Jobs Overview

A job is a production order — it tells your shop floor "we need to make these parts." Jobs are created from approved quotes and serve as the central record for tracking an order through manufacturing.

What's in a Job

When you create a job from a quote, it inherits:

Parts — the items you need to manufacture, with their quantities
Materials — raw materials required for each part
Operations — the manufacturing steps for each part (these become work orders)
Purchased items — off-the-shelf components to buy and include

A job also tracks additional order information:

Customer PO number — your client's purchase order reference
Promised delivery date — the date you committed to deliver
Order notes — any special instructions or context
PO file — an attached copy of the customer's purchase order document

Creating a Job from a Quote

You create a job from a quote that your client has approved.

Open the quote you want to convert.
Click the Create Job button.
Enter the Customer PO Number (required). If you upload a PO file, Forge can auto-detect the PO number from the document.
Set a Promised Delivery Date if you have one.
Select which parts to include. You can create a job for all parts or select a subset for a partial order.
Optionally adjust quantities for each part if the customer ordered different amounts than originally quoted.
Click Create Job to confirm.

Forge assigns a sequential job number (e.g., J-001, J-002) and sets the initial status to Open. The quote is marked as converted and locked from further edits.

Partial orders: If you only include some parts from the quote, the job is flagged as a partial order. You can create additional jobs from the same quote later for the remaining parts.

Job Statuses

Jobs move through a series of statuses as they progress:

| Status | Meaning | |---|---| | Draft | Job created but not yet confirmed. Can be edited freely. | | Open | Confirmed and ready for production planning. Materials may still need to be sourced. | | In Production | Work orders are active on the shop floor. | | On Hold | Production paused — waiting on materials, client clarification, or another issue. | | Ready to Ship | All work orders are complete. Parts are ready for delivery. | | Shipped | Parts have been shipped to the customer. | | Completed | Customer has received the parts and the job is done. | | Closed | Final state. Job is archived for record-keeping. | | Cancelled | Job was cancelled before completion. |

Not every job passes through every status. A straightforward order might go Open, In Production, Ready to Ship, Shipped, Completed, Closed.

To change a job's status, use the status dropdown on the job detail page. Forge only shows valid transitions — you can't jump from Draft directly to Shipped, for example. Some backward transitions (like moving from Ready to Ship back to In Production) require a reason.

Navigating the Jobs List

The jobs list page shows all your jobs in a table. Each row displays:

Job number — click to open the job detail page
Customer — the client who placed the order, with a "Partial" badge if it's a partial order
Status — the current status badge, with progress indicators showing how many materials have been received and how many operations are complete
Amount — the total job value
Profitability — a cost variance indicator showing whether actual costs are tracking above or below your quoted price (only shows once operations have been completed)
Delivery date — the promised delivery date
Last updated — when the job was last modified

Filtering and Sorting

Use the controls at the top of the page to find specific jobs:

Search — filter by job number or customer name
Date range — filter by when jobs were last updated
Status pipeline — click a segment in the status bar to filter by that status. Click again to clear the filter.

Click any column header to sort by that field. The pipeline bar also shows the total value of active jobs (those not in Draft, Completed, Closed, or Cancelled status).

Jobs list with status pipeline and filters