Work orders
Quick answers about stages, holds, lines, and shipping. The full guide is Work Orders.
Why can’t I click the SHIPPED stage button?
SHIPPED is the one stage you can’t reach with a stage button. It happens only through
Ship + consolidate, because shipping does more than flip a label: it creates the shipment
record, consolidates installed-part costs into the end item, and posts revenue and cost of
goods to the books in one step. See:
Documents & shipping.
Can I move a work order backward — say, from QA back to IN WORK?
Yes. The stage buttons don’t enforce the sequence (only SHIPPED is special), so you can step
a job back when QA finds more work. Every move is recorded with who made it and when, and your
customer sees the stage journey on their portal — so move deliberately. See:
Lifecycle & stages.
A hold appeared on my work order that nobody placed — where did it come from?
Symptom: an AWAITING PARTS hold shows up, annotated “Auto-placed by material readiness”.
Cause: when someone clicks Reserve on the Material Readiness screen and the work order
is still short after using free stock, APEX places the hold automatically so the shortage is
visible.
Fix: nothing is wrong — release the hold from the Hold Board once the parts arrive. See:
Holds & the Hold Board.
Why won’t APEX let me delete a work order line?
A line that has already driven inventory, labor, or cost history is refused server-side — the audit trail would break if it vanished. Edit the line in place instead. See: Parts, labor & material.
Why is the Lines grid on my work order read-only?
The work order has shipped. Ship + consolidate freezes the lines and finalizes the billable and cost totals, so a shipped job can’t quietly change after the fact. See: Documents & shipping.
How do I mark a work order as AOG priority?
You can’t from the console today. Work orders created in the console always start as
ROUTINE, and there is no field to change priority afterward — EXPEDITE and AOG currently
arrive only through data migration or system integrations. See:
Creating a work order.
Ship + consolidate failed with an accounting error — what happened?
Symptom: you click Ship + consolidate and get an accounting error instead of a shipment. Cause: shipping posts revenue and COGS to the books in the same transaction as the ship. If the accounting period is closed or an account mapping is missing, the entire ship is refused — deliberately, so nothing half-happens. Fix: resolve the books issue (reopen or use an open period, or fix the mapping under Accounting), then ship again. See: Documents & shipping.
How do I attach a signed 8130-3 scan to a work order?
The work order’s Certs & documents table is read-only — there is no upload button on the work order itself. Upload the file with + Add document on the related purchase, repair, or sales order, or on the customer or vendor record; the customer’s copy is served through the certificate record on their portal. See: Release documents.