Find your job below and it will show you the screens you use and the buttons you press. Or ask a question in the box - it answers from the live system where it can. If what you want is the shape of the whole thing - every place an order can be and what moves it - open the order flow.
Try a how-to question, or ask about stock. It only answers from the real system - if it does not know, it says so rather than guess.
Press the one that matches what you do. It takes you straight to your part and skips everyone else's.
Everything in the next section applies to everybody, whatever your job.
There are no passwords anywhere in PhoenixOS. You get a 6-digit code, it lasts 15 minutes, and it works once. There are two ways in - use the one for where you are.
This is the way in if you work at a machine, on the dock, or driving. You do not need to remember an email address.
Check the junk folder first. The screen says Code sent whatever number you type, so if no email comes it is usually a mistyped number. Ask Mick if it keeps happening.
You can ask for up to five codes in fifteen minutes. After that, wait a while.
A tablet that worked yesterday afternoon will want your number again this morning. That is normal and nothing is wrong.
If your station screen jumps to Floor sign in by itself, sign in again and you come straight back to the same screen. Nothing you already tapped is lost.
An office sign-in lasts 30 days on that device. If a code is rejected, check the email address above it is the one the code went to - the address is half the credential, so the right code with the wrong address will not work.
Every screen you are signed in to shows your name and a LOG OUT button in the top bar. On a shared tablet that name is how the next person knows the screen is still yours.
Press LOG OUT at the end of your shift. It ends your session properly, so nobody can pick the tablet up and act as you.
If the name at the top is not yours, the last person did not log out. Press it and sign in as yourself before you touch anything. Everything you do is recorded against whoever is signed in.
The wall TV and the shared truck tablet show no name and no LOG OUT. They are screens, not people.
Everyone has a level from 1 to 4, and it decides which boards you can open. Your launchpad only shows the boards you can actually use, so if you see four tiles and someone else sees eleven, that is correct and nothing is hidden from you by mistake.
| Level | Boards you can open | What you can change |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | My Station, TV Wallboard, Deliveries, Dispatch | Work jobs at your machine, and count deliveries in at Goods In. |
| 2 | the above + Factory Operations | the above + confirm a delivery as delivered. |
| 3 | the above + Queue Management, Stock, Projects | the above + stock triggers and silos, and machine queues. |
| 4 | All eleven boards | Everything, including Process Order, purchasing and staff. |
If you open a board above your level it says NOT AUTHORISED and stays put. Signing in again will not help. Ask David or Mick if you need it.
A change to your level takes effect the next time you sign in.
The launchpad is the grid of large buttons, one per board. Press the small star on any board to make it the screen you land on when you sign in.
Most boards carry a row of counts across the top - Open Jobs, New Orders, Awaiting Board, In Production, In Deliveries, Current SOH and DIFOT. They refresh by themselves and each one is a shortcut: press it to jump to that list.
The Home in the row of counts always goes to the launchpad.
The Home in the menu strip goes to the Order Book on some boards and the launchpad on others. If Home does not go where you expected, that is why.
You are looking at practice data, not the factory, and nothing you do is
recorded. Look at the web address: if it ends in ?demo or ?live,
delete that part and reload.
It follows you - every link keeps you in practice mode until you edit the address. One shared or bookmarked link can keep a whole shift on it.
If you see Feed stopped or Feed failing, the screens are showing the last information that arrived and nothing is updating. If you see something offline, one part of the system is down but orders and deliveries are still coming through.
Either way, what is on screen may be out of date. Tell the office. Do not assume a job has gone because it is not there.
Your session ran out. Sign in again - nothing is lost. On the floor this normally happens first thing in the morning, because the sign-in ends at midnight.
You are signed in, but that board is not part of your level. Signing in again will not help. Ask David or Mick.
It almost certainly has an open query, which moves it out of the Order Book and onto Order Queries until the question is answered. Look there first.
In Production and In Deliveries overlap on purpose. One order, two views. It is not a duplicate.
Tell someone rather than pressing more buttons. Most things the office can put right - a removed order restored, a job moved back to a machine, a delivery moved to another run.
Two things cannot be undone from any screen: finishing an operation on the wrong job, and marking the wrong order delivered. Both are fixable, but a person has to do it, so say so straight away.
This is for you if you run a machine - die cutting, stripping, laminating, Solarco, or any other machine on the floor - and the jobs you work on come to you in a queue.
You have your own 3-digit employee number. Nobody else has it, and it is yours for as long as you work here. You never type an email address into the tablet.
You land straight on your station screen. That is your screen for the shift - you do not have to find it.
Check your junk folder first. Then press Send my code again - asking for a second code is fine. If still nothing, ask Mick.
Your sign-in lasts until midnight. Next morning the tablet will ask you for a fresh code, and that is normal, not a fault.
Along the top of the station screen is a strip of machine names, each with a number next to it - that number is how many jobs are queued there. Slide the strip sideways to see them all. Tap your machine. It turns yellow, and the list underneath becomes that machine's queue.
The tablet remembers your choice. Next time you sign in on the same tablet, it comes back on the same machine. Some tablets are fixed to one machine and will tell you so in a blue line under the strip.
Every job in the queue is one card. From the top of the card down:
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| PRO number, in blue | The job's number. This is the number you quote to anyone about this job. |
| A short code beside it | The customer's short code. |
| PRIORITY | The office has pinned this job to the top. Do it first. |
| REWORK (sometimes with a number) | This card is rework, not the original job. The number says which rework it is. |
| #3 in queue (top right) | Where this job sits in the queue. The office sets that order deliberately - work down the list. |
| The description line | The item you are making. |
| Qty | The order quantity. |
| Something like 3/7 - 43% | How far through its route the job is: three of seven operations done. -/- means the route is not known yet - see the note below. |
| Due | The production due date - when this job needs to be finished, not when it ships. |
Under that sit the reference chips: small grey boxes for the drawing, artwork, knife, pallet and any notes. Where a chip is blue, tap it and the document opens in a new tab. Check the knife and the drawing before you start setup - that is what the chips are there for.
Its route is not readable yet, so the tablet will not let you tap anything on it. That is deliberate: a tap that cannot say which operation it finished is worse than no tap. Tell your supervisor and move to the next job.
The card is split into two panels: Setup on one side, Manufacturing on the other. The next tap you need is always the yellow one. The others stay on the screen but go quiet.
The state line in the middle of the card tells you where you are: Waiting to start setup, then Setup in progress, then Manufacturing in progress. If the job is paused it says Paused setup or Paused manufacturing with the reason.
After a pause the yellow button is Resume setup or Resume manufacturing - whichever phase you paused. It always puts you back in the same phase you stopped in, never the other one.
Press the one you are up to. If you never pressed Start setup, the operation still records as finished - Phoenix simply says honestly that it does not know how long the setup took. It will not invent a number, and it will not stop you working. Tell your supervisor so the figure can be explained later.
Open QA check on the card. Three things to fill in:
Then press Record QA.
Record the fail honestly. Phoenix stops the clock, holds the job at your machine and puts it on the office board straight away. You cannot restart it yourself and you are not meant to - the hold is lifted by a manager, who has to give a reason. Do not carry on running product you have just failed.
Open Quantity / waste. This is available while you are running, which is when the output exists.
Press Record quantity. You can record as many times as you like through a run - a few entries across a shift is normal and more useful than one guess at the end.
The running totals appear at the bottom of the card: Good, Waste, Rework, and your Latest QA.
Pause whenever the work genuinely stops. A pause keeps the stopped time out of your machine's figures, so pausing protects you - an unpaused lunch break makes your machine look slow.
Open Pause, pick the reason and press Pause this phase. The reasons are:
When you are going again, press the yellow Resume button on the card.
If something is wrong but you are not stopping the job for it, record it. Open Report issue:
Press Record issue. Your last few issues stay listed in amber at the bottom of the card, so the next person on the machine can see them.
Recording a safety issue is not the same as reporting it. If anything is unsafe, stop, make it safe and tell your supervisor in person. Then record it.
When work has to be done again at your machine, open Create rework job:
Press Create rework at this process.
It creates a new job for the one operation, at your machine, and puts it in your queue. It carries a REWORK badge and the same PRO number so it stays tied to the customer's order. It does not rewind the original job and it does not undo anything you have already recorded. Rework is extra work, and Phoenix records it as extra work.
You will see up to three separate numbers, and they are never added together, because they are three different problems:
| Number | What it is |
|---|---|
| Setup total | Time spent setting up. A long setup is a changeover problem. |
| Run total | Time spent running. A long run means the expected rate is wrong. |
| Waiting between machines (amber) | Time the job sat in a queue, not at any machine. That belongs to the schedule, not to you. |
While you are working you also see a live counter - Setup 25m on the clock, or Run 1h 10m on the clock. "On the clock" means plain wall clock: it ticks, and it keeps ticking through lunch and overnight. The settled totals underneath are working minutes off the shift calendar, which is why a job left overnight shows a big number on the clock and a sensible total the next day. Both are true. They are measuring different things.
Press a button twice, or press it again because the tablet felt slow, and Phoenix records it once. Every button goes grey for the moment it takes to save, and each tap carries a marker so a repeat is recognised as the same tap and ignored. You will never create two starts, two finishes or two counts by tapping twice.
Nothing on this screen can be taken back - not a tap, not a QA result, not a quantity, not a rework job. If you record something wrong, or on the wrong job, tell your supervisor straight away. It can be corrected properly, with a record of who corrected it and why. Do not try to cancel it out with another entry.
If the tablet loses the wi-fi it will say offline at the top right, and any tap will tell you the action was not recorded. Not saved, not queued, not sent later - nothing happened. Get the wi-fi back and do the tap again. Never walk away from a tap that did not confirm.
A confirmed action shows a short green line on the card - "Setup started", "Quantity recorded", and so on. Green means saved. Red means it did not happen.
Your name is at the top of the screen with LOG OUT next to it. Press it at the end of your shift, or any time you walk away from a shared tablet.
Every tap is filed against the person signed in. If you leave yourself signed in and someone else uses the tablet, their work goes down as yours. Log out.
This is for you if you work at the hand benches - assembling, inserting, gluing, packing by hand rather than running a machine.
Your screen is the same station screen the machine operators use, and everything in the operator section above applies to you exactly as written: signing in with your 3-digit number, reading a job card, the three taps, QA, quantity and waste, pausing, issues, rework, no undo, offline, and logging out. Read that section - this one only covers what is different.
On the machine strip along the top, your section is Hand Work. Tap it and you get the hand bench queue, in the order the office has set it, with pinned PRIORITY jobs first.
Hand Work is one queue for the whole bench area. Several of you may be working out of the same list at once, so before you tap Start setup on a card, make sure nobody else has already picked it up - the card will already say Setup in progress or Manufacturing in progress, with the name of whoever started it.
Otherwise the taps mean the same as they do on a machine. Start setup is getting the bench ready - stock, tooling, sample, first-off. Setup complete is when you are actually producing. Finish operation is when the operation is done and the job moves on.
The leading hand is service level 2, one above the bench, and gets one extra thing: a Factory Ops link in the bar at the top of the screen. That opens Factory Operations - every machine queue in the factory on one board, not just Hand Work. Use it to see what is coming toward the bench and what the bench is holding up.
Everything else is identical. Level 2 does not change what you may record on a job, and it does not let you lift a quality hold.
This is for you if a truck has pulled up and you are counting what came off it. Any operator can do this - you do not need a special sign-in.
Sign in as normal, then slide the machine strip at the top all the way to the right. The last chip is Goods In, with a number showing how many deliveries are outstanding. Tap it.
Each delivery still to be counted is one card. When you have finished, tap your machine back on the strip and you are back at your queue.
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| The PO number, in blue | The purchase order this delivery is against. Check it matches the supplier's paperwork. |
| The supplier name | Who it is from. |
| exp and a date | The date the delivery was expected. Cards are listed oldest expected first. |
| Exp: a number, or not set | The quantity the purchase order says is coming. |
| Dock: a number, or not counted | What the dock has actually counted. Blank until you enter it. |
The number on the delivery docket is what the supplier says they sent. Your number is what is on the dock. They are not the same fact, and Phoenix wants yours. Count the pallets, count the sheets, and type what you counted.
| Button | Press it when |
|---|---|
| All here | The order is complete. Nothing further is coming for this PO. |
| Partial - more coming | Part of the order arrived. The PO stays open for the balance and the card stays on your screen. |
Phoenix does not work this out from your numbers. It is your call, and you make it by choosing the button.
All here does not just tick off a delivery. It releases every job that was waiting on that board straight into production. Operators start setting up on material you have just said is here. If it is not all here - if one pallet is still on the truck, or a bundle is short - press Partial - more coming. There is no undo on either button.
Check the number on the card against the number on the supplier's paperwork before you count anything - a delivery counted against the wrong order releases the wrong jobs.
You will see purchase order numbers in three shapes, and all three are ours. PO8534 is an older one. PSP000142 is a Phoenix one raised before job numbers were switched on. 001260011 is the shape from now on: it is the JOB number 00126001 with one more digit on the end saying which purchase order it is on that job - so 001260012 is the second board order for the same job. Nine digits, and the first eight tell you the job at a glance.
If your count differs from the quantity on the purchase order, the card turns red and says so. That is the system working. The office picks it up and sorts out which is right.
A mismatch is information the business needs - a short delivery, a wrong quantity on an order, or a miscount that gets checked. Changing your number to match the paperwork destroys the only independent count anyone has, and Phoenix then pays for stock that never arrived. Enter what you counted. Let it flag.
Half-typed counts survive the screen refreshing, so you will not lose a number you are partway through entering.
This is for you if you load the truck and run the deliveries - Andrew, this section is yours.
Start your day at a floor screen and sign in with your own employee number. The screen is headed Floor sign in. Type your number, press Send my code, and a 6-digit code arrives in your email. Type the code and press Sign in.
You sign in as you, not as "the truck". Every drop you confirm is recorded against your name, which is what makes the record worth having when the office is asked three weeks later who delivered what.
The shared tablet is there so you can see the run while you are out. It is not a sign-in. Do not try to confirm drops from it, and do not sign yourself in on it and leave it in the cab.
Open Deliveries. The board is a set of lanes, left to right, and each lane is a run:
| Lane | What it is |
|---|---|
| Briestar | Briestar work, kept in its own lane at the far left so it is never buried in a general run. |
| Sydney | The Sydney run. Tue and Thu. |
| Newcastle | The Newcastle run. Wed. |
| Local | Local drops. Mon and Fri. |
| Courier | Going out by courier, not on your truck. |
| Cust P/Up | The customer is collecting from Berkeley Vale. |
| Direct | Supplier straight to customer. It never touches our dock. |
The lane heading carries the run name, the run day and a count of how many are in it. Along the top, All runs and Truck only switch between the whole picture and just what goes on a truck. Beside those are filter tabs - Complete List, Next 7 Days and one per lane - each with its own count.
A card with a green left edge has already been confirmed delivered.
Confirmations happen on Dispatch, not on Deliveries. Find the card and press the button on it:
A confirm box appears and asks you plainly - "Mark delivered and close this order in Phoenix?" - and nothing is written until you agree. The button then reads Saving while it goes through, and the card leaves the board.
Confirming closes the order. Check the PRO number on the card against the paperwork in your hand first. One card looks much like another on a phone screen in a loading bay, and closing the wrong order sends the wrong job off the board.
You confirm. The office schedules. You can say a drop happened; you cannot move a job to a different day, put it in another lane, or change a delivery date. If a run is wrong, ring the office and they will re-lane it.
On the truck tablet you get short codes, not customer names, and no suburb. That is deliberate. The tablet sits in a cab and gets handed around, so it carries what you need to match a card to a pallet and nothing that identifies a customer to whoever else picks it up. Your own sign-in on a floor screen is where the full detail lives.
This is for you if you decide what leaves the building and in what order - David, this section is yours.
Open Dispatch. It is a grid of cards, one per order ready to go, with four tabs across the top and a live count on each:
| Tab | Shows |
|---|---|
| All | Everything waiting to dispatch, whatever the method. |
| Truck | Going on our truck. |
| Courier | Going by courier. |
| Pickup | The customer is collecting. |
If the board says nothing is waiting to dispatch, that is the answer, not a fault. Cards arrive on their own.
A card appears on Dispatch once the job has passed QA or has reached Despatch as a station. That is the whole rule. You do not have to fetch anything onto this board and nothing sits here waiting for you to notice it - the board is the queue.
A card leaves the board the moment it is confirmed. Anything closed, cancelled or already delivered never appears.
Each card carries its method badge, its current state, the PRO number, the description, the customer short code and the quantity. Direct deliveries - supplier straight to customer - are drawn in grey and show short codes only.
The button on the card is Mark delivered, or Mark collected on a pickup. Press it, agree to the confirm box, and Phoenix records the delivery, closes the order and stamps today's date on it.
Marking a drop closes the order, and there is no undo button on Dispatch. If you confirm the wrong card, it is a correction back through the office, not a second click. Check the PRO number first.
Pressing it twice does no harm - Phoenix recognises the repeat and records it as the same act, not two deliveries. The card is simply already gone.
Dispatch tells you what is ready. Deliveries tells you where it is going and on which day. Work them together: Dispatch to see the pile, Deliveries to see the runs - Briestar, Sydney (Tue and Thu), Newcastle (Wed), Local (Mon and Fri), Courier, Cust P/Up and Direct.
The count in each lane heading tells you how much is on that run. Courier and Cust P/Up are queues rather than runs - they go when the courier comes or when the customer arrives.
You can also move a delivery to a different run or nudge its delivery date from the Deliveries card, using the Move button, then Save. A move you make sticks: nothing reschedules it back behind you.
You also have Factory Ops. It is the machine board with the office detail on it, and for despatch it answers the question the Dispatch board cannot: not "is it ready" but "how close is it".
Use it the afternoon before a run. If three Newcastle jobs are still two machines away on a Tuesday, you know that on Tuesday rather than at 7am on Wednesday.
This is for you if you run a section of the floor and set what the machines do next - Angelique and Jayden, this section is yours.
Open Factory Ops. It is the same board the factory sees on the TV - same columns, same order, same cards - with the office detail added back on. That matters: two screens side by side never tell you two different stories.
What you get here that the wallboard does not carry:
The board scrolls sideways through the machines and holds its place when it refreshes, so watching one machine does not mean being dragged back to the left every minute.
Top to bottom, a card gives you four things.
The traffic light. A coloured chip with a word beside it, top left. That is the job's stage in one glance.
The routing track. A row of short segments, one per step of the job's routing. Filled segments are behind it, the highlighted one is where it sits now, and empty segments are still to come. A track that looks wrong is one press from being fixed.
The step line. Underneath the track, in words: the step running now, then an arrow list of what follows, then the position - "3 of 5". If nothing has started yet it reads Not started and lists the whole routing. A job with no routing at all says No routing and offers a Fix press. Where a station like Hand Work covers more than one step of the routing, the card says so and offers a Check - it will not pretend to know which of them is live. You are the person who knows.
The due chip. Bottom right, beside the quantity. It shows the production due date in plain words - the day and month, and how it sits against today: "today", "1d", or "3d late". It turns orange as the date closes in and red once it has passed. Hover it and you get the delivery due date as well.
| Light | Means |
|---|---|
| Awaiting board | The job is on the board but the material is not here yet. Nothing to run. |
| Board received | The board has landed. The job is ready to be worked. |
| On machine | It is in production, on the machine whose column it sits in. |
| Complete | Its processes are finished. It is on its way to despatch. |
A card also badges Part rec'd when only some of the material has arrived, and Rush when the office has pinned it as urgent.
The cards in a machine column are in the order that machine should work them, top to bottom. The small figure beside the PRO number - "2/7" - is the job's position and the length of the queue.
To change it, use the controls along the bottom of the card:
The arrows grey out at the ends of the queue, so you cannot push a job above the top or below the bottom. Every reorder saves the whole queue, not just the one card, which is why the order you see is the order that holds. The wallboard picks it up on its next refresh, and the change is recorded with your name on it.
On the same row you have Station to move the job to a different machine, Hold to stop it, Routing to correct its process list, and Detail to open the full job.
A job on hold is still on this board. It stays in its machine column, dimmed, badged On hold, and it carries the reason on the card - "On hold: waiting on board". You can see exactly why it is stopped and who is waiting on what.
To take it off hold, the button on the card reads Release. Press it and the job rejoins the queue.
A job held by a failed quality check is different, and the card shows it differently - badged QA hold, with the reason reading "Quality hold: ...". Release does not appear on it at all. In its place is Waive QA, which only a level 4 can press, and it asks you to type why. Your name, the time and that reason stay on the job for good. A passing re-check does not clear a quality hold - only the waiver does.
The operator's tablet shows that the job is held and which of the two kinds it is, and locks every button until it is lifted. On a quality hold it also shows the note from the check that failed, because that is the operator's own words. Your free-typed office reason is never sent to the floor.
This is for you if you set up jobs, chase where they are, and keep the board stock straight - Georgia and Lilli, this section is yours.
Open Queue. The page is headed Queue management and it is the plainest view of the factory there is: one section per station, the jobs in it numbered in working order, and four things you can do to each one.
Each row shows the PRO number, the item description, the production due date, and chips where they apply - On hold, Rush, No routing. Jobs with no station yet sit together at the bottom under Unplaced.
Press Station on the row. A box opens asking for the station and, if you want it, a reason - "Green die-cutter down" is the kind of thing worth typing. Press Save and the job moves.
Use the up and down arrow buttons at the end of the row to walk a job through its queue. They grey out at the top and the bottom of the section, and the numbers down the left renumber as soon as the change saves. The factory screen picks it up on its next refresh.
Press Hold and type the reason - "waiting on board", "artwork query with the customer". Press Save. The row dims and carries an On hold chip.
The reason is for the office. The factory screen shows that the job is held and never why, so you can write what you actually mean.
To start it again, the same button now reads Release. One press, no dialogue.
This page still shows Release on a job held by a failed quality check, and pressing it does nothing except answer with a line of system text. No harm is done - the system refuses it. Go to Factory Operations, where the same job offers Waive QA instead.
A job carrying a No routing chip arrived without a process list. Press Routing and type the steps, one per line, in the order they run:
Press Save. The card immediately grows a proper routing track on Factory Ops and the wallboard, and the system stops trying to find one for itself. You can use the same button to correct a routing that is simply wrong.
Every one of these - the station, the queue position, the hold, the routing - is recorded as a decision with your name on it, and it stays until a person changes it. Nothing re-sorts your queue overnight and nothing overwrites a routing you typed.
Open Projects. This is the answer to the phone call. One row per open job, and the columns are the ones you get asked about: Item Description, Project #, Material Date, Prod. Date, Order Qty, Prod Qty, Processes, Current Process, Delivery Date and Notes.
The search box, top right, is the quickest way in. Type a description, a project number, a customer or a process and the list narrows as you type. Every column heading sorts - press once for ascending, again to reverse - and blanks always fall to the bottom.
A Material Date reading SOH means the stock is already on hand: nothing to wait for. Delivery dates go orange as they close in and red once they have passed. Click a row to open the full job detail.
Down the left of each row is a coloured bar. The legend above the table names them:
| Bar | Means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Blocked | Something is stopping this job. | Read the Notes column. Deal with it or get it to the person who can. |
| Needs attention | Not stopped, but it will not look after itself. | Have a look today. A date is tight, or a quantity does not add up. |
| On track | Running as it should. | Nothing. Leave it alone. |
Scan the bars first, not the rows. On a busy morning the colour down the left tells you which five of eighty jobs are worth your time.
Open Stock. The page is headed Stock on hand - one row per product, with the tabs above the table filtering by silo.
Stock on hand against the trigger. The S.O.H. column carries the number and a small bar. The thin marker across that bar is the Trigger - the level at which this product needs re-ordering. While the bar sits past the marker you are fine. When it falls short, the row lights up and a Re-order chip appears in the Status column. Beside the trigger, Re-Order Qty tells you how much to bring in when you do.
Incoming and ETA. Incoming shows what is already on order, as a plus figure, so a product below its trigger with stock inbound is a different problem from one with nothing coming. P.O. is the purchase order it is on - with a small plus badge if there is more than one - and ETA is when it is expected, weekday and date. The ETA cell is honest about what it does not know: a date already gone reads overdue and wants chasing or closing off, and an order with no expected date reads no ETA rather than a guess.
Under the stock table sits Unconfirmed POs - orders the supplier has not confirmed after a few business days. Worth a glance each morning. "Every open PO is confirmed" is the message you want to see.
The Silo column on each row is a picker: Stock Board, Stock Cartons, ECB and the rest, plus Misc for anything that belongs nowhere. Choose the right silo from the list and it saves as you pick it - no separate save. Rows a person has set carry a small Linked mark, so you can tell your own decisions from the ones the system guessed from the product name.
Getting silos right pays off immediately: the tabs above the table count by silo, so once a silo is clean you can look at just that stock and nothing else. If something was filed wrong, pick again - including back to Misc.
This is for you if you open the Order Book first thing and live in it all day - Sarah and Erica.
The Order Book is at Order Book on the launchpad. Every order Phoenix has, from the moment it lands to the moment it goes out, is on this one screen. Across the top are the lifecycle tabs, and each tab carries its own count so you can see the size of the day without clicking. Click any row to open the full job panel.
An order sits in exactly one stage, and it only changes stage because somebody did something or because a fact arrived. Nothing drifts.
| Tab | What is in it | How an order leaves |
|---|---|---|
| New Orders | Everything that has arrived and has not been dealt with yet. Typed in, or emailed in. | Two exits, and only two: you process it, or you remove it. |
| Awaiting Board | Processed orders waiting on material. The board is ordered and a promised date is known. | The board is received, and the order moves into production. |
| Awaiting supplier date the sub-list under Awaiting Board |
Processed orders where the board is on order but the supplier has not promised a date yet. They are counted inside Awaiting Board as well, so the parent number is always the whole picture. | You record the supplier's date. |
| In Production | Jobs the factory is working, with the current process and the percentage complete. | The last step is finished on the floor. |
| In Deliveries | Finished work with a delivery date, a suburb and a produced quantity. | It is despatched and delivered. |
| Removed | Orders taken out of New Orders without being processed. Not a lifecycle stage, and deliberately not folded into any of the counts above. | You restore it, and it goes back into New Orders. |
The Awaiting Board columns and the Awaiting supplier date columns are identical on purpose - it is the same work, filtered.
Two doors, and both land in New Orders.
Quantities and items are never read out of a customer's email. Phoenix takes the sender, the subject and the attachment names, and nothing else - the row is there to tell you a customer has written in. You open the email, you read it, and you supply the facts. That is why an email row starts sparse and why nothing downstream will act on it until you have processed it.
Start in Customer Name. The list drops open alphabetically with + New customer pinned at the top. Pick a customer and two things happen: their board prefix fills itself in, and their order history appears underneath the form. Any history row can be copied into the form, and a row copied that way lands as a Re-Order.
If you type a name that is not on the list, Phoenix takes that as a new customer and opens the contact row: a customer code of two to four letters, plus contact name, email and phone. Capture the contact while you have them. The code goes on the boards, so make it readable at a glance - the form tells you straight away whether the letters you picked are free, and the account number is assigned for you.
Fill in what you know. Rec'd Date defaults to today. Order Type is required and is either Re-Order or Batch-1. Routing Number, Raw Material and Number Up can wait - they are compulsory before the order is processed, not before it is captured. Press Create order.
An order you create carries its own Phoenix reference straight away, and it never changes and never disappears. Its job number is given when you process it - there is nothing to paste in and nothing to marry up.
A job number reads CCCYYSSS: the customer's own 3-digit number, then the 2-digit year, then that customer's count for the year. Photo Create is customer 001, so their 2026 jobs are 00126001, 00126002, 00126003. Every customer counts separately, so two orders processed one after another for two different customers both end in 001. A job number is never changed and never re-used.
The job number starts with the customer's number, so an order that is not linked to a customer has nowhere to take one from. Processing refuses, and the pop-up says so rather than half-doing it.
The fix is on the New Orders row, not in the Process order form: a customer name that is not in the registry carries a flag chip with an Add as alias… button. Link it, wait a minute, then process the order normally.
On any New Orders row, press Process order. The pop-up is titled Process order and it names the order at the top so you can see you are on the right one.
Six fields are compulsory. They are marked with a star and the pop-up will not submit without them. There is a seventh requirement that is not a field on this form - the order must be linked to a customer, because the job number begins with the customer's number.
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| Order Type | Is this a repeat or a first run - Re-Order or Batch-1. |
| Assignee | The person who owns this order. Same staff list as the intake form, so the two can never drift apart. |
| Routing Number | The machine route from the catalogue. Type to search - the list shows the number and the machines it runs through, in order. |
| Raw Material | What it is being made from. |
| Number Up | Finished items per sheet. This is what lets Phoenix compare sheets received against units ordered, so a 4-up job is not flagged as short. |
| Customer PO | The customer's own order number. An emailed or phone order often arrives without one, so you can supply it here. |
There is also an optional Supp PO # if the board order already has a number, and an optional notes box. The supplier PO is only ever added, never removed.
The moment you enter it, the job gets its machine steps. It reaches the floor already knowing the sequence it has to run - nobody types the steps again.
Exactly one of these, never none and never two. This is the choice that decides where the order goes next.
| Choice | Where the order goes |
|---|---|
| Board is on order | Straight to Awaiting Board. If you already have a confirmed date from the supplier, put it in the Supplier promised date box underneath and the dates cascade immediately. If you do not, leave it blank and the order lands on the Awaiting supplier date sub-list until a date arrives. |
| Board is already in stock | Straight to In Production. Nothing is being waited on. |
| Stock Sheet - no supplier purchase | Records the supplier as Stock Sheet with no supplier PO, skips Awaiting Board altogether and goes to machine allocation. Production is due seven days after you process it. |
Then press Mark processed. The order leaves New Orders and the queue clears - that is the whole point of the step.
The pop-up tells you plainly that it does not know whether the order went through, and that pressing Mark processed again is safe. It is - the retry carries the same key and Phoenix will not process the same order twice.
On the Awaiting supplier date sub-list, each row carries a Supplier date button. Press it, a date box opens in the row, pick the date the supplier has promised and press Save.
Entering that one date sets the whole tail of the job:
If you enter a date that has already passed, Phoenix says so and tells you the two dates it has worked out instead, so you are never left wondering why the screen shows something other than what you typed. When the board is actually received, the clock restarts from the receipt date - the same 7 and 2 - because receipt is the honest anchor.
A supplier's own promised date is theirs. Phoenix will not silently overwrite one that has come in from the supplier's own report.
If an order has moved past New Orders and never picked up a supplier PO, the row offers Attach PO#. Type the number in the row, press Save. It is offered on Awaiting Board, Awaiting supplier date and In Production, wherever the fact is still live.
This is clerical. It records a document number and moves no stage, changes no date and starts no clock.
Sometimes you cannot process an order because you need an answer from somebody else. Press Query order on the row, pick the department, type the question, and press Raise query.
Four departments:
While a query is open, that order is not in New Orders at all. It is not hidden, not greyed out - it is gone from the queue and it cannot be processed by anyone, because it belongs to the department you handed it to. Your queue only shows what is actually yours to do.
The department answers on the Order Queries screen with Answer and return. The order comes straight back to New Orders with the answer attached to the row, so you read the reply where you are working. From there you can process it, or send a further query.
If a question landed on the wrong desk, Re-route hands the same query to a different department, with an optional note saying why. The clock is not reset by a re-route.
Not everything that arrives is an order. A lead, a price enquiry, a duplicate. Press Remove on the row, pick a reason, and press Remove order.
Five reasons, and one of them is compulsory:
There is an optional note as well - use it for things like "duplicate of PRO 41822", which is what makes the Removed tab readable in a month's time.
The order moves to the Removed tab and stays there with the date, the reason, the note and the name of whoever removed it. The reasons are a fixed list precisely so the question "why did New Orders clear?" has a countable answer.
To bring one back, press Restore on the Removed tab. It changes to Confirm restore - press it again and the order goes back into New Orders. Two clicks, because an accidental restore quietly puts work back in your queue. If you walk away, the button disarms itself.
Down the left of every row is a coloured rail:
| Rail | Means |
|---|---|
| Red | This cannot progress. It is waiting on you or on a material fact. |
| Yellow | There is something worth knowing. The chip on the row says what. |
| Green | Go. Nothing needs saying about it. |
Next to the rail, in the Notes column, is a compact row of status chips. Hover any chip for the full sentence. The ones you will see most are:
A customer name that is not in the registry carries a flag chip with an Add as alias... button beside it. Pick the account the name belongs to, press Add alias, and the job links itself within the minute - no config, no waiting on anyone.
For an order that arrived by email, the row can offer Prepare AI draft. Phoenix reads the email, its attachments, the customer registry and similar past orders, and proposes values for the order. When it is done the row offers Review AI draft.
The review screen puts the evidence on the left and the suggested order on the right. Every suggestion carries a confidence, the reason behind it, and a reference to the evidence it came from. Fields the AI could not fill are marked amber as your input, with a count up front so you know the size of the job before you scroll. You can open the original email or any attachment from the same panel.
Edit anything that is not right, then press Apply to this New Order. Or press Reject - continue manually and carry on by hand. There is a review note box for recording why you changed or rejected something.
Applying a draft updates the New Order and nothing more. There is no Process control anywhere on the AI screen - the AI cannot process an order, cannot move a stage, and cannot write a supplier date. Moving an order onward stays your decision, taken in the Process order pop-up like every other order.
This is for you if you raise the board orders and watch what has not come back - Emma, and anyone else raising POs.
Open Purchasing. The screen is in two halves: the order you are raising on the left, the jobs waiting on board on the right. Two tabs over the job list - Awaiting board, which is the default and is usually the question you are answering, and All open orders.
Phoenix mints the number itself. You do not type a number and you do not go anywhere else to get one. The screen tells you what it raised.
Until job numbers are switched on the number is PSP000001, ascending. After that it is built from the job: the job number plus one digit for which purchase order it is on that job, so job 00126001 gives 001260011 then 001260012. A job can carry nine purchase orders; the tenth is refused rather than given a number that means something else.
If you tick more than one job, the number is built from the lowest job number of the ones you ticked. The order still covers every job you ticked - the number is a label for the order, not a claim that it belongs to only one job. An order with no job ticked cannot be given a number at all once job numbers are on.
The stock code and quantity on each line are what connect this order to the stock ledger. Without them the board you have just ordered will not appear in the Incoming column on Stock, and the P.O. and ETA columns there will stay empty. The stock code list on this form is the same list Stock matches against, so a code you pick from it will always resolve. A code typed from memory that is not on the list will not.
The button goes down while the order is in flight, and each order carries a key of its own. If the network drops, the screen says it does not know whether the order was raised and tells you to press again - the retry is safe. You are then told which of the two happened: either "Already raised", naming the PO and supplier and confirming nothing was ordered twice, or that the earlier attempt was a different order and this one has not been sent yet. A purchase order is a commitment to a supplier, so the screen never guesses.
Open Stock. One row per product, with sub-filter tabs for the silos across the top.
| Column | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Product | The ledger code. |
| Description | What it is. |
| Silo | Which silo the item belongs to. This is a dropdown - change it on the screen and it saves. An item filed by a person rather than by the standing map shows Linked beside it. |
| S.O.H. | Stock on hand. |
| Trigger | The level at which this product should be re-ordered. |
| Re-Order Qty | The standard quantity to order. |
| Incoming | The total quantity on every open supplier PO for this product. |
| P.O. | The open PO that best answers "what is coming". |
| ETA | Its expected date, with the weekday. If the date has passed it says overdue; if the PO has no expected date it says no ETA. Phoenix does not invent one. |
| Status | A red Re-order chip when stock on hand is at or below the trigger. That is the column to scan. |
Underneath the ledger is Unconfirmed POs, with the PO number, supplier, project and expected date. This is the exception list: a purchase order that has gone out and had no confirmation come back after 3 business days appears here. Business days, so a Friday order is not chased on Monday morning. Suppliers whose orders are confirmed by their own WIP report never age onto this list. When there is genuinely nothing to chase it says Every open PO is confirmed - and if the check itself cannot be read, it says that instead, rather than showing you a clear list it cannot stand behind.
This is for you if you want the state of the business in one look, and you answer the questions the office sends up - David, Vanessa, Michael and Brad.
Signing in lands you on Boards - every screen in the system as one big pressable tile, with a line saying what each one is for. Every board has a Home button that brings you back here.
In the corner of each tile is a star. Star the board you want to open on, and from then on signing in on that device takes you straight there. The star is per device, so the tablet on the floor and the machine in the office can each open on something different. Press it again to clear it.
Under the top bar on every screen is the same strip of numbers, and every tile is a link to the screen behind it.
| Tile | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Open Jobs | Everything live. This is New Orders plus Awaiting supplier date plus Awaiting Board plus In Production - it always adds up, because it is worked out once, on the server. |
| New Orders | Arrived, not yet processed. |
| Awaiting Board | Waiting on material, with Awaiting supplier date shown smaller underneath as its own filter. |
| In Production | On the floor now. |
| In Deliveries | Made, going out. |
| Current SOH | Stock on hand across the ledger. |
| DIFOT | Delivered In Full On Time. |
DIFOT is the share of jobs Phoenix produced inside the seven days the factory gets. The clock starts when the board is actually received, not when it was ordered - so a supplier who is three weeks late cannot drag the factory's number down. Hover the tile for the detail: the percentage, how many jobs it is measured over, and the trailing window. Jobs still inside their seven days are pending, not failures, and they are not counted either way. Until there are enough measured jobs to say something honest, the tile shows a dash rather than a percentage built on three jobs.
On the Order Book the five lifecycle tiles are left off the strip - the tabs on that page already are the filter.
Factory Operations is the management view of the board: machine columns and job lights, with the office data on the card - customer names, hold reasons, late jobs - and reorder, reroute, hold and routing available on the card itself. This is the screen to open when you want to know what the floor is actually doing.
TV Wallboard view is the same board stripped for the unattended screen in the factory: short codes only, no customer names. It navigates nowhere - it is a display, not a console - and it carries the same counts strip, including the honest note when the feed has stopped moving. That matters most on the screen a room full of people is trusting.
Open Order Queries. When the office cannot move an order without an answer, they hand the whole order to a department - Operations, General Manager, Sales or Deliveries - and it appears here.
The department chips across the top filter the list, and each chip shows how many are waiting, so you never click into an empty screen. The filter rides the address, so you can bookmark your own queue and never think about it again. Each card shows the order, the question, who raised it and how long ago in working days.
Press Answer and return, type the answer in your own words, and the order goes back to Sarah or Erica with your answer attached to the row. If it is not really yours, Re-route sends it to another department with an optional note.
| Age chip | When it appears |
|---|---|
| Chasing | After 2 business days. |
| Overdue | After 4 business days. |
The clock is not reset by a re-route, so a re-route cannot clear an overdue chip. An order with an open query is out of New Orders the whole time it is with you - the office cannot work around it, which is exactly why answering it is the thing that unblocks the order.
Open Photo Create. This is Glen Innes stock against the reorder points agreed with the client. Press Upload i4query export and pick the refreshed file. The screen tells you how many lines it loaded, and the stock-on-hand date sits above the table so nobody reads an old number as today's.
One row per product, with the code, description, stock on hand, reorder point and MOQ, and a status:
| Status | Means |
|---|---|
| ORDER | Stock on hand has reached or dropped below the agreed reorder point. Time to order. These sort to the top. |
| GOOD | Above the reorder point. Nothing to do. |
| NO DATA | A product being managed that was not in the upload. Phoenix will not guess a number for it - it tells you it is missing. |
| FORECAST | The screen is in forecast mode for the agreed pre-supply cycle. The numbers stay live; the order flags are stood down. The chip at the top of the screen says which mode you are in. |
An ORDER row carries a Raise order button. It opens the Order Book intake with the customer, the item and the MOQ quantity already filled in - one reorder, one product.
Open Projects. Every open job, one row each, with its machine and its dates. This is the screen for the phone call that starts "where is my job" - one list, no tabs to choose between, no hunting.
Every action anyone takes on any screen is written down against the person who took it, with what it was before and what it was after. The Removed tab shows who removed an order and why. A query shows who raised it and who answered it. A stock item filed into a silo by hand is marked as a person's decision, not the system's. Nobody has to remember what happened, and nobody has to be asked.