Custom Builds

As of 2026-05-19, custom builds live inside /work-orders with OrderType='custom'. The standalone /custom-builds route redirects there. Same data, unified workflow + universal status set with repairs. The terminology in this article still refers to “custom builds” because it’s the industry term; the URL is now /work-orders.

A custom build is a one-off piece you’re making (or having a vendor make) for a specific customer — an engagement ring set with stones the customer brought in, a refurbished heirloom, a bespoke pendant. It’s distinct from:

• Repairs — sizings / re-tipping / soldering on something the customer already owns (same module, OrderType='repair')
• Purchase Orders — bulk reordering of standard styles you carry as inventory

Many of the dedicated articles for custom-job workflow:

• Quote a Custom Job — quote versions + Quote PDF
• Take a Deposit on a Work Order — collect money before invoicing
• Job Templates — pre-canned recipes for common services
• Photos, CAD Files, & Attachments — multi-photo gallery including CAD/3D
• Email the Vendor on a Work Step — vendor outreach per trip
• Customer Signatures — Intake & Pickup — digital signature capture
• Repair Warranty & Warranty Redos — warranty tracking + redo flow
• Print Three Audience Copies of a Work Order — counter / bench / customer copies

Custom builds live at Services → Custom Builds.

Starting one from an invoice — sell now, build later

Often the sale happens before the job does: a customer buys a diamond and wants a setting designed for it, and you’d rather ring up the sale than keep them at the counter while you work out the build.

Do it in that order. Put the stone on the invoice as its own line, then add a second line with the line type Custom Job (or Repair), priced at what you’ve agreed. That line offers two choices:

• Search for an existing job — attach a work order that already exists.
• or create a new one → — raise the work order now, from this line.

Both are there while you are adding the line — you don’t have to save the invoice and reopen the line to find them. Choosing to create one saves the line first (a work order has to have a line to link back to) and carries you straight into intake.

Reopening a saved line that still has no job shows the same pair, worded Link to a work order → and or create one →.

Creating from the line opens the normal New Work Order screen with the customer, job type, description and price already filled in from the invoice, so nothing is retyped. You still get everything the intake form offers — photos, stones, a job template, due date. Saving links the new job to that line and takes you straight back to the invoice.

From then on the two stay in step: edit the price on the work order and the invoice line follows. The rest of the invoice is untouched — the diamond keeps its own line and its own price.

The stone stays on the invoice, not on the build. It was sold on that line, so it has already left inventory; the work order covers the setting. Adding it to the job as well would take it out of stock twice.

The 6-state workflow

Every build moves through some subset of these states. The list is intentionally short: if two statuses had the same owner and the same next action, they were merged.

Code	Meaning	Owner	Typical next
QN	Quote needed	Admin / Salesperson	AVQ, CR, IP
AVQ	Awaiting vendor quote	Vendor (Admin monitors)	CR, QN
CR	Customer review	Salesperson	IP, QN
IP	In production	Vendor or in-house jeweler	RP
RP	Ready for pickup	Salesperson	—
OH	On hold (waiting on customer, stones, etc.)	Admin	back to any state

The typical happy path is QN → AVQ → CR → IP → RP for vendor-built pieces, or QN → CR → IP → RP for in-house work.

OH (On hold) can be entered from any state — useful when the customer needs to think it over, or when you’re waiting for the customer to drop off stones for setting. From OH you can resume into any other state.

RP (Ready for pickup) is the resting state once the piece is finished. The dashboard will eventually flag a build red after 14 days on the floor so the salesperson chases the customer.

Required fields

• Customer — pick from the contacts list. Tax-exempt status, contact info, and address all snapshot onto the build when you save, so later edits to the contact don’t retroactively change the historical build.
• Salesperson — the employee responsible for following the build through. Defaults to the logged-in user.
• Promised Date — when the customer is expecting the finished piece. Drives the aging engine and “due soon” flags on the dashboard.

Everything else is optional. Capture as much or as little spec as you have at the Quote needed stage; flesh it out as quotes come back.

Inspiration photo + vendor drawing

After the build is saved, the detail page shows two upload cards:

• Inspiration Photo — what the customer is asking for. Phone snaps of magazine pages, screenshots of other rings, sketches on a napkin. PNG / JPG / WebP / GIF / PDF, up to 8 MB.
• Vendor Drawing — the vendor’s CAD render or technical drawing for the customer to approve. Same file types and size limit.

Both are stored privately in JewelTrak’s cloud storage (Cloudflare R2) under your tenant’s prefix and shown inline when an image, or as a “View attachment ↗” link when a PDF.

Deleting an attachment also removes it from storage; deleting the build cleans up both files automatically.

Vendor handoff

When you set Vendor on a build, the vendor’s company name snapshots onto the build for later display. Today, sending the quote / build request to the vendor is a manual email step — generate the spec yourself and email the vendor.

A future enhancement will template the email (“Quote request for Custom Build #000123 — Yellow gold engagement ring, 6mm cushion center, …”) and send via the same Resend pipeline JewelTrak uses for invoice emails. For now: email the vendor, then move the status to Awaiting vendor quote so the workflow log shows when you sent it.

The job timeline

Every work order has a single Activity timeline (open by default near the top of the job) that merges everything that’s happened into one chronological story — when it was created, each status change, every quote version, deposits and payments, work steps starting and finishing, photos added, and customer notifications sent. It also shows upcoming milestones as hollow markers: an unfinished step’s expected-back date and the promised delivery date. It’s the “single timeline so the project never lives in three places” — no more hunting across separate tabs to reconstruct what’s happened.

Finishing an in-house piece — stones, cost and price

An in-house job is a piece you’re making for your own case rather than work on a customer’s ring. Nobody collects it, so its statuses are shorter: Received → In Progress → Finished — in stock.

Marking it Finished — in stock is the moment the piece becomes real. In one step it:

• creates the inventory item, if you haven’t already
• sets the stones you allocated into it
• lands any step costs that hadn’t been captured yet
• puts it in stock, and prices it by running your inventory multipliers over its finished cost

You don’t have to click anything else, or remember to price it afterwards.

Creating the item early is fine. If you want a stock number to print a tag or take photos before the job is done, use Create its stock record now — the line under the job’s next step, on the job ticket — but that early record sits at quantity 0 with no price, because the piece doesn’t exist yet and its cost isn’t final. It’s priced when you finish the job, like every other piece.

If your shop has no inventory multipliers set up, the piece is left unpriced rather than given a made-up number — price it yourself on the item.

A cost that turns up after the job is finished still lands on the item’s cost basis, but it won’t move the price. By then the price is yours to set.

What the created item carries

Creating the stock record turns the job into a real inventory record. What comes with it:

• The stones you allocated to the job become the piece’s set stones. They show in the item’s Set Stones panel, and they carry onto its appraisal, certificate and description — you don’t re-enter them.
• Their cost lands on the item. A stone taken from a multi-stone lot is charged at its share of the lot; a parcel drawn down by weight is charged per carat. That, plus each step’s vendor or bench fee and the job’s own cost, is the piece’s cost basis — so margin is right when it sells.
• The stones aren’t taken out of stock twice. They left loose inventory when you allocated them to the job; setting them into the piece only records where they went.

If the job is already pointed at a stock number (you’re building onto an existing piece rather than making a new one), the same thing happens when you mark it Finished — in stock.

To undo it, remove the stone from the item’s Set Stones panel — that returns it to loose stock and takes its cost back off the piece. The work order’s Stones card won’t let you remove an allocation once it’s set, because that would put the stone back on the shelf while it’s still in the ring.

Certificate of Authenticity

When a custom piece is finished, issue a Certificate of Authenticity — a formal, printable PDF attesting that you designed and handcrafted the piece. It’s on the custom job, in the Certificate of Authenticity card:

• It pulls the customer, description, metal, stones, and a finished-piece photo from the job, and renders an award-style certificate with your shop’s logo, a gold seal, the signer’s signature, and a unique certificate number.
• Retail value is off by default — a certificate attests authenticity, not value. Tick Include retail value only if you want a reference figure (it prints clearly marked “not an insurance appraisal”).
• Re-issue any time to refresh it from the latest job details.
• An insurance appraisal is a different document and lives on the finished inventory item (create the item from the job, then issue the appraisal there). The certificate and the appraisal serve different purposes — authenticity vs. value-for-insurance.

What this doesn’t do (yet)

• Doesn’t email the vendor automatically. Set Vendor + bump status, then send the email yourself.