Exports & documents

A work order can produce three documents, and each of them in three formats: PDF, Excel (XLSX) and CSV. Nine combinations, one dialog, one button.

On this page

• The three documents
• The Export dialog
• Templates
• Filenames
• Live data caveat

The three documents

Pick list

The shop floor’s gathering document, and the most common print target on a busy bench. Materials are listed with quantities to gather, current available inventory, shortage values, and any per-row metafields the template enables (lot numbers, supplier batches, specifications).

By default the rows are grouped by their pick location, but a template can group by product type, category or vendor instead — and can optionally split out or float up the out-of-stock rows so operators clear the shortages first. See Templates.

Build overview

A full-page summary of the work order, for warehouse or supervisor handover, or as a paper companion to a multi-day project. It covers what the work order builds: planned, built and remaining quantities, with the quality-control snapshot, plus the header details (name, short ID, status, due date, assignee, production location), the materials, the cost figures and the build-run history.

The cost figures on it are the work order’s own three totals: Planned, Adjusted and Actual. See material planning & costs.

Shortage report

A gap analysis for procurement. For each material on the work order:

• Need — the effective quantityPlanned quantityHow much of a material a work order intends to consume: the bill's quantity, editable per material in the Planned column but never below what has already been consumed. Pick lists and Adjusted cost read it. "Effective quantity" is the older name. Read more → required.
• Available — current inventory at the consume-from location.
• Shortage — the gap, only present where need exceeds available.

The template can add unit cost and a total-cost column (shortage × unit cost), and a black-and-white mode for printing. Use this when you’re triaging a work order that won’t pick cleanly, or feeding a purchase order.

The Export dialog

Export is the secondary action in the work order’s title bar. It opens a small dialog with three things in it:

1. Document — one flat list of all nine combinations: Pick list (PDF), Pick list (Excel), Pick list (CSV), Build overview (PDF), and so on. Picking the document and picking the format is one choice, not two steps.
2. Template — which saved template to render it with. It appears only when your shop has templates for that document-and-format pair, and it pre-selects the one you starred as the default. See Templates.
3. Export — the one button. It builds the file and downloads it, whichever format you chose.

There is no preview inside this dialog. To see what a template looks like before you use it, preview it where it is edited — Settings → Work orders → Export templates renders a live A4 or Ledger preview. See work-order settings.

If the export can’t be generated, the dialog says so in a red banner and keeps everything you chose, so you can change one thing and try again.

Templates

Each document has a template per format family — one set for the PDF, one shared set for Excel and CSV. A template controls:

• Which columns appear, and in what order.
• Display switches per document — logo, company details, SKU column, material notes, assignee, due date, items to produce, one page per component, item notes, quality-control snapshot, location, unit cost, total cost, black and white.
• How the pick list is grouped — by pick location (the default), product type, category or vendor. Each value becomes its own headed section.
• How out-of-stock items are shown on the pick list — don’t separate them, split each group into Out of stock / In stock sections, or float the out-of-stock rows to the top of each group with a highlight.
• How rows are sorted inside each group — by material name, SKU, quantity, available or shortage, ascending or descending.

Product type and category come from each material’s linked Shopify product. You can also set them by hand when you create or edit a material — including virtual materials that aren’t in your Shopify catalog — so the pick list groups consistently no matter where a material came from.

Templates are created and edited on their own page: Settings → Work orders → Export templates. That page is also where you star one as the default for its document and format. Everything about it is in work-order settings.

If a configured template can’t be loaded for any reason (it was deleted, or the server hiccuped), the export falls back to that document’s default columns — you still get a usable file.

Filenames

Exports are named for the document and the work order’s short ID:

Export	Filename pattern
Pick list	pick-list-WO-NNNNN.pdf / .xlsx / .csv
Build overview	build-overview-WO-NNNNN.pdf / .xlsx / .csv
Shortage report	shortage-report-WO-NNNNN.pdf / .xlsx / .csv

Note

Which format to hand the floor is a judgement call. The PDF is the one to print — its layout, grouping and page breaks are what the template controls. Excel and CSV carry the same rows as data, for a spreadsheet or another system; the display switches that only affect layout have nothing to do there, which is why a spreadsheet template asks about columns and nothing else.

Live data caveat

The pick list and the shortage report read inventory levels at the moment you generate the file. If you exported either one twenty minutes ago and someone has picked since, the numbers are stale — regenerate before relying on them. The build overview captures the work-order state at export time but doesn’t query live inventory beyond what’s already on the work order.

Related

• Work-order settings — where templates are built, previewed and starred.
• Material planning & costs — the cost figures that appear on the build overview.
• Editing the plan — the build metafields that can surface on the pick list, on the Documents & Build Metafields tab.
• Glossary.