Definitions¶
The terms below appear across setup, inventory, orders, and production. Using a shared definition helps your team stay aligned across locations, languages, and business units.
| Term | What it means in Loupe Factory | Where to update or customize it |
|---|---|---|
| Products | Your master catalog of what the business makes, buys, or sells. A product exists before stock exists. It gives your team a consistent commercial and operational name to work from. | Product Settings |
| Inventory | The live stock records your business actually holds, consumes, transforms, transfers, or ships. Inventory is operational; products are the catalog behind it. | Inventory Settings and Inventory Management |
| Inventory type | The workflow bucket an inventory record sits in, such as Rough, CAD/STL Ready, Machined Component, or Finished. It helps Loupe Factory reflect how far an item has moved through your process. | Inventory Settings |
| Finished inventory type | The sale-ready family used once an item is complete enough to quote, sell, stock, or dispatch, such as Faceted, Rings, or Braking Parts. | Product Settings and Inventory Settings |
| Materials & Supplies type | The support items your team uses to operate the business, such as wax, chemicals, tooling, packaging, workshop supplies, lubricants, and similar consumables. | Product Settings and Inventory Settings |
| Size | A standardized way to describe dimensions so people, orders, and production all use the same measurement language, for example stone diameter, ring size, chain length, OD/ID, thread size, or kit quantity. | Product Settings |
| Shape | The geometry or form factor of a part or item, such as Round, Oval, Princess, Cylindrical, Flange, or Kit / Set. | Product Settings |
| Shape group | A reusable family of compatible shapes tied to a specific component or product family. In jewelry, for example, one shape group can define which shapes a head, halo, bezel, or mount supports. | Product Settings |
| Production stage | A named step in your manufacturing route, such as Rough Assorting, Metal Casting, CNC Machining, QA & Function Test, or Pack, Label & Dispatch. | Production Settings and Production Tracking |
| Issued weight / pieces (pcs) | The inventory amount you put into a production job as input. This is the weight or piece count taken from source inventory for the job. It can be the same as the requested amount, but it answers a different question: how much inventory did we issue into production? | Production job creation in Production Tracking |
| Requested weight / pieces (pcs) | The target amount your team expects the production job to account for. Loupe Factory uses this as the bucket for the job result: received + rejected + scrapped + waste + pending = requested. Users enter requested details when creating the production job. | Production job creation in Production Tracking |
| Received inventory item | Good output received back from a production job. This is the usable item your team can move to the next production stage, hold in stock, allocate to an order, or sell when it is ready. | Receiving a job in Production Tracking |
| Rejected inventory item | Output that was produced and measured, but failed a quality check. Loupe Factory keeps rejected inventory separate from good received inventory so teams do not accidentally use or ship it. | Receiving a job in Production Tracking |
| Scrapped inventory item | Recoverable loss material separated from a production job, such as metal scrap, off-grade stones, or reusable components. It is tracked separately because it may still have value for reuse, recovery, sale, or reporting. | Receiving a job in Production Tracking |
| Wasted inventory / waste | Material consumed or lost during production that cannot be reused, recovered, sold, or stored as usable stock. Waste is recorded as process loss and helps explain the difference between requested output and usable received output. | Receiving a job in Production Tracking |
| Sales order | The commercial record of what a customer agreed to buy, including items, pricing, quantity, timing, and delivery expectations. | Orders Settings and Order Management |
| Purchase order | The buying record your team sends to a supplier for materials, components, tooling, packaging, or services. | Orders Settings |
A simple rule of thumb
If your team is deciding what something is, start in Product Settings. If you are deciding where it sits in the workflow or how it is tracked, start in Inventory Settings or Production Settings.
How Inventory Classification Fits Together¶
Use this diagram when you need to understand the difference between catalog setup and a live inventory record.
Inventory classification
Catalog language becomes a stock record
Product settings define what the item is. Inventory settings and the inventory item record define how that stock is tracked in daily operations.
In practical terms, Product answers "what is this item?" An inventory item record answers "where is this stock, how much do we have, and how should teams handle it?"
How Users, Roles, Permissions, and Staff Records Differ¶
Use this diagram when you need to decide whether to invite someone as a user, change their role, or create a staff record for operational assignment.
User access
Login access and staff assignment are separate
A person can have a user account, a staff record, or both. User accounts control platform access. Staff records help teams assign work.
Invite or update a user when someone needs to sign in. Create or update a staff record when the person needs to appear in assignments, ownership fields, or operational reports.
Keeping teams aligned¶
These definitions matter most when your business spans multiple departments, locations, sales regions, or supplier networks. A shared vocabulary reduces quoting errors, stock confusion, and production handoff friction.
- Sales teams can describe the same item consistently across quotations and orders.
- Production teams can track progress using agreed stage names.
- Warehouse teams can identify stock correctly across locations and bins.
- Procurement teams can buy the right materials and supplies without guesswork.
Next Step¶
Continue with Admin Settings to see where each of these terms can be tailored to fit your business.