Sending work to a shop
Hand some or all of a job's work streams to another shop, or no streams at all and just a description and the drawings, with the material lists and files they need. Take it back or close it when the work is done.
A job stays with the shop that owns it: its client, its files, its material lists. What moves is the work. From a project you can send one or more work streams to another shop, and that shop then plans, staffs and clocks the tasks in its own portal while you watch progress from yours.
A quote can send work out too, and it works the same way up to the point of awarding. You price from a quote and you award from a project: see Pricing from a quote below.
You can also send no work streams at all. A packet with none carries only what you wrote and what you picked: the job description, the files and the material. That is the right shape when you are asking a shop to price or build from a drawing and there is no task plan to hand over. Everything else on this page works the same way.
What gets sent
Press New packet on the project's Outsourcing screen, or on a work stream in Tasking. A quote has the same Outsourcing screen and the same button. The form is what the shop will receive:
| Part | Default | What the shop can do with it |
|---|---|---|
| Work streams | All of them (or the one you opened), and none is allowed | Plan, assign people, clock time, add files to tasks |
| Material | Nothing until you pick it | Lands on their own bill of materials, item by item. See below |
| Files | Every file in File Manager | Read them in their own File Manager. Download only if you allow it |
| Job description | Empty | Read it: what to build, what is in and out of scope |
| Delivery deadline | The project's delivery deadline | The date their work is measured against |
Documents already attached to the tasks travel with them; you do not pick those. Untick a work stream to keep it, untick a list or file to hold it back.
Untick every work stream and the packet carries none. Then the picked files are the only files the shop gets, because task documents travel on the tasks: the Files step stops being optional and the form says so. A packet has to carry something, so one of the three has to be there, a work stream, a job description or a file.
Sending the whole project is one click. Sending two halves to two shops is two sends, one after the other: a work stream can only be at one shop at a time, and the form greys out anything already sent. The shop is told when the work lands, when you take it back, and when you close it.
Who to send to lives on the PM console. Each shop has a profile with what it can do, how loaded it is, and the Jeevy work it has already done.
Who supplies the material
You pick material item by item, not by list, and each item you pick carries one more answer: do you supply it, or do they?
You supply it. The item is reserved off your own stock the moment the work is awarded, and it arrives on the shop's bill of materials already marked as received, on a list called Supplied by your shop. They do not buy it and they are not billed for it. They can see it, receive it against, inspect it and report it short, which is the whole point: a shop that cannot see your steel on its own job cannot tell you it arrived damaged.
They supply it. The item lands on a second list, To source for your shop, with no price and no vendor, ready for them to quote, order and receive in their own Purchasing exactly like any other job. The price and the vendor are their decisions, so the row does not guess at them.
Two lists rather than one, because the question a buyer asks is "what do I still have to order", and that has to be answerable at a glance.
Nothing else from your purchasing reaches them: no purchase orders, no order confirmations, no vendor prices.
What the shop sees
In the receiving shop's project list the work appears as its own row, named the way you named it when you sent it. Send two pieces of one project and they see two rows. Opening one shows three sections and nothing else:
- Tasking: the work streams you sent, live. Their progress is your progress; there is no copy to sync. Sent none and there is no Tasking: the shop lands on File Manager instead, and the screen says the description and the files are the brief.
- Purchasing: the material you sent, as real rows on their own bill of materials, split across the two lists described above. Not a read-only copy: they source, price, order and receive against these rows like any others.
- File Manager: the files you picked, in a folder named From your shop, alongside their own folders. They open, preview, search and sort like every other file because they are ordinary rows of their tree. They cannot be renamed, moved or deleted, and the portal leaves those buttons off rather than offering them and refusing. Download only if you allowed it.
The job description, the delivery deadline and a message box headed Ask and your shop's name (Ask Acme) sit with the job and reach the platform PMs.
They never see the job's client, its other work streams, or its files beyond what you sent.
Inviting bids instead
Not sure which shop should do it, or want a price first? On the same form, choose Invite bids from several shops, tick the shops and set a quote deadline. Instead of moving the work, this puts a quote on each shop's Quotes page, tagged with your shop's name (Acme RFQ), with your scope, files and material lists attached read-only. Each shop prices it with its own quoting screen, exactly as it prices any customer job, and presses Submit to your shop (Submit to Acme) when done, or No bid to pass. Shops never see who else was invited or what they quoted.
You do not have to chase answers yourself. Each invited shop's owners get the invitation by email, a reminder two days later, and then reminders that get more frequent as the quote deadline approaches, in the shop's own timezone. Submitting a quote or pressing No bid stops the reminders for that request at once, and a deadline that passes unanswered is mentioned to them exactly once. No shop is ever emailed twice in the same two days, however many requests it holds; everything open rides in one message.
The invitation names the request by its RFQ number, the same one the shop sees on their own Quotes page, and so does the text that goes with it. When you offer the work, their email and text say they have been awarded it and carry the purchase order number.
A message on the job sends a text as well as an email, in both directions: to the shop when you write, and to your project managers when they do. A run of messages from one side rings once rather than once each, so a shop asking three things in a row costs you one interruption.
Every round shows on your project under Work sent to other shops and on the Outsourcing board in the PM console, which also has a New packet button of its own: pick the project and it takes you there to fill the form.
The board carries one line per shop with its status, total and lead time, and the line items behind a submitted quote. Press Award on the quote you want. The work streams move to that shop, its quote is marked accepted, every other shop's quote is marked not chosen, and their access to your files and lists ends. From there the job runs exactly as if you had sent it directly.
Tick more shops on an open round to invite them late. Close round takes the work back without awarding; every quote is marked not chosen and those shops are told. Invite again on the same send to start a new round: each shop gets a fresh quote, and the previous one stays on their Quotes page as a record.
Pricing from a quote
A quote has an Outsourcing screen of its own, in the same place in the left nav as a project's, and it builds packets the same way. Use it when you need a partner's number before you have won the job: you are quoting a skid, a third of it is machining you do not do, and the price you put in front of your client depends on what a machine shop will charge you for it.
Everything up to the award works exactly as it does on a project. You pick the work streams, the material and the files, you invite shops, they price it on their own Quotes page, you read the totals and the line items side by side, and you can close the round, re-invite, message a bidder or publish an addendum.
The award waits for the project. Awarding forks a project into the partner's shop, issues a purchase order and moves the work streams, and none of that has anywhere to go while your side is still a quote. So the Bids view on a quote-owned packet shows every price and no Offer button, and Send to one shop is not offered either, because a direct send is an award. Convert the quote and the award is there.
When the quote converts, its packets move onto the new project with everything else, keeping their rounds, their bids and their messages. Nothing is re-sent and no shop is re-invited.
While the work is out
Everything you sent sits under Work sent to other shops on the project header, one line per send, with the shop, the number of streams and how many tasks are still open.
- Edit changes the lists, files, description, the quote and delivery deadlines, or the download setting, from this list or straight from the Outsourcing board. A changed deadline updates every invited shop's copy of the quote, so both sides read the same date. A changed description reaches shops that have not answered yet; a submitted quote keeps the text it was priced against, and scope changes for those shops travel by change order. The shop sees the change straight away, and is told (bell and email). Work streams can only change once the work is pulled back.
- Progress shows how the work is going without switching shops: each stream's task counts and roster, the issues the shop has raised on those tasks (its QA log), and the photos and documents it has attached to them. Status only: who is doing what, and for how long, stays with the shop. While the packet is at a shop this is that shop's task status. After you complete it, the same panel still reads those tasks, now back on your project. A packet with no work streams has no task plan to read, so there is no Progress on it.
- History is the whole story of the send in order: created, invited, who bid and who passed, what was awarded, what was pulled back and when. It is grouped by round, so a job that went out three times reads as three rounds rather than one long list, and a pull back leaves the record standing rather than erasing it.
- Messages opens the same thread the shop's Ask box writes to. Your reply pings the shop's owners and managers.
- Pull back returns the work streams to your shop and closes the shop's access. The shop is told. Use it to move work to a different shop, or to take it back: edit, then send again. With no streams there is nothing to bring home, so it only closes their access.
Your own Tasking hides a work stream while it is out, and shows a count of streams executing elsewhere instead. See Reading the Gantt.
Closing it
When every task is done the line reads ready to close. Press Complete once the work has been delivered. A packet with no work streams has no tasks to count, so it never reads ready to close: press Complete when the shop has delivered. The shop is told. The work streams come back to your project as finished work, with the shop that did them recorded on the line, and the job disappears from the shop's list. The shop keeps its own purchasing records; what you sent it is closed.
You can complete early. The dialog tells you how many tasks are still open and asks again.