The email chase
Approvals, orders, progress and dates live where the work happens. Nobody waits on a reply to find out what was decided.
Portals and access
Every job is a view, held by whoever does it.
Your customers approve samples and place orders. Your factories post progress. So does whoever books the freight, whoever receipts the container, and the agent when nobody does. A portal is not a second product — it is the same record with a narrower view, and who holds that view is a decision about how you staff the work, not about what software they have.
Where it sits
One chain, every link.
Every flow in Weavwork is a view of the same connected record — so nothing here is a module bolted on beside the others.
- StyleSKU tree · BOM
- Samplerounds · specs
- Ordergrid · price list
- Production managementplan · WIP · QC
- Shipmentvessel · ETA
- Warehousepick · pack · count
- Accountinginvoice approval · what posts
This is the one page where the whole chain lights, because every record on it has a view and every view can be handed to someone. Portals are not a module beside the others — they are how the others are reached.
Who holds which view
A seat, a portal, or no seat at all.
The same eight views run the business. What changes between one manufacturer and the next is who is looking at each one — and that can change again next year without changing the system.
Held by
- Style and the SKU treecreate products, add branches, hold the bill of materialsYour teamAn outside partyAn agent
Your design and technical team — or a freelance patternmaker you give the style view and nothing else.
- Sample approvalrounds, measurements against spec, approve or request changesYour teamAn outside partyAn agent
Your customer signs off from their portal and your technical lead signs off from a seat. Same record, same round, same comment thread.
- Order entrya variant grid against the right price listYour teamAn outside partyAn agent
Sales key it, the customer keys it themselves, or the agent reads their emailed purchase order onto the order and asks someone to confirm it.
- Production postingstage, quantity done today, photos, blockersYour teamAn outside partyAn agent
Your own floor supervisor posts it, the factory posts it from a phone, or the agent lifts it out of the progress email they sent instead.
- Shipment bookingvessel, forwarder, ETD and ETA, the documentsYour teamAn outside partyAn agent
A logistics desk big enough to have its own team, a forwarder you outsource it to, or the agent filing the booking confirmation against the shipment.
- Goods-in receiptingcount it in, reconcile it to the shipmentYour teamAn outside partyAn agent
Your receipting manager records it, your 3PL records it, or a reader at the door does and the agent reconciles whatever did not arrive.
- Picks and despatchpick, pack, despatch, cycle countsYour teamAn outside partyAn agent
Your own warehouse, or the 3PL you use instead of one. The picks come off the same order either way.
- Costing and invoicessupplier bills, landed cost, what posts to the ledgerYour teamAn outside partyAn agent
Finance holds this one. An agent can read a supplier bill onto the order it belongs to, but nothing posts to your accounts without a person saying so.
A seat is a view with a wide scope; a portal is the same view with a narrow one. Portal users are never seats and are never counted as seats — there is no limit on how many of them you have.
How it runs
Step by step, on one record.
- 01Name the view, not the person
Sample approval, order entry, production posting, shipment booking, goods-in receipting. Each is a view of the one record with its own scope — what it shows, what it can change, and what it can never touch.
- 02Hand it to whoever does the job
Your own team takes it on a seat. A customer, a factory, a forwarder or a 3PL takes the same view on a portal. An agent takes it with no seat at all and drafts instead of deciding.
- 03Every action lands on the record
An approval from a customer’s phone and an approval from your technical lead’s desk are the same event on the same round. There is no syncing step, because there is nothing to sync.
- 04Change who holds it, not what runs
Bring freight booking in-house, or hand it to a forwarder, or let the agent file the confirmations. The view does not change; only who is looking at it does.
A week with it
What it looks like on a Wednesday.
Three days from one week, on the sample data that runs through this site.
Monday
Two approvals, one round
Northline approves the pre-production sample from their portal at 8pm; your technical lead had approved the measurements from a seat that morning. Round 3 closes with both on it.
Wednesday
The booking comes from outside
Your forwarder books SH-0492 against the two production orders going into it. Nobody at your end keys a vessel name, and the customer portal shows the new ETA that afternoon.
Friday
The agent covers the gap
The receipting manager is away. The container is read in at the door, the agent reconciles the two short cartons against the packing list and drafts the claim — for a person to send on Monday.
What it removes
The jobs that stop existing.
The re-keying between parties
A factory posting progress and a 3PL posting a receipt write to the record directly. Nothing is retyped at your end from someone else’s message.
Access as an all-or-nothing question
A forwarder does not need to see your margins to book a vessel. A view carries exactly its own scope and nothing beside it.
Who works in it
The same record, three seats.
Your team
A seat with a wide view: everything their job touches, and nothing that belongs to someone else’s.
Customers, factories, forwarders and 3PLs
A portal with a narrow one. They are never seats, never counted as seats, and there is no limit on how many you have.
The agents
No seat at all. They read, draft and reconcile against a view, and hand the decision back to a person.
Questions
The ones we get asked.
Are portal users seats?
No. Seats are your own people. Customers, factories, forwarders and 3PLs work from portals, they are not counted, and there is no limit on how many of them you have.
Can we give one of our own team a narrow view?
Yes — that is the same mechanism. A receipting manager who only receipts gets the receipting view, and a freelance patternmaker gets the style view and nothing beside it.
What if we outsource a job later, or bring one back?
You move the view, not the process. Freight booking handed to a forwarder and freight booking done in-house are the same screen writing to the same record.
Can a supplier see our costs or our other customers?
No. A view carries its own scope: a factory sees the orders it is making and nothing about what they sell for, and never another supplier’s work.
Does the agent need a seat?
No. Agents act against a view without one, and they draft rather than decide — a purchase order, a reply or a reconciliation waits for a person to approve it.
Keep going
Two more flows, and the whole product.
See it on your own range.
A 30-minute demo, run on your products and your workflow. No slides.
Or write to hello@weavwork.com