Follow every order from drawing revision through each stage, outside job work and dispatch.

These trades make to an order. A buyer sends a drawing, a purchase order or a specification, and the factory turns it into parts, panels, boxes or garments. Quantities change between orders. The same part often returns in a new revision, so the paperwork around the work matters as much as the work itself.

Most orders pass through stages: cutting, machining, welding, assembly, finishing, testing and packing. Some stages go outside, to a plater, a hardening shop, a polisher or a printer, and for those stages the challan book is often the only record of what left the gate. Stock arrives as bars, sheets, reels, components or fabric. Each is drawn down by a particular order and has to be counted against it.

Several people touch every order: the estimator, the planner, the store, the supervisor, the inspector and the accountant. Each keeps a private sheet. The business needs one record of the order that all of them can read. After dispatch the record keeps growing, with warranty returns, spares, AMC renewals, retention and the buyer’s debit notes all added to the same order that the estimator first opened.