How to Track Custom Orders in Craftybase

“How does Craftybase deal with quotes that may or may not become orders? I’m a jeweler and most of my work is custom — I usually give a client a quote, they confirm, and then I make it. I want to track the materials used for each custom piece.”

That’s a real question from a real support thread. It came in twice on the same day, from different jewelers, which tells you how common this workflow actually is.

The honest answer: Craftybase doesn’t have a dedicated quoting module. There’s no “send quote” button, no quote-to-order conversion flow. The platform is built around making things and tracking inventory, not managing a quote pipeline.

But that doesn’t mean custom order workflows are a dead end. Two approaches work reliably, and between them they cover most of what jewelers, cake decorators, leather goods makers, and custom embroidery sellers actually need.

Why Craftybase doesn’t have a quoting module

Craftybase’s core model runs in this order: you make something (a manufacture run), that creates inventory, and then you assign orders to that inventory.

Quoting sits before the making step. It’s the moment you’re estimating a price before you’ve committed to making anything. Most inventory and manufacturing tools don’t model this step. They assume the order already exists.

For many makers, that’s fine. You list a product, someone buys it, you make it or ship it from stock. The order is the trigger.

For custom work, the trigger is a conversation, not a purchase. That conversation may or may not lead to an order, and you need a way to hold the cost estimate without blocking your inventory or manufacturing workflow.

Here’s how to do that in Craftybase.

Approach 1: Use a draft order as a placeholder

The simplest workaround is to create an order in Craftybase as soon as a client expresses interest, then use order statuses to manage where it sits in the workflow.

Here’s the flow:

1. Client enquires. You work out what the piece involves and what it’ll cost. You can do this in a recipe (more on that below) or just in your head at this stage.
2. Create the order. Add it to Craftybase with the client’s name, the item, and the agreed price. Use a status like “pending” or “awaiting confirmation”, or just leave it in draft. The order exists, but you haven’t made anything yet.
3. Client confirms. Update the order status to “confirmed” or “in progress.”
4. Run the manufacture. Create a manufacture run for the specific piece. This deducts materials from your inventory and records the true cost of what you made.
5. Assign and close. Link the manufacture output to the order and mark it fulfilled when it ships.

This keeps your orders list clean. Pending quotes sit in one status, confirmed work sits in another, and fulfilled commissions are closed. You can see at a glance what’s waiting on a client versus what’s in production.

The limitation: you’re creating real orders for work that may never happen. If a client doesn’t confirm, you’ll need to delete or archive that order. Keep an eye on your pending pile so ghost orders don’t accumulate.

Approach 2: Use a recipe as the cost estimate

For jewelers and other makers who do a lot of custom work, a more structured approach uses Craftybase’s recipe feature to build the cost estimate before any order exists.

This approach works well when your pricing depends on knowing the exact material costs upfront: sterling silver by gram, gemstone weight, hours of labour. Far better than quoting from memory.

Here’s how it works:

1. Build a recipe for the piece. Even if you’ve never made exactly this design before, create a recipe that approximates it: the metals, the findings (clasps, jump rings, settings), the gemstones, and your labour rate per hour. Craftybase calculates the cost automatically from your current material prices.
2. Use the recipe cost to set your quote price. You now have a real number to work from, not a guess. Add your profit margin, and that’s your quote.
3. If the client confirms: Create the order, run the manufacture against the recipe, and let Craftybase deduct the materials from your inventory. The manufacture run records which specific materials went into that specific piece. Useful for lot tracking, insurance, or just knowing what you used.
4. If the client doesn’t confirm: The recipe stays in your library. Delete it, or keep it for next time someone asks for something similar. Either way, nothing hit your inventory because you never ran a manufacture.

This approach gives you a proper paper trail for each piece. The recipe is the spec; the manufacture run is the record that it was made.

Tracking materials for each custom commission

Jewelers ask about this workflow for a specific reason: they want to know exactly what went into each piece, not just for pricing but for records.

“I want to track the materials used for each custom piece” is the specific ask. Craftybase handles this well, but only through the manufacture run, not through the order itself.

Each time you run a manufacture for a custom piece, Craftybase deducts the materials used (based on the recipe) from your stock and creates a record of that specific production run. If you’re using lot-tracked materials (specific batches of sterling silver, or a particular set of gemstones), that traceability flows through too.

What you get:

• A per-piece cost record (what it cost to make that piece, not an average)
• Material deductions from your inventory (so your stock levels stay accurate)
• A manufacture history you can refer back to for repeat commissions or warranty queries

If you’re making truly one-off pieces with no exact recipe (freeform wire wrapping, custom sizing, unusual stones), the recipe can be approximate. The important thing is that you run a manufacture for each custom piece, even if the recipe is a “close enough” estimate. That gives you the production record and the inventory movement.

Custom orders from other sales channels

If your custom orders come through Etsy, Shopify, or another integrated channel, those orders will sync into Craftybase automatically. You still need to run a manufacture manually (the order sync doesn’t trigger manufacturing), but the order exists in Craftybase for you to link to the finished piece.

For jewelers who take commissions via DM or email, manual order creation (Approach 1 or 2 above) is the right path. Craftybase doesn’t have a customer-facing quote form that clients can fill out.

Which approach is right for you?

If most of your custom work converts (clients who enquire tend to confirm), Approach 1 is simpler. Create the order early, manage the status, manufacture when confirmed.

If you quote a lot of work that doesn’t convert, or your pricing depends heavily on exact material costs upfront, Approach 2 gives you more control. Build the recipe, price from there, and only create the order if it goes ahead.

Many makers end up using both depending on the job. A quick small commission might use Approach 1. A complex multi-stage piece where you need to cost out the silver and gemstones carefully would use Approach 2.

Neither approach is wrong. The key here is that some system beats none. Even if it’s imperfect, having a manufacture run per custom piece keeps your inventory accurate and your COGS real.

Frequently Asked Questions