Frequently Asked Questions¶

Loupe Factory is an AI-native operations platform for modern manufacturing and wholesale businesses. It connects inventory, production, customer orders, shipments, invoicing, and reporting in one place, so your team spends less time reconciling spreadsheets and more time running the operation.

For a full overview of what the platform can do, see the Platform Guide.

Loupe Copilot is the chat assistant built into the Loupe Factory Home dashboard. Your team can ask plain-language questions such as "Which orders are ready to ship?", "Do we have this item in stock?", or "Which production jobs are running late?" and get an answer from live business data.

Copilot answers from the records each person is already allowed to see, links back to the exact records behind the answer, and stays read-only so it cannot change or delete anything. See Loupe Copilot for examples and setup guidance.

The fastest way to get up and running is to follow the Quick Start Guide. It walks you through account creation, adding your first inventory item, setting up a production process, and placing your first order.

Loupe Factory onboarding is designed as a staged rollout, so your team does not have to move everything at once. New workspaces start with the role-aware Quick Start checklist, which guides admins through the core setup: industry selection, organization details, locations, product and inventory defaults, team members, customers, suppliers, production stages, and first orders.

For data migration, the best approach is to move the records that remove the most daily friction first. Most teams start with products, inventory, locations, customers, suppliers, staff, and active orders, then expand into deeper history once the operating workflow is stable. Admins can use Loupe Factory's AI-powered import tools for structured files, including CSV and Excel inventory imports with a review step before anything is confirmed.

If you are switching from spreadsheets or disconnected tools, start with a small validation import, review the mapped data, correct any field issues, and then import the remaining records in batches. Larger teams can also use integrations such as QuickBooks Online, Shopify, or Tally Prime where they apply. Every plan includes a guided onboarding tour. Enterprise adds dedicated migration support for more complex rollouts.

Loupe Factory is for organizations that make or distribute physical products, for example factories and workshops, as well as wholesale teams that hold stock and ship to customers. If you run multi-stage production, need dependable inventory control, and fulfill orders against that stock, the platform is designed for you.

Loupe Factory is a strong fit if your business makes, buys, or sells physical products and your team is starting to feel the limits of spreadsheets, disconnected order tools, or manual handoffs. It is especially useful when inventory, production, customer orders, purchase orders, shipments, invoices, customers, suppliers, staff, and reporting need to stay connected in one shared workspace.

It may not be the right fit if your business is purely service-based, software-only, or does not manage physical stock, production activity, fulfillment, or wholesale order workflows. If your only need is accounting, a storefront, or a simple invoice tool, a narrower system may be enough.

A good decision rule is this: consider Loupe Factory when staying in spreadsheets is creating stock errors, slow order follow-up, unclear production status, duplicated entry, or finance and operations working from different records. If those problems are only starting to appear, you can start small and move into the plan that matches your team size, locations, and production volume as the operation grows. See Pricing & Plans for plan guidance.

Sign up at loupefactory.com. You can sign in with your work email and the method your organization uses, such as password, magic link, or single sign-on (SSO). See Account Setup for step-by-step instructions.

On the login screen, click "Forgot password" and follow the instructions sent to your email. If your organization uses SSO, contact your IT administrator to reset credentials through your identity provider.

For more on managing your login and profile, see Profile.

Use Profile to update your own name, email, profile picture, or password. Use Admin Settings > Organization Settings for company-level details such as branding, locations, defaults, and compliance information. Full details are in Profile and Organization Settings.

Go to Inventory > Add Inventory Item. Then complete the item's type, product, physical attributes, quality, and storage details. Admin users can also click Add Product to Inventory and choose Import Spreadsheets with AI for bulk creation. See Inventory Management for the full step-by-step workflow.

Partly. With Auto-merge with existing inventory turned on, a row that matches an existing record adds its quantity and weight to that record and fills empty fields such as the product label, storefront description, photo, or an attribute key with no value yet. It never overwrites a value the record already carries, so prices, currency, and an existing photo stay as they are. Enter the amount you are adding rather than the new total, and delete the export-only columns first. See Update Existing Items from an Exported CSV.

Loupe Factory organizes inventory using operational fields such as type, finished type, materials & supplies type, product, shape, size, color, quality, and location. This gives most manufacturing and wholesale teams more control than a single category label. See Inventory Management for details.

Use the search bar at the top of the Inventory module. You can filter by product, inventory type, shape, size, quality, or storage details. The Inventory Management guide covers advanced filtering options.

Every workspace has one list of colors and finishes, and items pick from it. A typed color field let Rose Gold, Rosegold, and RG become three different colors on three different items, which broke search and filters. The list starts with your industry's colors, and each one shows a dot in its shade. See Item Colors.

Ask an admin to add it under Admin Settings > Product Settings > Colors, with a swatch and a catalog code if it has one. The color then appears in every picker. An admin can also type a color that is not on the list while adding or editing an item, and it is saved on that item only. See Managing Colors.

Open the item's details page, click More Actions, then select Storefront Description. Type the copy yourself, or choose a tone and click Generate to have AI draft it from the item's product, type, shape, size, weight, and attributes. Nothing is stored until you click Save Description. See Storefront Descriptions.

Users with the Admin or Manager role, on every plan. Members do not see the option. Every save is recorded on the item's history with who made the change and when.

Shopify, yes. A Products & Inventory push sends the description to the matching Shopify product, and a description edited in Shopify is never pulled back into Loupe Factory. No other channel receives it automatically, so your team copies the saved text into whichever website, marketplace, catalog, or listing needs it. See Storefront descriptions.

No. Unit prices, currency, rate details, cost components, internal notes, tag IDs, and HS or HSN codes are stripped out before the item reaches the AI, and the copy never mentions price, availability, discounts, or shipping. See What the AI Reads, and What It Never Sees.

Workspace admins only. Managers and members do not see Export CSV or Export All CSV, even if their role lets them view or manage inventory. See Exporting Inventory to CSV for the complete workflow.

An inventory export can move stock and pricing data outside Loupe Factory. The one-time email code confirms that an active admin, rather than an unattended signed-in session, approved the download. The six-digit code expires after ten minutes and works for one export only.

Yes. Export All CSV ignores the active tab, filters, and search. It downloads every inventory record in your workspace at the time of export, including stocked-out and rejected items hidden from the current view. Open All Inventory to use it.

No. The CSV downloads only to the exporting admin's browser. Loupe Factory emails a security receipt to that admin and the workspace's billing contact, but the receipt includes only the export type, record count, exporting admin, and time. It never contains the CSV or any inventory data.

Export CSV on the Materials & Supplies page downloads the visible table columns as shown on screen. It does not include the Storefront Description column. For exports from other inventory pages, see Exporting Inventory to CSV.

Yes, if you are an admin. Go to Admin Settings > Inventory Settings, scroll to Reset, and click Delete all inventory items under Inventory Records. You confirm with a six-digit code sent to your email, which expires after ten minutes, and you and your workspace's billing contact receive a security receipt afterward.

The deletion removes every inventory item of every type, plus the cost components and marketplace listings attached to them. Inventory types, products, settings, production jobs, orders, and tasks are kept. It cannot be undone, so use Export All CSV first if you might need the records later. See Deleting All Inventory Items.

Yes, on the Professional, Business, and Enterprise plans. Admins can enable Managers can use inventory from all locations in Organization Settings > Locations, below the Add location button. When enabled, Manager users can view and select inventory items or products from every location in the organization.

On Starter, the option is unavailable and users need to upgrade to use manager cross-location inventory access. Members can only see inventory items and products from their assigned location, even when manager cross-location access is enabled.

Go to Production and create a production job from the real order demand. You will select the associated order, line item, stage, source inventory, requested specs, and responsible staff member. See Production Tracking for the full job-creation flow.

When you receive a production job, Loupe Factory lets you record received output, wasted weight, and optional rejection or scrap separately. That data feeds job progress, yield, and waste metrics automatically. See Production Tracking for details.

Yes. Loupe Factory supports stage-based production workflows, so teams can create and track production work at the correct operational stage while keeping source inventory, received output, and losses visible. The Production Tracking guide explains how to manage that flow.

Go to Orders > Sales Orders and click Add new sales order. Select the customer, assign the order lead, enter clear notes, review the AI-prepared requested products, then complete the order details. See Order Management for the full workflow.

Open the order record to review the requested products, linked production work, invoicing progress, shipment activity, and any commercial follow-up. You can also use the order list to focus on the records that need action. See Order Management for details.

Yes. Once an order is ready to invoice, open the order and click Generate Invoice. Loupe Factory will pre-fill the invoice with the order details. See Invoicing for more on managing and sending invoices.

Yes. Open the sales order or order line and use Create BOM to build a Bill of Materials for the workflow you need, such as an estimate, quote, production BOM, actual-cost BOM, invoice BOM, or internal costing BOM.

Loupe Factory lets you link the BOM to the right order line, add rows from saved cost components, rate profiles, production context, or manual entries, then review the saved BOM in the read-only BOM Summary modal. Customer documents hide sensitive cost, margin, sourcing, exchange rate, and internal note details, while internal BOMs keep the full costing record. See Bill of Materials for the full workflow.

Yes, on the Professional, Business, and Enterprise plans. Admins can go to Admin Settings > Orders Settings > Invoices and turn on Add inventory product photos to invoices. The invoice preview and generated PDF will show the image attached to each billed order line item.

This setting is off by default. If an order line item does not have its own image, that row stays text-only. Loupe Factory does not automatically use the inventory item photo as a substitute on the final invoice.

Choose Starter for one login user, one location, and one active production job. Choose Professional when a growing team needs shared workflows, up to three locations, Shopify, Tally Prime, Bills of Materials, shipment tracking, or export invoices.

Business is designed for manufacturers and wholesalers that need 25 included login users, unlimited locations, unlimited active production jobs, advanced production reports, custom inventory IDs, or automatic HS code retrieval. Choose Enterprise when procurement, custom roles, OIDC or SAML SSO, migration, data residency, self-hosting, or dedicated support is part of the rollout. See Pricing & Plans for current prices and limits.

AI credits are the unit of consumption for Loupe Factory's built-in AI capabilities, such as automated data extraction, smart suggestions, and Loupe Copilot questions. Each AI action consumes a certain number of credits depending on its complexity.

See AI Credits & Billing for a full breakdown of how credits are consumed.

Yes. Loupe Copilot uses AI credits when your team asks a question and Copilot prepares an answer. Normal dashboard work, opening records, and opening reports do not use credits.

Every plan includes a monthly allowance: Starter includes 500 credits, Professional 3,000, Business 9,000, and Enterprise 25,000. Admins can top up credits or manage on-demand usage from Admin Settings > AI Credits Usage. See AI Credits & Billing for details.

Only when you click Generate. Credits are calculated from token usage at 1 credit per 1,000 tokens, rounded up, so a single draft usually costs a small number of credits. Typing or editing the description by hand is free, and so is saving it. See Storefront Descriptions.

Go to Admin Settings > AI Credits Usage and select Buy Credits. You can choose a credit bundle and complete the purchase with your saved payment method. See AI Credits & Billing for details.

Your invoices and payment history are available under Billing > History. See AI Credits & Billing for more information.