Plan production runs, issue purchase orders to vendors, track work-in-progress, and keep production tied to the rest of operations — all in one connected system.
Built for multi-channel apparel brands managing wholesale, DTC, marketplaces, warehouses, 3PLs, and growing operational complexity.
Friday 5pm · “Two weeks late.”
When production tracking runs in a weekly master spreadsheet, bad news travels at the speed of manual updates. Good news travels slower.
The cost of that lag shows up as missed ship windows, short shipments, and chargebacks.
They emailed the update Friday at 5pm. Your production tracker lives in a Google Sheet that gets updated Monday mornings, when somebody has time. Between Friday evening and Monday morning, three dependent styles got promised to buyers. Tuesday afternoon, you confirmed a prebook commitment with a wholesale partner assuming the styles would land on time.
Now it's Wednesday, the spreadsheet is finally updated, and your ops lead is pulling down five promises that can't be kept. Customer service is drafting apology emails. The merchandising team is rebuilding the launch calendar for the third time this season. Finance is recalculating the revenue forecast.
Meanwhile, two more factories on the same delivery cycle are running silent. Their Friday emails will arrive this Friday. Nobody will read them until Monday.
Production tracking that lives outside the system is a lag you can't afford.
Most apparel brands don't own their factories. Production happens across a mix of contract manufacturers, cut-and-sew houses, and overseas partners, each with their own reporting cadence and format, each subject to the raw-material and capacity shocks that ripple through the apparel supply chain.
When production lives outside the ERP, tracking becomes a part-time detective job. Somebody rebuilds a master schedule in Google Sheets every Monday. Fabric POs are tracked separately from cut tickets. Factory delays reach operations late, and by then commitments have already been made on bad assumptions.
Uphance puts production orders, vendor status, WIP, and materials into one system, tied to the BOMs, POs, and inventory positions that depend on them. When a factory flags a delay, the impact is visible immediately.
Plan runs across styles, vendors, and seasons with visibility into timing and readiness.
Issue production orders. Track vendor status. Manage factories where your product data and inventory already live.
Cut · sew · finish · ship. Teams see where each order stands without asking.
Fabric and trim status tied to the production orders that depend on them.
Bulk orders move through consistent stages without manual reconciliation.
Design, sourcing, production, warehouse, and ops share one production reality.
Every apparel brand knows this in theory. In practice, production tracking is the first place growing brands cut corners because “we'll fix it later.” Later becomes three missed seasons and a chargeback meeting.
Production isn't an accounting exercise. It's the operational heart of an apparel brand. The system that tracks it should sit next to inventory, purchasing, and orders — not next to the coffee list.
| Feature | Spreadsheet tracking | Uphance |
|---|---|---|
| Tracks WIP stages | ✓ (manual) | ✓ (structured, real-time) |
| Tied to BOM and materials | No | ✓ |
| Tied to incoming stock and inventory | No | ✓ |
| Real-time updates | Depends on who updated last | ✓ |
| Vendor access | Shared sheet (risky) | ✓ Role-based access |
| Partial receiving and landed cost | Manual reconciliation | ✓ Native |
| Auditable change history | No | ✓ |
| Visibility for commercial team | They ask. Somebody answers. | ✓ Self-serve |
| Delay impact analysis | Manual cross-reference | ✓ Surfaced automatically |
| Time to "where is style X?" | 10 minutes across tools | Seconds, one screen |
| Cost to maintain | Hidden in ops headcount | Part of Uphance |
“Uphance has given us real-time control over our inventory and orders. It's transformed our fashion inventory management by unifying everything in one place.”
| Metric | Before Uphance | After Uphance |
|---|---|---|
| Production-to-distribution handoff | Manual entry | Finished goods visible immediately |
| Scalability | Headcount constrained | 3 new brands + 100+ retailers onboarded, no new ops hires |
| Operational reporting cadence | Delayed reconciliation | Weekly data-driven decisions |
45 minutes, prepped around your production model:
Factory network, production cycles, and handoff patterns mapped.
Your production model rebuilt inside Uphance.
Workflows set up per factory, stage, and category.
Role-based access for factory contacts where direct portal makes sense.
Launch with support through the first full production cycle.
| Accounting | QuickBooks · Xero · Exact · Pennylane (vendor payments and cost tracking) |
| API | Uphance API for factory and vendor integrations |
Start with a brief discovery conversation. We'll learn how your production runs today, assess fit, and prepare a demo around your vendors, cycles, systems, and priorities.
