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Quick Starts by RoleOperator

Operator quick start

You run jobs through the shop: units come in, get inspected and worked, wait on parts, pass QA, and ship back out. In APEX all of that lives on the work order, and your day is a loop around a handful of screens. Here is that day, task by task.

Your screens

Sidebar entryWhy you live there
Work Orders → OrdersThe job list — every WO, its stage, priority, and open holds.
Work Orders → Hold BoardEverything stuck in the shop, grouped by reason, longest-stuck first.
Work Orders → Material ReadinessPart demand vs. stock for every open job, with one-click reserving.
CommandThe operations overview — pipelines, receiving calendar, quick-create for any order.
InventoryStock on the shelf when you need to check availability yourself.

Your first day, task by task

1. Start at the Hold Board

  1. Open Work Orders → Hold Board — every open hold, grouped by reason, with the longest-stuck group on top.
  2. For anything that has cleared overnight, click Release right on the row.

It answers “what is stuck, why, and for how long?” in one glance — make it the first screen of the morning meeting. See Holds & the Hold Board.

2. Triage the job list

  1. Open Work Orders → Orders and read the KPI strip — OPEN WORK ORDERS, IN WORK, AWAITING PARTS (amber when anything waits), AOG (red above zero).
  2. Click a row to open the peek drawer, and use Advance → to move a job to its next stage without leaving the list.

See the work order list for the columns, filters, and search.

3. Open a new job

  1. Click + New WO on the list (or use Command’s quick actions).
  2. Fill Customer, Type (defaults to REPAIR), and Work scope, optionally pick an Assign to owner, and click Create work order.

The job starts in RECEIVED at ROUTINE priority. See Creating a work order.

4. Keep stages honest

  1. On the record, click the stage button the job has actually reached — RECEIVED → INSPECTION → IN_WORK → AWAITING_PARTS → QA → READY_TO_SHIP.
  2. If work stalls, place a hold with a reason instead of parking the stage — the job keeps its place and the delay is explained.

Every move is recorded, and your customer watches the same journey as a timeline on their portal. See Lifecycle & stages.

5. Put parts and hours on the job

  1. In Lines, add the charges — material, labor, outside processing — with cost and price.
  2. In Labor, log technician time: name, hours, rate, Log.
  3. In Units · assembly, click Install on a piece part to build it into the end item.

See Parts, labor & material.

6. Watch material

  1. Open Work Orders → Material Readiness — each open WO with its material status pill (Ready, 2 to reserve, 1 short).
  2. Click Reserve on a job, or Reserve available stock to sweep the whole shop in priority order (AOG first).

A job still short after reserving gets an automatic AWAITING_PARTS hold — you’ll see it on the Hold Board. See Material Readiness.

7. Run the paper check at QA

Before advancing to READY_TO_SHIP, verify every certificate is in Certs & documents and every review pill reads APPROVED — and that the lines match the work performed, because shipping freezes them. See What QA reviews.

8. Ship it

  1. On the record (or the peek drawer), click Ship + consolidate.
  2. APEX moves the job to SHIPPED, creates the shipment, rolls installed-part costs into the end item, and posts revenue and cost to the books — all in one step.

See Documents & shipping.

Watch out for

  • SHIPPED is never a stage button. Only Ship + consolidate ships a job — and it has money attached: lines freeze and revenue/COGS post at that moment. If the accounting period is closed, the whole ship is refused; resolve it with accounting, then ship again.
  • Console-created work orders always start ROUTINE. There is no console control to raise a job to EXPEDITE or AOG afterwards — those priorities arrive only with imported or integration-created jobs. Don’t count on the red AOG tile to reflect a rush job you keyed in yourself.
  • Nothing gates the stage buttons. You can skip or move backward, and a rejected document won’t stop a stage move — the QA check is your shop’s discipline, not the software’s. Your customer sees every stage move on their portal, so keep the stages true.
  • Watch for auto-placed holds. Reserving from Material Readiness places an AWAITING_PARTS hold on any job still short — release it from the Hold Board when the parts arrive.

Go deeper: the full Work Orders guide covers every screen in this loop.

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