How work flows through Complaia

This page shows how the whole system fits together. Each module in this documentation handles one stage of the same process. Once you know which stage you work on, the other pages are easier to place.

The page follows one order from the moment the demand arrives to the moment it is invoiced. Bold words with a link are defined in the Glossary and mean the same thing on every page.

The journey

 ┌──────────┐  ┌──────────┐
 │Production│  │  Goods   │   Stock arrives one of two ways:
 │  order   │  │ receipt  │   you make it, or a supplier
 │          │  │    or    │   delivers it.
 │ → buffer │  │ external │
 │          │  │ receipt  │
 └────┬─────┘  └────┬─────┘
      └─── stock ───┴─────────────┐
                                  ▼
 ┌──────────┐  ┌──────────┐  ┌──────────┐  ┌──────────┐  ┌──────────┐
 │ Products │─▶│  Order   │─▶│  Stock   │─▶│  Order   │─▶│ Handover │
 │components│  │  placed  │  │reservation│ │ packing  │  │    or    │
 │  & sets  │  │          │  │ RESERVES │  │ into a   │  │ loading  │
 │          │  │          │  │  stock   │  │   box    │  │  ISSUES  │
 └──────────┘  └──────────┘  └──────────┘  └──────────┘  └────┬─────┘
                                                              │
                             ┌──────────┐  ┌──────────┐  ┌────▼─────┐
                             │ Analytics│◀─│ Invoice  │◀─│ Delivery │
                             │  & logs  │  │          │  │ & proof  │
                             └──────────┘  └──────────┘  └──────────┘

Two points on this line explain most questions about stock figures:

• Stock reservation is where stock is reserved. Nothing physically moves: the reserved figure rises and the available figure falls. If nobody reserved the goods before packing, the first scan into a box reserves them.
• Handover or loading is where stock leaves. The quantity on hand does not fall at packing. It falls when a closed box is handed to a courier, loaded for your own route or given to the customer.

Step by step

1. It starts in the catalog

You can sell only what exists in the catalog. A product defines what you sell. If you make it yourself, its recipe lists the components needed for one unit. A set is different: several finished products sold as one line, described by its set contents rather than a recipe. A set has no stock of its own. It is available when all of its products are available.

The catalog also affects the later steps:

• A product's parcels decide how it travels and how many labels one unit needs.
• If the product comes in variants, the variants are what is sold, made and stocked.

See Product types & structure.

2. Demand arrives as an order

An order records what a customer wants. An order is created in one of two ways:

• you type it in under Sales → Orders → New order, or
• an integration rule fetches it from a connected shop or marketplace on a schedule.

A line of an imported order describes the shop's product. Complaia matches it to one of your products automatically where it can. Where it cannot, you match it by hand on the order. Until a line is matched, the warehouse has nothing to reserve or pack for it. The other lines are not held up. See Importing & order mappings.

The order names its customer: one of your entities (customers & suppliers), or details typed in for this order only. It also has its own prices, discounts and delivery cost. Its status and its payment are tracked separately: an order can be shipped and unpaid, or paid and still new.

3. If you make it, production feeds the chain

Only for companies that run with production switched on.

A production order says what to make and how many. You create it under Production → Production orders, or directly from a sales order. When you create production orders from a sales order, Complaia creates them only for what is missing, and reserves the goods that are already in stock for the order.

If the product has a recipe, Complaia uses what is already on the shelf first. It adds a sub-order only for the rest of a recipe line that you also make yourself, and it reserves the materials.

Work reaches a worker only through a workstation. An order is placed on a workstation in one of two ways: by assigning it on the Planning screen, or by automatic distribution.

People at the workstation check in, take the material, start the order and report what they made. They can do this:

• on a POS terminal, a shared kiosk on the shop floor (POS stands for point of sale, but here it is not a till),
• in the mobile app,
• in the browser.

The status of a production order follows this work. It is Pending until work starts, Started while it runs and Completed at the end. Nobody sets it by hand.

Finished goods usually do not go straight to regular stock. First they are booked into the workstation buffer as WIP (work in progress). They are real and counted, but cannot be reserved or packed yet. They move into a warehouse when someone scans the goods' PRO- label on a terminal, or moves them with the To warehouse button in the buffer on the workstation screen. If the production order was made for a sales order, the goods are reserved for that order as they enter the warehouse.

This step is the boundary between the shop floor and the warehouse. It is the usual reason why finished goods cannot be shipped yet. See Production overview and moving output into a warehouse.

If you buy the goods in instead, this step does not happen.

4. Or the goods arrive from a supplier

There are two ways to book a delivery in:

• Goods receipt, under Warehouse → Operations → Goods receipt, is the direct way. You scan product labels and component codes, and the list goes onto stock when you confirm it.
• An external receipt, under Warehouse → Operations → External receipts, is a document prepared in advance. Preparing it moves no stock. Stock arrives as you receive goods against the document, in as many stages as the delivery takes.

5. Stock reservation reserves the goods

Under Warehouse → Order handling → Stock reservation you reserve the goods for an order, and Complaia makes a reservation. The goods stay on the shelf, but they are no longer available for anything else.

Reservation takes what it can, line by line. If one line is short, the rest is still reserved and the order shows what is outstanding. You reserve the remainder when the stock arrives.

You can also skip this screen. When someone scans goods into a box at packing, Complaia reserves them for the order at that moment.

Reservation does not change the order's status. The order list shows the warehouse progress in its own column, next to the status: Reserved, Packing with a count, and Packed.

6. Packing fills a box

Under Warehouse → Order handling → Order packing you pack the order into a box: you open a box, scan goods into it and close it.

• A closed box needs a label: the carrier's own label when a courier carries it, Complaia's box label otherwise.
• A box can be given a carton, a template with the size and empty weight.
• An empty box cannot be closed.

Closing the box records the goods as packed. It does not change the quantity on hand: the goods are in a box, but still in the building.

7. The box leaves the warehouse

The quantity on hand changes when a closed box leaves. Issuing a box:

• lowers the quantity on hand,
• releases what was reserved for it,
• records a movement that names the box, the order and the shipment.

Only a closed box can be issued. How it leaves depends on how the shipment travels:

• Courier: under Warehouse → Order handling → Shipment handover, you scan the boxes the courier takes. When the last box of a shipment is scanned, the whole shipment is issued by itself. To issue only some of the boxes, use Hand over to courier. See Shipment handover.
• Own transport: the route is loaded by scanning, in the mobile app or on a POS terminal. The office follows it under Warehouse → Order handling → Loading. Closing a loading stop issues the boxes that were scanned there. The driver cannot start the route until loading is complete. See Loading.
• Personal pickup: on the shipment, Hand over to customer issues the boxes.

A box that was dispatched or delivered but never issued waits on the To clarify list of the Shipment handover screen. Check that list from time to time, because those boxes still count as stock.

Not everything leaves through an order

Goods can also be taken off stock without an order, for example write-offs, samples and internal use, under Warehouse → Operations → Goods issue. See Goods issue.

8. It goes out for delivery

A shipment takes the goods to the customer. You create it from the order's Shipments tab, or under Logistics → Shipments → New shipment, and choose how it travels:

• A connected courier, such as InPost or DHL, set up as an integration. Saving the shipment with Create and dispatch sends it to the carrier and creates a paid label. There is no separate send step.
• Own transport: your vehicle and your driver. The shipment waits in the backlog until you plan it into a route under Logistics → Planning. A route can be approved once it has a vehicle, at least one driver, and a departure date. From then on, customers see their delivery window.
• Other carrier or Personal pickup for everything else.

Every shipment has a customer tracking link, a public page where the customer follows the delivery. Messages to customers are sent by e-mail. See Ways to deliver and Deliveries & notifications.

On your own routes the driver works in the mobile app. At the door the driver collects proof of delivery: scanned parcels, a photo, a signature or a PIN, whichever you have made mandatory under Logistics → Deliveries and notifications. If the order is paid on delivery, the app also makes the driver confirm that the cash was taken. See The driver app.

When a delivery fails, the driver reports it in the app.

• The shipment returns to the backlog to be planned again.
• The boxes that came back are booked in under Warehouse → Operations → Route returns. See Route returns.

9. It gets billed

An invoice is usually created directly from the order. On the order's Invoices tab, click Create draft from order. The new invoice opens with the order already selected, and it copies the order's lines, discounts and delivery cost.

Under Finance → Invoicing you can also put several orders on one invoice, if they are in the same currency. The invoice is issued by one of your sales entities, and its number comes from that entity's numbering. Sellers in Poland can send it to KSeF, Poland's national e-invoicing system.

After issuing, you cannot simply edit the invoice. You change it with a correction.

10. And if something comes back

A claim or return is opened from the original order and stays linked to it, so what was sold and what came back are always found together. Claims and returns have their own list under Sales → Claims & returns, and their own statuses.

What cuts across the journey

The order's status follows what the warehouse and logistics have done:

• once something is packed, the order moves to In progress;
• as boxes leave the warehouse, it moves to Partially shipped and then Shipped;
• as its shipments are delivered, it moves to Partially delivered and then Delivered. In a company that packs into boxes, Delivered also needs every box of the order to have left the warehouse.

This automatic change only moves an order forward, and it never changes a Cancelled or Delivered order. You can still set a status by hand. After a manual change, Complaia stops changing that order's status automatically. Reserving goods alone does not change the status. See Fulfilment & shipments.

Cancelling an order undoes the warehouse work. Its reservations are released, and boxes that were already packed appear on the To unpack tab of Order packing. Shipments that were not loaded or dispatched yet are cancelled too.

Stock is shared. Production, the warehouse, sales and logistics all read and change the same numbers. The figure that surprises people most is reserved. Whenever a figure looks wrong, check Stock levels first.

Roles and permissions decide who may do each of these steps. Someone who cannot find a screen usually lacks the permission for it. Modules and missing screens covers the other reasons.

A stocktaking session stops this entire chain

While a stocktaking session is open, the warehouse is frozen for the whole company. Receiving, reserving and packing are refused on every device. Boxes that leave the building during the session are taken off stock only after it ends. Only one session can be open at a time. Plan it as a break in normal work, not as something that runs in the background. See Stocktaking.

Where to go next

• New to the vocabulary? Read the Glossary. It defines every linked term on this page.
• Want the ideas behind the process rather than the order of steps? Read Core concepts.
• Setting Complaia up for the first time? Read Register your company, the Setup wizard, then the Setup checklist.
• Ready to work? Start at Products or Orders.