Boutique / Designer Wear

For a boutique or designer studio that does two jobs from one shop: it stitches to order (designer and bridal pieces made to the customer's measurements, often from the customer's own cloth) and it sells readymade off the rail with a barcode tag. Both go through the same counter and the same book. This page covers what a boutique does differently; the full reference for orders, measurements and the board is Tailoring / Boutique.

Set up before you open the doors

The owner does these, in this order. A new boutique starts lean: the order halves are off until you switch them on.

1. Switch on the order halves you run Tools > Settings > Orders: Measurements for anything made to fit, Trial / Fitting if customers come in to try a piece before it is finished, and Delivery Promise so every order carries a date and late work shows first. A designer or bridal boutique usually wants all three.
2. Set up your garments Setup > Garments & Measurements: Blouse, Kurta and the rest, each with the measurements it is taken on. Add your own — lehenga, gown, saree blouse with lining — and their fields.
3. Build the price list Setup > Stitching, Cloth & Readymade. Stitching and alteration charges go in their groups; each readymade piece gets its MRP, selling rate and brand. A piece with no maker’s barcode is given a code of its own when you save it.
4. Bring in your readymade stock Shop > Cloth & Stock Purchase: the supplier’s bill, so stock and cost are on the book. It shows for a login allowed to purchase, on the Advanced plan or above.
5. Print the tags Setup > Barcode: pick the pieces and how many labels each, then print on a label printer or an A4 sheet. On the Premium plan Designed Barcode prints a proper price tag with MRP, size and colour (see Readymade stock and labels).
6. Add your staff Setup > People > Tailors & Staff, filed under their role (Master Tailor, Cutter, Embroiderer, Finisher, Counter / Order Taker, Shop Manager), then give each a login (see Who signs in).
7. Run one of each as a test: scan a readymade piece through the Counter, then take a stitching order with an advance and some cloth logged, and move it to Ready. Cancel the test order afterwards; it stays on the books as cancelled.

How the work flows

A boutique’s day starts from the Today’s Work panel at the top of the Dashboard: New Order, Take Measurements, Customer Walk-In, Ready to Collect, Remind Customers, Counter Sale and New Customer, one tap each, with a count on the ones waiting. Each step below says who usually does it and what prints.

The whole journey on one page:

flowchart TD
    W[Customer at the counter] --> Q{Came for?}
    Q -->|readymade| S[Counter Sale
scan the tag · MRP and rate]
    S --> B1[(Bill)]
    Q -->|new piece| O[New Order
garment lines · trial date · promised date · advance]
    O --> CL[Customer's cloth logged
what · colour · pieces · length]
    O --> R1[Stitching Order receipt
advance paid · balance · cloth received]
    O --> M[Measured] --> C[Cut · Stitching]
    C --> T[Trial Done]
    T --> RD[(Ready
WhatsApp: ready for collection)]
    Q -->|collect or pay| WI[Customer Walk-In
their open orders, ready first]
    WI --> RD
    RD --> BL[Raise Bill
advances taken off]
    BL --> D[Delivered
date stamped · cloth marked returned]
    O -.->|cancelled| X[Cancelled
cloth stays held until handed back]

Who signs in

Give every person their own login. Adding a user in a boutique asks what the person does first. That choice decides the screen they open on, their phone’s bottom bar, which menus they see and the switches they start with. Any switch can be changed afterwards.

1. Open the user form Tools > Settings > Users > Add User.
2. Pick the seat in Does and link their staff record in Contact. A staff record filed as Master Tailor, Cutter, Embroiderer or Finisher suggests the tailor seat; Counter / Order Taker, Salesman or Cashier the counter; Shop Manager the manager.
3. Set the login: user name and password (email on a cloud business).
4. Review the switches the seat ticked on the Orders & Measurements card, add or remove any, and save. The person gets the change at their next sign-in.

The counter and manager seats are also offered the price and discount switch; the tailor seat is not. What each switch does is in Tailoring / Boutique.

Where it is in the app

A boutique has its own menu bar, and the phone’s side menu lists the same menus in the same order. Across the top: the Dashboard and the screen this seat opens on (taken out of its own menu so it sits first), then the menus below. Each menu shows only what this login is granted and this business has switched on; a menu left empty does not appear.

New Order sits in the New submenu at the top of the first menu, and Settings on Tools.

The Dashboard

Today’s Work comes first: the buttons above, with a count on Ready to Collect and Remind Customers. Below it, the day in tiles (Due Today, Overdue, Trials Due, To Remind, New Today, Urgent), the floor (Received, Cutting & Stitching, Trial Done, Ready), then Due & Overdue, Ready to Collect, Trials Today and a Delivery Calendar. Balance to Collect and Open Order Value show only to a login with View Revenue.

Readymade stock and labels

• Every piece has a code. Scan a maker’s barcode once on the item form; a piece without one gets a code of its own when saved.
• MRP and brand are on the item from the start, so a tag and the bill show the printed price beside your selling rate.
• Plain labels: Setup > Barcode, pick the pieces and how many each. Price tags: Setup > Designed Barcode (Premium), a layout with the fields you choose — name, MRP, rate, size, colour, shop name. See Barcodes & Label Design.
• New stock arrives through Shop > Cloth & Stock Purchase, and labels for what was received can be printed from the purchase. Sizes and colours of one design are variants of one item — see Products.
• Cloth, lining and trims you sell by the metre go in Cloth Material and Lining & Accessories; cloth the customer brings is not stock and is logged on the order instead.

The customer’s cloth

A boutique holds its customers’ property, and a lost silk piece is the complaint a shop never lives down. Each order carries a Customer’s cloth card: log a piece while the order is open (needs Take & Edit Orders), and Mark returned to customer or Still in shop from its menu (needs Advance Orders or Deliver Orders).

• Delivering the order marks its cloth returned on the day.
• Cancelling does not: the card warns to hand the pieces back and mark them returned, because the cloth of a dropped order is the one that goes missing.
• At year end an order whose cloth is still in the shop is carried into the new year rather than cleared away.
• Customer Cloth In Hand (Reports) lists everything the shop is holding today, with pieces and metres.

Advances against an order

Bridal and designer work is paid in parts. Take the first advance on the order form; take more with Receive Advance on the order while it is open. The order shows Paid and Balance, and the receipt prints Advance Paid and Balance on Delivery. From Ready onwards, Raise Bill bills what is left of the order and applies the advances to that bill, so the customer is never billed twice.

Alterations on readymade

A hem or a fitting on a piece bought off the rail is an Alteration item: done while the customer waits, add it to the same counter bill as the piece. One that needs a day or two is taken as an order with a promised date, so it lands on the board and the collection list like any other.

Customer reminders

Orders > Customer Reminders is today’s WhatsApp call list in three parts: Trials today & tomorrow, Ready – tell the customer (the first message), and Ready but not collected (chased again every three days until it is collected). Send one at a time, or Send all. The same messages are on the order under Message the customer. A customer with no phone number is skipped and flagged.

Settings that matter

Reports worth reading

Order Register, Delivery Performance and Work In Progress need View Revenue as well as View Reports. Readymade sales, stock and profit are in Business Reports. The rest of the tailoring reports are in Tailoring / Boutique.