Questions people actually ask
If the answer to yours is not here, the help centre goes deeper, and a real person reads anything you send.
Getting started
Do I need my co-manufacturer to sign up before I can use NextBatch?
No. You can set up your products, recipes, costs and forecasts on your own and get value from day one. Inviting your co-manufacturer is what unlocks the shared schedule and the handshakes, but nothing is blocked until they join.
What does my co-manufacturer have to pay?
Nothing, ever. Manufacturers get a free login with their own calendar across every brand they make for, goods-in, floor mode and their rate card. We charge the brand, because the brand is the one whose planning problem this solves.
How long does setup take?
About ten minutes for your first product. A guided wizard walks you through the product, its collection, its recipe and its suppliers, and you can save and come back at any point. Connecting a store and inviting your manufacturer are separate steps you can do later.
Is this only for drinks?
No. NextBatch works for any physical product with a recipe that someone else makes for you — food, beverage, cosmetics, supplements, household and pet. You choose the category once during setup and the units, pack formats, quality-check templates and paperwork all change to match.
How it works
What is a handshake?
A handshake is both companies confirming the same specific fact — this date, this weight, this delay — so neither can say later that they did not know. It is between the two organisations rather than two individuals, anyone with the right role can shake for their side, and there is no un-shaking. If one side goes quiet, it auto-resolves when their window runs out so a silent partner can never block you.
Where does cost per unit come from?
It is derived, never typed. Ingredients come from your recipe multiplied by current supplier prices, packaging and logistics come from your rate lists, and tolling comes from the co-manufacturer’s own rate card at the tier your run qualifies for. Change a supplier price and every product using it moves.
My recipe is in grams per litre but my co-packer batches in barrels. Does that work?
Yes, and it is the reason units are handled the way they are. The recipe basis is the source of truth because it is volume-independent — grams per litre stays true whether you make two litres or two hundred barrels. The weigh-out unit and the site’s batch unit are both derived from it, so nobody weighs pounds when the sheet meant kilos.
Can my co-manufacturer see my costs?
Only what they set themselves. They see their own tolling rates because they wrote them. Your ingredient prices, your margins and your sell prices are yours. Where they supply the ingredients rather than you, the split changes accordingly.
Integrations
Which stores can I connect?
Shopify and WooCommerce. The connection is read-only — we pull sell-through per SKU to build your demand forecast and we never write anything back to your store. You pick which products to track, so bundles and merch do not distort the forecast for your singles.
Are my collections the same as my Shopify collections?
No, deliberately. Collections in NextBatch are yours and exist to group products the way you plan production, which is rarely the way you merchandise them. We import the product list from Shopify; the grouping is ours.
Data & trust
Who owns the data?
You do. Every batch record, lot number, photo and weight stays available to you, and to the manufacturer for the runs they made. If a brand and a manufacturer part ways, both keep the history of the work they did together.
What happens if I stop paying?
Your data is not deleted or held hostage. You drop to read-only on the planning features and can still open, export and print any historical record.
Your next batch is already being planned. Somewhere.
Better that it happens in one place both of you can see. Free to start, and free forever for your co-manufacturer.
No card. Set up your first product in about ten minutes.