One plan, from ‘we need more’ to ‘here is what it cost’
Nothing here is a new process. It is the process you already run over email and spreadsheets, with both companies working from the same copy of it.
A run, in real time
Weeks are illustrative — yours depend on your lead times. The order does not change.
- Week 0 You see it coming
Days of cover on your best seller drops under your lead time. NextBatch flags it before it is a problem rather than after.
- Week 0 You book the slot
You look at your co-manufacturer’s real calendar, pick a window their changeover rules actually allow, and book. It appears on both calendars.
- Week 1 Ingredients get ordered
The run’s bill of materials nets against what is already on their shelf, adds your overage, and becomes one purchase order per supplier.
- Week 4 Goods arrive at their dock
You both watch the tracking. Their goods-in team weighs it against the order, photographs it, and you shake on the number that arrived.
- Week 6 It runs
The batch sheet is generated from your recipe at their batch size. Checks and scrap are recorded as they happen, on a tablet, by the person doing the work.
- Week 6 It costs what it costs
Real weights, real yield and real scrap land back in cost per unit. Nobody reconciles anything into a spreadsheet afterwards.
Six stages. The same six on both sides of the wall.
This is the whole product. Every screen belongs to one of these, and each one hands the next its numbers, so nothing gets typed twice.
- Demand
Start from what actually sold
Connect Shopify or WooCommerce and your real sell-through becomes the forecast. The burndown shows stock running to zero, so the question stops being “should we make more?” and becomes “which week”.
- Book a run
Book real capacity, not an email thread
See every co-manufacturer’s open days, with changeovers and tank availability already accounted for. Pick a slot and it is booked on both calendars at once.
- Ingredients
One order across every run that needs it
NextBatch works out what the booked runs consume, nets it against what is already on the shelf, adds your overage, and turns it into a purchase order per supplier.
- Receiving
What arrived, what it weighed, and the photo
Track every delivery to the dock. Goods-in weighs it against what was ordered, photographs it, and both companies shake on the number — so a short delivery is caught the day it lands.
- On the line
Watch it fill, in their words
The batch sheet is generated from your recipe at their batch size. The floor records checks and scrap as they go, and you see it happen instead of hearing about it later.
- Distribution
Out of the door, into the cost
Finished units split across your channels, and every real number from the run — yield, scrap, actual weights — lands back in cost per unit. No second spreadsheet.
The part that makes it work
Three decisions underneath everything else. They are why the numbers stay right when a real week goes wrong.
Nothing is typed twice
Cost per unit is derived from the recipe, supplier prices, the tolling tier and freight — never entered. Change a supplier price and every product using that ingredient moves. There is no second place for the number to be wrong.
The recipe is volume-independent
Formulation is held per unit of volume, because that stays true at any batch size. Your weigh-out unit and the site’s batch unit are both derived from it. This is the difference between scaling a recipe and re-deriving one, and it is where scale-ups usually go wrong.
Agreement is recorded, not assumed
Dates, weights and delays are confirmed by both companies. Not a message that might have been read — a record with two names on it and a timestamp, which resolves itself if one side goes quiet.
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.