The plugin catalog

Five plugins are available today. Each one is installed from the Plugins module (see Plugins & the Marketplace) and adds its own module to the sidebar. This page describes what each plugin actually does, screen by screen.

Analytics

Sidebar entry: Analytics. A read-only reporting surface with two tabs — Turnaround and Delivery commitments — switched at the top of the screen. There is nothing to edit here; the numbers are computed from the work your team already records.

Shop turnaround

Screen: The Shop turnaround view. The header shows “Last 12 months” and an “as of” date. A KPI strip reads Avg turnaround, Median turnaround, Open work orders, and Over target (30.0d). Below, a Bottleneck line names the slowest stage with a red pill, then a Per-stage dwell time bar chart, and a table with columns Stage · Avg dwell · Median dwell · Samples.

• Turnaround is the time from a work order being received to it shipping, measured over the last 12 months of shipped jobs.
• Over target counts open work orders that have already been open longer than the 30-day target.
• Dwell is how long jobs sit in each stage (Received, Inspection, In work, Awaiting parts, QA, Ready to ship). The stage with the worst average dwell is flagged as the bottleneck and shown in red — that is where your shop hours are going.
• Durations show in hours up to two days (“36.0h”) and in days beyond that (“12.5d”).

Delivery commitments

Screen: The Customer delivery commitments view. The header shows “OTD · last 90 days”. A KPI strip reads On-time delivery (with “shipped · target 95%” beneath it), Open commitments, Overdue, and Due soon. Below, a table of open orders with columns Order · Customer · Promised · Status · Value; each Order cell carries an SO or WO tag.

• On-time delivery (OTD) is the percentage of work orders shipped within their promised date over the trailing 90 days, against a 95% target — sales orders appear in the worklist below but are not yet counted in the OTD figure. At or above target the tile is green; slightly below it turns amber; further below, red.
• The table lists every open sales order and work order that has a promised date, ranked worst-first by slack to the promise. The Status pill reads “Nd overdue” (red), “Due today”, “Due in Nd” (amber when inside the 3-day window, otherwise green).

Roles: Analytics is visible to every member once installed. It is read-only for everyone.

AOG Desk

Sidebar entry: AOG Desk. One screen of every open Aircraft-on-Ground item — AOG-urgency RFQs, AOG-priority repair orders, and AOG-priority work orders — each with a live SLA clock that ticks up in real time. The board sorts worst-first and re-sorts as clocks breach, so the person running the desk always works the most urgent grounding first.

Screen: The AOG Desk. The header reads “Grounded-aircraft work · live SLA clocks”. A KPI strip shows AOG Items (with an “RFQ · RO · WO” breakdown), Past SLA (“response overdue”), and Escalated (“notify the lead”). The table has columns Item · Type · Customer / Vendor · Detail · Status · Received · On the clock; each row ends with a running clock (H:MM:SS) and a pill reading On SLA, Past SLA, or Escalated. Rows carry a colored accent — amber or red — matching the pill.

How the clock works

The clock starts when the item arrives (the RFQ’s received time, the repair order’s order date, the work order’s opened date) and never shows “fine”: an AOG item is amber from the moment it appears and turns red when it crosses its response-time window.

Clicking a row opens the source record — the RFQ in the RFQ inbox, the repair order, or the work order. The desk itself is read-only: you resolve an AOG item by working its source record. A repair order leaves the board when it is closed or cancelled, and a work order when it ships.

Surcharge Invoicing

Sidebar entry: Surcharge Invoicing. Pass-through re-invoicing: a vendor bills you, and APEX re-invoices your customer at cost plus a surcharge — posting both sides (the vendor bill to accounts payable, the customer invoice to accounts receivable) to the general ledger so every pass-through is fully accounted for.

Roles: Creating, delivering, and voiding pass-throughs — and editing vendor rates and the plugin’s settings — are owner/admin actions; a member who tries gets an error message. Members can open the module and read the list and every pass-through record.

Screen: The Surcharge Invoicing list. A KPI strip across the top, then a Pass-throughs header with a search box (“Search vendor, customer, invoice…”), a status filter, and a New pass-through button. The table columns are Number · Vendor · Customer · Cost · Surcharge % · Resale · Margin · Status · Delivered.

Creating a pass-through

Click New pass-through. A drawer subtitled “Upload a vendor invoice to re-invoice at cost plus surcharge” walks through the flow:

1. Drop the vendor invoice — drag a PDF or image (up to 25 MB) onto the drawer, or click Browse files.
2. APEX reads the invoice — “Extracting the cost, parties, and aviation references…”. The fields are pre-filled automatically from the document.
3. Review — check and correct the pre-filled fields: Vendor, Customer, Vendor cost, Surcharge % (blank = the vendor’s configured rate, or the default), Currency, and the aviation references (PO number, RAN number, AWB number, PSN, Flight number, VAT IDs). If extraction confidence was low, a banner warns you to double-check every field.
4. Generate invoice — APEX creates the vendor Bill (accounts payable) and the customer Invoice (accounts receivable) and posts both to the ledger in one step.
5. Done — “Pass-through invoice generated.” Open the record with Open the pass-through.

The pass-through record

The detail page shows the money summary (Vendor cost · Surcharge · Resale amount · Margin), a Bill · Accounts payable cell and an Invoice · Accounts receivable cell (each linking into the Accounting module), the Aviation references, what was Posted to the general ledger, and a Processing log of every step. Two actions live here:

• Deliver invoice — emails the issued invoice to the customer (optionally with the rendered PDF attached, per the plugin’s settings).
• Void — opens a drawer (“Reverses the bill and invoice in the GL. This cannot be undone.”), asks for a reason, and reverses both postings.

Per-vendor rates and defaults

The plugin’s settings page holds a Per-vendor surcharge rates table (“This is what lets one vendor bill at 7% and another at 25%” — the rate resolves per-vendor first, then the default) and a Defaults section: default surcharge %, default customer, invoice prefix, VAT ID, delivery email, a branding note for the invoice footer, and whether to attach the PDF to the delivery email.

Company Chat

Sidebar entry: Chat. Internal, Slack-style team messaging that lives inside APEX: every message stays in your company’s own records, isolated per workspace and auditable. Nothing here is visible to customers.

Screen: The Chat module. A left rail lists Channels (each prefixed with #, some with a Restricted badge) and Direct Messages (with the colleague’s avatar), each with an unread count. Above them, a “Search messages…” box. The main pane shows the active conversation: messages with author and time, a “New messages” divider, typing indicators, and a composer (“Message #channel…”) with an attach-files button and a Send button.

Channels and direct messages

• Channels come in three kinds, chosen at creation:

• New channel opens a drawer: name, optional topic, visibility, and — for role-gated channels — the roles that can see it. Creating channels requires a chat-creation permission — owners and admins always have it; a member needs it granted through a role (Team → Roles).
• Join / Leave appear on public and role-gated channels you can see. Direct messages are 1:1 — pick a colleague from New message.
• Inside a conversation: @mentions, message edit and delete, read receipts (“Seen”), presence (Online/Offline), typing indicators, and file and image attachments (up to 25 MB each; files are shared privately, never public).
• Search covers the conversations you can see — results list matching messages and jump you to the conversation.

Order discussions

Every work order, purchase order, sales order, and repair order detail page carries an Open discussion button (“Internal team chat thread for this work order” — worded to match each record type). It opens — creating it the first time — a private chat thread linked to that record, so the conversation about a job lives next to the job. See the work order detail.

Admin controls

Roles: Owners and admins see a gear icon at the top of the rail — Chat settings — plus Manage on each channel (rename, edit topic, archive).

Chat settings hold Message moderation (an optional automatic scan of new messages — it never blocks sending), Message retention (days) (blank = keep forever; 1–3650 days otherwise), and Purge old messages — a Run purge now button that removes every message older than the retention window.

Shipping Desk

Sidebar entry: Shipping Desk. A read-only worklist of the day’s outbound work, so the shipping clerk packs and ships without walking order by order. Rows are colored by urgency — slack to the promised date for orders, time-in-status for shipments — and each lane sorts worst-first.

Screen: The Shipping desk. A KPI strip reads Needs shipment, To pack, Packed-ready, and Overdue. Below, a LANE switcher with three options and their counts: Needs shipment, To pack, Packed. The table shows orders (columns Order · Type · Customer · Status · Promised · Lines · Waiting) or shipments (columns Shipment · Customer · Carrier · Tracking · Lines · In status), each row ending in an age (“N days”) and a pill: On track, Due soon, or Overdue.

Clicking an order row opens the source order; a shipment row opens its work order when one is attached. The desk itself takes no actions — you ship from the order’s own screen (see Documents & shipping).