Core concepts
This page explains the few ideas that the rest of Complaia is built on, and how they relate to each other. The Glossary says what each one is, so the terms here link to it and are not defined again.
Your workspace
Your company has its own workspace in Complaia, with its own users, data and settings. Nothing is shared with any other company. Everything you see and do after signing in happens inside your workspace.
A workspace is created when somebody registers the company. That person becomes its Owner. At the Owner's first sign-in, the setup wizard asks for the first decisions: whether the company manufactures, how the warehouse is organised, and which company issues the invoices. Everybody else gets an account from an administrator and never sees the wizard.
Modules, and why a screen might be missing
Complaia is made of modules, such as Products, Orders, Warehouse, Production and Finance. They are arranged into the eleven sidebar sections described in Interface & navigation.
Every workspace has all of them, with one exception: a company that does not manufacture can run without Production. That choice is made in the setup wizard, and the Owner can turn production on later.
Apart from that, what you see depends mostly on your own role. A screen described in this documentation can be missing from your sidebar for one of these reasons:
| What is happening | How to tell | Who fixes it |
|---|---|---|
| Your role lacks the permission | A colleague with a different role can open the screen | Whoever manages roles |
| Production is switched off for the company | Nobody but the Owner sees Production orders and Planning | The Owner |
| The entry follows the warehouse mode | Warehouses and Stock transfer exist only in advanced mode, Warehouse location only in simple mode | See below |
| The entry depends on your company's data | OSS returns (One-Stop Shop VAT returns) appears only when the company has a sales entity in Poland. This applies to the Owner too | Add a sales entity in Poland, if you have one |
| The subscription has lapsed | Almost the whole menu is gone and a window says System access has been restricted | The Owner, under System → Subscription |
Modules and missing screens explains how to tell them apart.
Users, roles and permissions
- A user is a person with an account. A user signs in with an e-mail address or a username. The sign-in name cannot be changed once the account exists.
- A role is a named set of permissions. Seven roles come with a new workspace: Owner, Administrator, User, Production worker, Driver, Warehouse worker and Accountant. You can change all of them except Owner, and you can define your own.
- A permission is the right to do one thing. The role editor shows most of them as an area and an action, for example Orders: Create or Warehouse: Stock movements. Anything you have no permission for is hidden from you.
Permissions are more detailed than the role names suggest. For example, counting stock during stocktaking and posting the differences are two different permissions. The built-in Warehouse worker role has the first but not the second. Approving a correction to the stock records is a different job from counting the shelves.
The Owner is different from every other account. It is one protected account:
- it cannot be deactivated or deleted,
- nobody else can change its password,
- the Owner role cannot be given to anyone else,
- it always has every permission.
The Administrator role comes with nearly all permissions. It has no subscription permissions, and it lacks System definition: Edit. The Owner keeps those.
Manage people under Settings → Users and their roles under Settings → Roles & permissions. See Users and Roles & permissions.
Seats
Your plan is counted in seats. A seat is one active user account.
- Deactivating a user frees a seat at once.
- Deleting an account that was active also frees a seat.
- Deleting an account that was already inactive frees nothing, because it was not taking a seat.
A new workspace starts with a trial period. Plans, seats and the invoices for Complaia itself are under System → Subscription. See Subscription.
Sites
Most companies work in one location. A company that manufactures in several plants can set up sites. A site is a plant or location with its own warehouses and production areas. A production order then takes materials only from the warehouses of its own site.
You choose one site or several in the setup wizard, and manage them under Production → Configuration → Sites. Several sites work only in the advanced warehouse mode. See Sites.
Catalog, stock and orders
Three things hold almost all the information in Complaia. Each answers a different question.
| Answers | Holds | |
|---|---|---|
| Catalog | What exists, how it is made, how it is packed | Products, variants, components, sets, recipes, parcels |
| Stock | How much of it you have, and where | Quantities, reservations, movements |
| Orders | Who wants it | Customers, lines, prices, statuses, payments |
They depend on each other in one direction:
- Nothing can be stocked unless it is in the catalog.
- An order line becomes warehouse work only when it points at a catalog product. A line that arrives from a connected shop has to be matched to one of your products before anything can be reserved or packed for it.
Stock comes down to three numbers per item. Confusing them is the most common source of questions:
Available = On hand − Reserved (never below zero)
A product can show plenty on hand and still be refused, because all of it is reserved.
Two moments often surprise people:
- A reservation is made on the Stock reservation screen, or at the latest when the first item is scanned into a box at packing. It is not made when the order arrives.
- The quantity on hand does not fall when goods are packed. It falls when the closed box leaves the warehouse: when it is handed to a courier, loaded for your own route, or given to the customer at pickup.
How work flows through Complaia describes the whole chain.
Components, the materials and parts that products are made from, are stocked the same way, in their own list.
Two ways to run the warehouse
The warehouse runs in one of two modes for the whole company. You choose the mode in the setup wizard and can change it under Warehouse → Configuration → Warehouse type.
- Simple mode: one warehouse, nothing to choose. Screens never ask where goods are. This is the right choice for most companies.
- Advanced mode: several warehouses, each divided into segments. Receiving and issuing ask for a warehouse and a segment, and you can transfer stock between them under Warehouse → Operations → Stock transfer.
The mode changes the menu as well. Warehouse → Configuration → Warehouses and Warehouse → Operations → Stock transfer exist only in advanced mode. Warehouse → Configuration → Warehouse location exists only in simple mode.
Going back to simple mode can be refused
Switching simple → advanced is safe: all existing stock goes into the main warehouse and nothing is lost.
Switching advanced → simple is refused while:
- the company has several active sites,
- goods, unused material or finished output, are still waiting in a workstation's buffer (WIP, work in progress), or
- a stocktaking session is open.
Reservations do not block the switch. They move together with the stock.
When the mode changes, everyone who is signed in sees Warehouse mode changed and Complaia reloads. See Warehouse type.
Every change is recorded
Quantities are never edited directly. The quantity on hand is the sum of movements: a receipt, an issue, an adjustment, a transfer, a return, or a box that leaves the warehouse. Every physical change records one movement, so you can trace any number on screen back to what produced it. Open an item on Stock levels to see its history. The movement recorded when a box leaves names the box, the order and the shipment.
Corrections are visible. When a stocktaking session is posted, the difference between the shelf and Complaia is recorded as an adjustment. The old figure is not overwritten without a trace.
Every action has an author. The Event log records who did what and when. Entries are removed automatically: Info and Warning entries after a year, Critical entries after two years.
Where to go next
- See how these ideas work together, step by step: How work flows through Complaia.
- Look a term up: Glossary.
- Find your way around the screen: Interface & navigation.
- Decide who can do what: Roles & permissions.