How the Shop Model Works

Everything in the workspace is built from a small set of objects, and most confusion during setup comes from mixing two of them up. Ten minutes here saves an hour of guessing later.

Customers

Object	What it is	Example
Organisation	The customer. Holds the price list, payment terms, default carrier and addresses	Northside Football Club
Contact	A person at that organisation. One is the primary contact	Megan Cole
Portal user	A login for the customer portal, created by inviting a contact and tied to one organisation	megan@northsidefc.au
Address	A billing or shipping address on the organisation, with one default of each	Club rooms, 12 Park Rd

A contact is not a login. Creating a contact lets you quote and invoice a person; Invite to portal on that contact creates the portal user that lets them sign in. Payment terms are a fixed set, Net 7, Net 14, Net 30, Net 60, End of month and Cash on delivery, and the invoice due date is computed from them.

Walk-in customers still become an organisation. The kiosk creates one named after the person, which keeps their history, reorders and invoices attached to something.

Product

Blanks are described in layers, and SKUs are what stock attaches to.

Brand          Gildan
  Style          5000 Heavy Cotton Tee
    Colour         Black
      Size           L
      = SKU        GIL-5000-BLK-L   <- stock lives here

Object	What it is
Brand	The blanks manufacturer, with a code of up to 8 characters used in SKU codes
Style	A garment within a brand: the supplier's style code, a name, a list unit price and a category
Colour	A colour shared across styles, with a code used in SKU codes and a swatch shown on the kiosk, the portal and the designer
Size	XS to 3XL are seeded for every new workspace; imports add more
SKU	One style in one colour and size. Carries on-hand, reserved, reorder point and reorder quantity
Category	A grouping for the storefront and the portal catalogue: tees, hoodies, caps

A style and its SKUs. Stock is never edited here; it moves through adjustments and purchase orders.

Stock is never a single number that gets overwritten. Every movement writes a row to a ledger, so on-hand is always explainable.

Decoration and Price

Object	What it is
Decoration method	Screen print, embroidery, DTG, DTF, heat transfer, sublimation. Carries a setup fee and a rate matrix by quantity and colour count
Price list	A named rate band. Its discount percentage comes off list prices wherever that customer is priced: quotes, portal, store and cart
Pricing rule	A customer discount, a quantity break or a setup fee waiver, scoped to the whole shop, one customer or a price list
Coupon code	A code a customer enters at checkout
Promotion	An automatic offer applied when its conditions are met

Set these up in this order: decoration methods, then price lists, then rules on top. The order is explained in Pricing rules.

The Job

Quote  ->  Order  ->  production stages  ->  Dispatched  ->  Invoice  ->  Paid

Object	What it is
Quote	Priced lines, not yet committed. Draft, Sent, Converted, Declined or Expired
Quote line	One garment plus decoration plus quantity, priced by the engine
Order	A committed job with a stage, a due date, addresses, stage history and a sales rep
Order line	The same shape as a quote line, plus cost snapshots taken when the order was created
Artwork	The proof thread on an order, with versions, comments and an approval state
Production batch	Several orders ganged together for one press run
Time entry	One clock-on against one order, costed at that person's labour rate
Invoice	Issued from an order: a deposit, a full invoice or the balance at dispatch, with a pay link when Stripe is connected
Return	Goods back in, with a refund or a credit note

Two things are snapshotted on purpose:

• Garment and decoration costs are copied onto each order line when the order is created. A supplier price rise next month does not rewrite the margin of a job that shipped.
• The labour rate is frozen when a clock starts, and the commission rate when a rep is assigned, so a pay rise later never changes last month's job costs.

Production Stages

An order's stage is the column it sits in on the production board. There are five, in a fixed order:

Artwork Print queue In production QC + Pack Dispatched

An accepted quote becomes an order in Artwork. Approval moves it to Print queue. Entering In production consumes stock. Dispatched issues the invoice and closes the job. A cancelled order leaves the board and releases its stock. See Production workflow stages.

Selling Surfaces

Object	What it is	Address
Customer portal	Reorders, approvals, invoices and messages for a signed-in customer	yourshop.printersfriend.com/portal
Team store	A branded store for one club or company with guest checkout	yourshop.printersfriend.com/store/{team}
Campaign page	A group buy with a deadline	yourshop.printersfriend.com/campaign/{slug}
Kiosk	In-store iPad self-serve, switched on with a PIN	yourshop.printersfriend.com/workspace/kiosk

All of them end in the same place: a quote or an order in your workspace, priced by the same engine as a staff quote.

Your Shop and Your Team

Object	What it is
Workspace	Your whole shop, at its own address. Everything above belongs to exactly one workspace
User	A staff login with a role, a labour rate and a commission rate
Role	Owner, manager, sales, production, designer, finance or viewer. Decides which screens and actions are available
Setting	A stored preference: brand name, accent colour, tax scheme, portal copy, kiosk PIN
Time zone	Set per workspace. Due dates, today tables, clock-in times and the morning reminder sends follow it; records are stored in UTC

Roles are covered in Your team and roles. Give people the narrowest role that lets them do their job, and use viewer for anyone who only needs to look.

Related Pages

• Your First Job, End to End: one job through every screen it touches
• Pricing Rules: customer discounts, quantity breaks and setup waivers
• Production Workflow Stages: the five production stages and the chase timings
• Your Team and Roles: invite your team and choose their roles at setup
• Glossary: the terms used in the product and these docs