Using the production board
The five columns, what a drag actually triggers, and why the dispatched column is windowed.
Full guide: https://docs.printersfriend.com/operations/production-board
Production under Operate. Every live job as a card, in five columns, ordered by due date so the most urgent card sits at the top of its column.
The columns
- Artwork: where an order lands when a quote is accepted.
- Print queue: artwork approved, waiting for press time.
- In production: on the press.
- QC + Pack: checked and boxed.
- Dispatched: gone.
These five stages are fixed. The Workflow stages screen lets you save a different set, but the board, the barcode scanner and the API all still work to the five above, so renaming a stage there does not change what you see here yet. Treat that screen as not-yet-wired rather than as a working setting.
What a move actually triggers
Dragging a card is not just a status change. Moving into a stage for the first time fires that stage's side effects:
- In production: stock is consumed off the shelf for every line with a SKU. This is the stock-out point.
- Dispatched: the dispatch date is stamped, the invoice is generated, and the customer is emailed.
- Any move: a stage history row is written with who moved it and when, the activity feed is updated, and subscribers get
order.stage_changedororder.dispatched.
Side effects fire only on the first entry into a stage. Dragging a card back to Print queue and forward again does not consume stock twice or raise a second invoice, and neither does a double barcode scan.
Two people, one board
The board is live. When a teammate moves a card, every other open board refreshes itself, so the shop floor and the front desk never argue about which screen is right.
Why Dispatched looks short
The Dispatched column only shows the last 14 days. A board carrying every job you have ever finished is unreadable and slow. The column header links through to the full dispatched history in the Orders list.
Cancelling
Cancelling is not a column. Use Cancel order on the order itself, with a reason: that releases whatever stock is still reserved. Units already consumed at stock-out are not released, because they have physically gone. A cancelled order cannot be moved back into a stage.
On a shop TV
The board is designed to be left up on a wall screen. There is a separate stripped-back floor board for that, and the production board on a shop TV guide covers mounting and what to show.
Still stuck?
Email hello@printersfriend.com and quote the name of this page. Support is on every plan, with a reply within 1 business day.