External Units and Suppliers
Few factories do everything in-house. Specialty washes go to a washing house. Embroidery goes to a digitizer with the right machines. Pressing and packing sometimes go to a third party closer to the port. Each of those external services is, in GarmentFlow terms, an External Production Unit — and each external unit is run by a Supplier.
This folder covers the flows specific to external units: dispatching stock to them, recovering finished or partial goods back, and the supplier-side portal that lets your subcontractors do their share of the work without anyone emailing PDFs.
How an External Unit works in GarmentFlow
When you create a Production Unit and set its type to External, four extra fields appear:
- Supplier — the Supplier who runs this unit.
- Default Service Item — the Item Code that represents this service in ERPNext (e.g., "Garment Washing Service — Standard").
- Default Cost Source — Blanket Order, Purchase Order, or Purchase Invoice. Tells the cost rollup where to look for the rate.
- Default Blanket Order — if you've negotiated a long-term rate, the Blanket Order this unit's costs draw from.
The Unit's warehouse becomes the destination for dispatched stock — typically a "Subcontract WIP" warehouse owned by your company but physically at the supplier's site.
The dispatch/recovery rhythm
The pattern repeats every external operation:
- Plan. A Production Batch has an External Step pointing at an External Unit.
- Materials in. Materials transfer to the External Unit's warehouse (via Material Request → Stock Entry).
- Dispatch. Driver picks up the WIP and takes it to the supplier. Dispatcher posts a Handoff OLE.
- Work happens at the supplier. Outside GarmentFlow; tracked by the supplier (and visible on the Supplier Portal if they use it).
- Recovery. Goods come back. Dispatcher posts a Handoff OLE for the return.
- Cost lands. When the supplier invoices (or when a Subcontracting Receipt is posted, or when a Purchase Invoice is booked), the cost lands on the Batch Operation Step. See Production Batch — Cost rollup.
The pages in this folder
- Dispatching to external units — the outbound side.
- Recovering from external units — the inbound side.
- The Supplier Portal — what suppliers see when they log in.
Why this matters
Most factories that struggle with subcontracting struggle because they treat it like a black box: "we sent it to the wash house, we got it back, we got billed." Without per-batch tracking, you can't tell which subcontractor is reliable, which is over-billing, which has a quality problem, or which is delaying your schedule.
GarmentFlow's external-unit machinery makes subcontracting visible. You can see how long each supplier sat on each batch, how much they cost per unit, how their reject rate trends. From there, you can manage them like any other production capacity — with data instead of vibes.
What to do next
Start with Dispatching to external units.