Add steps to the production process that customers can see & some they cannot - for example.
Some steps can be
films produced
screens burned
garments have been ordered
garments arrived*
queued for print*
production finished*
order boxed
shipped*
These do not have to be in chronological order (finishing one does not mean there is another step next - screens can be burned before or after the garments arrived from the wholesaler). Some of these are for the production team only. However, some of these are viewable for the customer so they are aware which step in the order process it is in.
Have these steps easily marked as finished with barcode scanning integration. I believe Printavo does something similar which is really cool.
At the moment we do allow you to create Custom production statuses , which can be configured per process / product. (Settings -> Production and Order Settings -> Production Statuses )
These are all currently internal facing.. guessing being able to mark a status as client facing would solve your issue?
Yes, that would help if it were client facing as well. It has been a while since I played around with that feature you are talking about but if I remember correctly I had trouble with that feature since there was a chronological order to it. So marking one thing completed automatically went to the next however some steps are interchangeable and created issues. Not sure if that is still the case.
No the production statuses we have added are completely separate of inbuilt workflow.. They are simply steps you can put the production into, Its only been added a couple of months ago .
Give them a go, I believe they are what you are describing.