip Work order or production order? Both turn inputs into finished goods through a subcontractor. The difference is the cost model. A work order prices only the conversion (you own the materials, the site provides labor). A production order prices the whole thing — the manufacturer's production cost plus the consumed material cost — so the finished good lands fully costed. See the comparison. :::
What problem it solves
A work order tracks a job that leaves your four walls and comes back as product. It records the products expected back, snapshots the inputs those products will consume (from each SKU's bill of materials), and reconciles inventory as the job moves from committed, to in production, to received.
Lifecycle
Draft has no inventory effect. Entered commits the order. Production marks the inputs as allocated to the job. Received / Completed close it out as products come back. Cancelled is terminal and reverses the commitments.
Fields, line items, and receipts
- Header —
woNumber, the work-site location, expected delivery date, notes. - Output items — the products to be produced, each with a
quantityand a per-unitconversionCost. - Inputs — not entered by hand. At creation, each output's BOM is snapshotted one level deep into the input list, so both raw materials and any component SKUs become inputs.
- Receipts — each delivery of finished product back from the site is a receipt with its own date and lines.
Inventory effects
| When | Ledger | Event |
|---|---|---|
| Entered (and beyond) | finished goods, per output | ORDER on the products being made |
| Entered (and beyond) | materials / finished goods, per input | DEMAND on the inputs |
| Production (and beyond) | input ledgers | ALLOCATE on the inputs |
| Receipt created | input ledgers | CONSUME the inputs |
| Receipt created | finished goods | PRODUCE the output products |
DEMAND, ALLOCATE, and ORDER are driven by status; CONSUME and PRODUCE are driven by
receipts. Inputs route to whichever ledger they belong to — materials to the materials
ledger, component SKUs to the finished-goods ledger. Every entry carries the WO number as
its ref.
Relationships
- Performed at a location (the work site).
- Outputs reference products; inputs come from those products' BOMs.
- Writes to both the materials and finished-goods ledgers.
See also
Drive work orders through the REST API or the MCP server.