Getting Started

The order to do it in

Every step below builds on the last. Order forms need a manufacturer to belong to, templates need order forms to fill in, and a test order needs all of it. Skipping ahead is the main way people end up redoing work.

Set up one manufacturer all the way through before starting on the next. You will learn what your shop actually needs, and the second manufacturer goes much faster.

1. AccountYour team, billing, locations, logo, and your existing customers.
2. ManufacturersWho you order from, and how orders reach them.
3. Order formsWhat your team fills in for each garment: style and measurements.
4. Trimming librariesReusable lists of buttons, linings and other trims.
5. Fabric orderingOnly if you order fabric yourself: suppliers, purchase orders, default lengths.
6. Measurement toolsMaster measurements, connected measurements, fit profiles, boundaries.
7. TemplatesSaved styles, try-on sizes and measurement sets for faster orders.
8. WorkflowStatuses, the review step, and alterations.
9. A test orderOne fake customer, one full run through, before anything real.

1. Account

Start here because everything else hangs off it: who can log in, where your shop is, what your paperwork looks like, and which customers you already have.

Everything in this step is under Account, opens in MTMPRO in the left-hand navigation.

Users & Permissions, opens in MTMPRO

Invite your team and decide what each person can do. Look at the permission levels before you send invitations, so nobody has to be changed later. This is also where you deactivate someone, reset a password, or buy more seats.

Locations, opens in MTMPRO

Add each store, showroom or office. Assign your users to them: a user's location is applied automatically to the customers and orders they create. Pick one location as the default shipping address for new orders.

General, opens in MTMPRO

Your account name and logo. The logo appears on the paperwork MTMPRO produces, so set it now rather than after your first order goes out.

Billing, opens in MTMPRO

Your plan, payment method and invoices. Nothing to set up on day one unless you want to change plan, but know where it is.

Import Customers, opens in MTMPRO

If you already have a customer list in a spreadsheet, bring it in now. Choose the file, match each column to an MTMPRO field, check the preview, and import. Names, email, phone numbers, company, address and notes all come across. Doing this before you set up forms means your test order in step nine can use a real customer record.

More: Users and Permissions · Locations · Branding · Billing · Importing Customers

2. Manufacturers

A manufacturer in MTMPRO is a workshop you send orders to. Its settings decide how an order is measured, what it looks like on paper, and where the email goes when your team presses Submit. Set these before building forms, because the forms belong to the manufacturer.

Open Settings / Manufacturer Settings, opens in MTMPRO, add the manufacturer, then open its Settings. There are five tabs. Some manufacturers are managed by MTMPRO and arrive with their forms already built; for those, a few of these options will be greyed out.

General

• Active: whether the manufacturer can be picked on new orders.
• Display name: what your team sees instead of the formal name.
• Automatic garment numbers: give each new garment a number, with an optional prefix such as ABC-0001. Numbers can still be edited afterwards.

Order Forms

Add the garment types this manufacturer makes: jacket, trouser, vest, shirt and so on. A suit is not its own form. A two-piece suit is a jacket and a trouser; a three-piece adds a vest. Each garment type gets its own style form and measurement form, which you build in the next step.

Measurement Options

Whether the form asks for height and weight, and whether the paperwork prints the measurement type (skin, finished) beside each number. Turn these on if the manufacturer wants them.

Fabric Options

Whether garments from this manufacturer carry fabric, how many fabrics one garment can have, and which fabric details are required. Also who sources the fabric: the manufacturer from its own books, the manufacturer on your behalf, or you, through a purchase order. That last choice is what step five is for.

Order Sending

Where the order goes when it is submitted: the manufacturer's email address, anyone to copy in, the reply-to address, and whether the email carries a PDF with photos, a spreadsheet, or no attachment. Get this right before the test order in step nine.

More: Manufacturer Settings · Order Forms · Measurements · Fabric Setup · Order Submission

3. Order forms

An order form is what your team fills in for one garment. Each garment type has two: a style form for how it is made, and a measurement form for the customer's numbers. This is the biggest step, and the one worth doing carefully, because every order your team places runs through these forms.

Open Settings / Manufacturer Settings, opens in MTMPRO, pick the manufacturer, go to Order Forms and press Customize Form beside a garment type.

Body profile first

The body profile section holds the things about the customer's body that apply to every garment from this manufacturer: posture, shoulder slope, chest and belly observations. Set it up before the garment-specific fields, so those can refer to it.

Style fields

Fit, lapel, pockets, vents, lining, buttons, monogram, special instructions. Pick the field type that matches the answer: a single choice, several choices, a checkbox, free text, a trimming library, or a fixed value that never changes. Mark a field required only if the manufacturer truly cannot make the garment without it.

Measurement fields

Each measurement is one of four kinds: skin, finished, posture, or other. Use the kind the manufacturer expects. A measurement can also be a skin measurement plus an allowance, or a try-on size plus an adjustment, if that is how your shop works.

Logic

Logic shows a field only when an earlier answer calls for it. Choose Tuxedo under Make, and the formal-treatment and satin-lapel fields appear; choose anything else and they stay hidden. It keeps forms short. Use it whenever a field only applies sometimes.

Sections

Group related fields under headings such as Construction, Front, Pockets and Lining, then drag fields into them. Long forms are far easier to fill in when they read in the order a tailor would go through them, so check the order before you save.

More: Using the Form Builder · Body Profile · Field Types · Logic · Sections · Tab Sections · Draft Mode · Required Fields

4. Trimming libraries

A trimming library is a list you keep once and use on many forms: your buttons, your linings, your undercollar felts. Instead of typing the same forty linings into every jacket form, you keep them in one library and drop that library into each form as a field.

Find them under Settings / Manufacturer Settings, opens in MTMPRO, pick the manufacturer, then Order Forms / Trimming Libraries. You can start a library from scratch, from a field you already built, or by copying one from another manufacturer. Each library can show as a plain list or as a gallery of pictures.

Once a library exists, go back to the style form and add it with the Trimming Library field type.

More: Trimming Libraries

5. Fabric ordering

Skip this step unless your shop orders fabric itself and has it sent to the manufacturer. If the manufacturer supplies fabric from its own books, or orders it for you, there is nothing to do here.

Everything in this step is under Settings / CMT Fabric.

CMT Fabric Suppliers, opens in MTMPRO

The mills and merchants you buy from. Each one has a name, whether it is active, and the units it sells in.

Purchase Orders, opens in MTMPRO

• Shipping addresses: where each manufacturer receives fabric. A purchase order cannot go out without one.
• Special shipping addresses: for a supplier that ships somewhere unusual, such as a forwarding hub.
• Email recipients and reply address: where the supplier's purchase order is sent and where their questions come back to. A supplier with no email address cannot receive orders.
• Automatic scheduling: days and times to send fabric orders on their own. Leave it off and you send them by hand from the Fabric Orders page.

Fabric Lengths, opens in MTMPRO

The usual amount of cloth for each garment type from each manufacturer, so the purchase order starts with a sensible number: four and an eighth yards for a jacket, one and a half for trousers, one for a vest, or whatever your manufacturer asks for.

6. Measurement tools

These keep measurements consistent from one garment to the next and one manufacturer to the next. They sit under Settings / Measurements. None are required, but the first two save a great deal of retyping.

Master Measurements, opens in MTMPRO

One set of measurements per customer that lives above any single manufacturer. Enter a customer's chest once here and it can flow into every garment form that asks for chest, across every manufacturer you work with.

Connected Measurements, opens in MTMPRO

The links that make that flow happen. For each measurement or choice you want shared, create a connection and add the fields it should copy between. A Chest connection copies the first chest measurement entered for a customer into every other connected chest field. Every copy it makes is marked as such in the customer's measurement history.

Fit Profiles, opens in MTMPRO

Lets one customer hold more than one set of measurements for the same garment type: a slim sportcoat and a loose jacket, say. You can set up preset profile names per manufacturer and garment type so your team picks from a list rather than inventing names.

Boundaries, opens in MTMPRO

A sensible minimum and maximum for a measurement field. A chest of 12 or 120 gets flagged for a second look before it goes to the manufacturer.

More: Master Measurements · Connected Measurements · Fit Profiles · Boundaries · Measurement History

7. Templates

Templates are answers you save once and apply with a click. They come after the forms because a template is just a filled-in form. Find them under Settings / Templates.

Style Templates, opens in MTMPRO

A saved set of style choices: your house business suit, your standard tuxedo, your usual trouser. Apply one to a new garment and only change what is different.

Try-on Sizes, opens in MTMPRO

If you fit from a try-on garment, a try-on size fills the finished measurements for that size, and your team adjusts from there. This is what the try-on size plus adjustment field type on the measurement form uses.

Measurement Templates, opens in MTMPRO

A saved set of measurement values or adjustments you apply again and again.

More: Try-on Sizes

8. Workflow

How your team tracks a garment from draft to picked up. Under Settings / Work Flow, which is how the app spells it.

Garment Statuses, opens in MTMPRO

Every garment has a status: Draft, Ready for Review, Submitted, Production, Shipped from Manufacturer, Received at Store, Ready for Pickup, Picked Up, and a dozen more. The standard list covers most shops. Renaming, reordering and colour-coding them is part of the Premier plan.

Review Process, opens in MTMPRO

Turn this on if orders should be checked by someone before they go to the manufacturer. Your team marks a garment Ready for Review, and a named reviewer looks it over on the Review Screen before it is submitted.

Alterations, opens in MTMPRO

Set up the alteration options for each garment type before you need them, so your team can raise an alteration ticket, record what was adjusted, and print it.

More: Garment Statuses · Mark for Review · Review Screen · Alterations

9. A test order

Before anyone places a real order, make a test customer and take one garment all the way through: create the customer, opens in MTMPRO, add a garment, fill the style form, take the measurements, submit it. Everything you set up above gets exercised in one pass, and anything wrong shows up here rather than in front of a customer.

More: Creating a Customer · Adding Garments · Submit Order

If something is missing

The usual reasons a test order does not go the way you expected, and where to look.

• A manufacturer is not offered on new ordersIt is probably switched off. Manufacturer Settings, General tab, Active.
• A garment type is missingIt has not been added, or is hidden, for that manufacturer. Manufacturer Settings, Order Forms tab.
• A field is missing from the formThree usual causes: it was built on the wrong form (style versus measurement), it is still in Draft Mode and not published, or logic is hiding it because of an earlier answer.
• A required field is not stopping submissionRequire Fields to Submit is off for that manufacturer. Manufacturer Settings, Order Forms tab.
• The order email went to the wrong place, or nowhereManufacturer Settings, Order Sending tab: recipients, copies, reply-to and the attachment type.
• Fit profiles are not offered on an orderThey are not switched on for that manufacturer. Settings, Measurements, Fit Profiles.
• A submitted garment cannot be editedThat is by design. Submission locks the garment. Check everything before you press Submit, or use the review step so a second person does.

Good to know

• One manufacturer firstTake a single manufacturer all the way through to a test order before you set up the rest. What you learn on the first one makes the others quick.
• Required means requiredOnly mark a field required if the manufacturer cannot make the garment without it. Every extra required field is another reason an order gets stuck.
• Names matter more than you thinkFields, sections, templates and fit profiles are all things your team reads in a hurry. Call them what a tailor would call them.
• Look before you deleteA field or section with draft orders behind it still matters to those orders. Check for drafts before removing anything from a form.
• Keep manufacturer settings currentWhen a manufacturer changes what it needs on an order, or where orders should be sent, change it here the same day. Old settings send orders to old addresses.