Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Manufacturing Orders (MO).

So, what is a Manufacturing Order? Think of it as the central document that schedules and tracks a production run. When your business needs to make something, a Manufacturing Order is what kicks that process off. It pulls together your components, tells the system what you’re building, how much of it you’re building, and then tracks the whole thing from start to finish. As production happens, it consumes stock from your component inventory and, when everything’s done, it adds the finished goods back into your warehouse. That loop — components go in, finished product comes out — is what a Manufacturing Order manages.

Let’s walk through the lifecycle of a Manufacturing Order, because understanding the stages really helps you see how the whole thing fits together.

It starts in Draft. This is where you’re setting things up. You haven’t committed to anything yet — you’re just putting the order together, specifying what you want to produce and in what quantity. Think of it as your planning stage.

Once you’re happy with it, you move the order to Validated. At this point the system recognises the order as real and approved. You’re saying, yes, this production run is happening.

From there, it moves into the In Production stage. This is the active phase — work is underway, components are being consumed, and you’re recording progress as things get built.

Then comes Completed. The production run is done. The finished goods exist.

And finally, Stock Updated. This is where the system catches up with reality — your finished goods are added to inventory, and the components that were used are deducted from stock. The books reflect what actually happened on the floor.

So that’s five stages: Draft, Validated, In Production, Completed, and Stock Updated. Each one represents a meaningful checkpoint in the production process.

Now let’s talk about how you actually work with a Manufacturing Order day to day.

The first thing you do is create the MO from a Bill of Materials, which you might hear referred to as a BOM. A Bill of Materials is essentially the recipe — it lists every component you need and in what quantity to produce the finished item. When you create a Manufacturing Order, you reference that BOM and specify how many units you want to produce. The system uses that information to work out exactly what stock it needs to pull.

Next, you check and reserve your component stock. Before you can actually build anything, you need to know the materials are available. The system lets you verify that the components are on hand and reserve them so they’re earmarked for this production run and not accidentally allocated elsewhere.

After that, you record production progress as work happens. This keeps the system up to date in real time, so your inventory and production data stay accurate throughout the run rather than only at the end.

And finally, when the run is done, you complete the MO. That’s the action that triggers the finished goods being added to stock — closing the loop we talked about earlier.

There are a few related areas you’ll want to be familiar with alongside Manufacturing Orders. The Bill of Materials is the starting point for every MO, so understanding how BOMs are structured is essential. Stock and Warehouse Management ties in closely, since every MO both draws from and contributes to your inventory. And if you’re tracking the cost side of things, the Margins module connects to MOs for production cost tracking — useful for understanding how profitable each production run actually is.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.