Manufacturer / Factory

For a unit that makes goods and sells them on. Raw materials are bought and consumed, finished goods are produced and stocked, and sales go out to stockists and distributors, optionally with a field team booking orders and a channel of stock points that keep their own books. Payroll and GST compliance sit alongside.

Set up before the first dispatch

The owner (or an admin) does these, in this order. What you switch on in step 1 decides which home screen the app opens on, so decide it first.

1. Pick what you run Settings > Field Sales, card Channel & Field Team. Channel Stock Points makes a stockist or distributor hold your stock in a book of its own; Field Sales puts reps on the road. A factory billing its stockists from the office can leave both off. Every switch can be turned on later.
2. Switch on production Settings > Master, Raw Material (Premium plan). Warehouses are already on for a manufacturer.
3. Add your items: finished goods under Master > Finished Products and inputs under Master > Raw Materials, with units (bag, box, carton, case, kg, litre, pcs are ready) and rates.
4. Add your godowns (factory, depots, vans) under Warehouses (Channel > Our Warehouses with Channel Stock Points on), and enter Opening Stock for each.
5. Add the channel from the Directory: super stockists, stockists, distributors and retailers each have their own list. With Channel Stock Points on, every super stockist, stockist and distributor gets its own godown when you save it. Its page has Logins and Customers tabs: the team that signs in to its book, and the parties it supplies by territory.
6. Add your suppliers for raw material and packing.
7. If you run a field team, lay out the territory and add the team as described on the Field Sales page.
8. Create the logins: office staff, the field team, and a login for each stockist or distributor that keeps its own book (see Who signs in).

How the work flows

Materials come in, goods are made, and they go down the channel. Each step says who does it and what prints.

The whole journey on one page:

flowchart TD
    P[Purchase Invoice: raw materials] --> RM[(Raw stock · warehouse)]
    RM --> C[Production Run
consume inputs · produce output · cost]
    C --> FG[(Finished goods stock)]
    FG --> ST[Stock Transfer to depot / stockist]
    FG --> SI[Tax Invoice to distributor]
    ST & SI --> T[(Voucher and stock movement)]
    T --> E[e-Invoice · e-Way Bill]
    F[Field team: orders on route] --> SO[Sales Order] --> SI
    W[Staff Timesheet · Salary Run] --> PR[(Payroll vouchers)]

Who signs in

Give every person their own login; never share the owner's. A factory's office staff have no seat picker: you pick a role and tick switches. The field team is added on its own form, and each channel partner's login is made from that partner's contact.

1. Office staff: Settings > Users, add a user, pick the role (Admin, Manager, User; Delivery Boy and Accountant where they can work), link the staff contact and tick the switches.
2. Field team: Field Team > Team > Add, with rank and territory. See Field Sales.
3. A stockist or distributor: open the party in the Directory and choose User Login from its row menu (Ultra Premium plan, Channel Stock Points on, and the party made a stock point first). It opens that party's Logins list: add its Principal first, then its billing, store, accounts and salesman logins, or let the principal add them from My Team. The whole set-up is in the Manufacturer Channel Guide.
4. A retailer: Buyer Login on the retailer's row (Enterprise plan) gives the shop an account in the buyer app.

Where each login lands depends on whether Channel Stock Points is on. On, the app opens on the channel home screen; off, on the ordinary POS main page.

Your office gives each stock point its first login. After that, the party's Principal or Manager can add logins only below their own level, only in their own book, and only with permissions they hold. Every login counts toward the business's user limit. See the Manufacturer Channel Guide, and the full switch list in Users, Roles & Permissions.

Where it is in the app

With Channel Stock Points on, a manufacturer opens on its own channel home screen. Each menu shows only what this login is granted and this business has switched on; a menu left empty does not appear. With it off, the factory keeps the POS main page (see Supermarket & Grocery), with Master > Raw Materials, Vouchers > Production Run, Warehouses, and the Field Sales menu when a field team is on. A new factory starts with both switches off unless you turned them on while creating it. Reps and managers on the road use the SKS Field Sales app.

Channel home screen on a computer: the menu bar

Across the top: your opening screen and the Dashboard (My Channel comes first for anyone who is not the owner or an admin), one menu per area, a New menu for Purchase & Sales, and Setup. Items, Warehouses, Opening Stock, stock vouchers, the standard masters, payroll, payment types, utilities and settings are on Setup.

Channel home screen on a phone or tablet: the side menu and the bottom bar

The side menu starts with My Work — your opening screen, then the Dashboard — followed by Channel, Dispatch, Field Team, Planning and Office (Reports, Directory, Accounts). A screen on the bottom bar is not repeated in the side menu.

What matters for this trade

• Production Run (see Raw Materials & Production) - the production voucher: inputs consumed (with quantity per unit produced), output quantity, cost carried onto the finished item. Ingredient groups organise inputs.
• Warehouses - factory, depots and van stock as separate warehouses; Stock Transfer between them with a register. See Stock & Warehouses.
• Channel - distributors and stockists as stock points; dispatch is a mirrored sale and purchase. See Distributor.
• Field team - reps, routes, DSR, targets. See Field Sales.
• Payroll - attendance, leave, holidays, salary run and register (Advanced plan). See Payroll.
• Compliance - e-Invoice, e-Way Bill, TDS / TCS, export details on the invoice for exports. See GST.

From cost to price

flowchart TD
    A[Raw material purchase rate] --> B[Production: consume inputs, make output]
    B --> C[Cost per finished unit]
    C --> D[Factory price to the distributor]
    D --> E[Distributor margin]
    E --> F[Retailer margin]
    F --> G[MRP the consumer pays]
    C --> H[Profit report: made vs sold]
    A -->|input prices move| C
    H --> I[Reprice, or squeeze the input cost] --> D

Reports

Seven channel reports, each its own menu entry:

• Stock Position - on-hand at every stock point, product by product.
• Primary / Secondary - dispatched down the channel against sold out of it. A tall primary bar beside a short secondary one is stock piling up at a distributor.
• Scheme Utilization - what went out as scheme and discount rather than revenue.
• Collection Efficiency - what was billed against what actually came in.
• Sales by Outlet Type - what General Trade, Modern Trade and HORECA are each worth.
• Order Book - booked and not yet billed, party by party, with the age of the oldest open order. Not a period report: a backlog is a position, so an order booked last quarter and still open is exactly the row you want.
• Stock Ageing - stock that has stopped moving, and which stock point holds it. Aged from the last time any of it went out of that godown, not from when it arrived, so a distributor receiving weekly cannot look permanently fresh.

On the POS main page they sit together as Channel Reports in the Reports menu. Plus the reads every business keeps: Stock Vouchers, Stock Register, Warehouse Stock, Stock Transfer Register, Stock Valuation, Sales Register, Purchase by Product, Production Register, Salary Register, GST Reports, Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet.

Primary/Secondary, Collection Efficiency and Stock Ageing are charted above their tables. The Sales & Collections by Area chart on the dashboard is itself the drill — tap a bar to walk down the location chain.