Pan Innovation House Pan Innovation House
GAZIANTEP · SUBCONTRACTOR TRACKING

Goods out, goods back and waste, out of the notebook at last: Gaziantep subcontractor tracking software

The kilos leaving for the workshop, the metres coming back, the waste in between, quality rejects and the month-end settlement are gathered in one place. The workshop sees a single screen on a smartphone; you see all of it at once from the office. Because part of Gaziantep's textile and carpet chain runs outside the factory's four walls, in subcontract workshops, every kilo that goes unrecorded turns into an argument at month-end.

The picture in Gaziantep
  • In our own field research across the Gaziantep organised industrial zone (OSB), textiles led the sector breakdown of the 1,108 companies we surveyed with 257 companies, with carpets close behind at 107. In these two sectors, part of the chain — yarn, dyeing, post-weaving finishing, cutting, sewing, overlocking — is given out to subcontract workshops; in other words, part of production happens outside the main factory, on someone else's machines.
  • In the sub-breakdown of the same research we tagged 33 companies on the yarn side; that number is an estimated labelling, not a definitive classification. Every link in the chain from yarn to weaving to garment-making passes goods to the next. As the chain grows longer, the question of which workshop the goods are in gets harder, and the answer stays in a single person's memory.
  • In the same data set, the scale distribution was 236 micro, 413 small, 286 medium, 90 large and 83 very large businesses. Most subcontract workshops sit exactly at the lower end: a few machines, a few people, no separate accounting setup. That is why imposing a complex program on the workshop does not work; the screen the workshop uses has to open on a phone and be done in two taps.
  • Goods move constantly during the day between the zones of Başpınar OSB and the small workshops in Şehitkamil. Van departures, weighing, hand-over, returns — all of it runs on paper. We are in this city too, so before designing the system we go and look both at the factory's dispatch gate and at the bench in the workshop.

What actually happens on the ground in subcontract work

  • Goods are weighed as they leave for the workshop, but the slip never enters the system. At month-end the workshop quotes the quantity in its own notebook and you quote yours; both sides believe they are right, and there is no record to end the argument.
  • The waste rate is not written down anywhere. What counts as acceptable waste, how much per product, what last year's figure was — there are no answers; it is negotiated fresh every month, and whoever negotiates better wins.
  • It is unclear who bears a quality reject. Is the faulty piece among the returned goods the workshop's error or a problem with the raw material sent out? Without measurements and photos, the argument gets settled by relationship, not evidence.
  • The settlement is rebuilt at month-end in an Excel file. Quantities, unit prices, waste deductions, quality deductions and advances are entered one by one by hand; the file degrades a little more every month, and only one person understands it.
  • Which workshop has missed its deadline is only noticed when the customer calls. Because there is no view of whether the goods arrived, whether work started or whether half is done, the delay arrives as news, not as data.
  • Many workshops run at once, and the answer to who holds which goods is the production manager's memory. When that person is on leave or leaves the company, the business is genuinely blind.
  • Tracking runs through WhatsApp groups. Photos, voice notes and text are mixed together; finding that conversation a week later is nearly impossible, and the information you need usually sits in a deleted group.
  • The semi-finished stock count never matches. Goods missing from the warehouse are at subcontractors, and the goods at subcontractors appear in no system at all, so the gap between the records and the reality on the ground keeps growing.
  • Price updates are made verbally. When the new price started, and which batch gets the old price and which the new — the two sides remember it differently.
  • There is one foreman who knows all of this, and the work cannot run without him. This is not a loyalty problem but a record-keeping problem; without records, the knowledge lives in a person, not in the company.

A system that measures what goes out, what comes back, and the gap between

Subcontractor tracking is really the ability to answer one question at any moment: which goods, in what quantity, are with whom, and since when. That needs neither a big ERP rollout nor a computer in the workshop. One record at dispatch, one record on return, and the difference between them evaluated against a rule — that is enough. The system is not built to do the month-end maths for you; it is built so that when settlement time comes, there is nothing left to argue about.

QR and barcode dispatch and return slips

As goods leave for the workshop, a record is opened from a phone or terminal: product, batch, quantity, weighing value, workshop and date. On return the same batch is scanned and the incoming quantity entered. Instead of a paper slip there is a timestamped, photo-backed record you can go back to. The van's load list comes from the same record; the person at the dispatch gate no longer keeps a separate notebook.

Waste and quality rejects tied to rules

An acceptable waste rate is written into the system for every product and process type. If the returned goods fall outside that rate, the record is flagged automatically and a reason is required. Quality rejects are recorded as a separate item with photos and a reason code — so what gets discussed at month-end is the data sitting in the system, not who remembers what.

Settlements and reconciliation produced automatically

The workshop's settlement is calculated from the accepted quantity, unit price, waste deduction, quality deduction and advances paid. The workshop sees the same breakdown on its own screen and objects line by line if it disagrees. The job of rebuilding the month-end Excel disappears; the settlement is simply the sum of records that built up through the month.

A simple mobile screen for the workshop

There is no complex program on the workshop side. There is a single screen that opens on a phone, showing the jobs coming in, the quantity due back and the settlement breakdown. Each workshop sees only its own data — never another workshop's prices or jobs. For a workshop owner who does not use computers, the design test is this: if it takes more than two taps, it is designed wrong.

Deadline, capacity and where-is-it board

A single board showing which batch is at which workshop and how many days it has been waiting. Jobs approaching their deadline appear first; overdue ones are flagged separately. Delays are learnt from your own screen, not from the customer's phone call — leaving time to intervene.

Linking subcontractor stock to accounting

Goods at subcontractors stop being invisible stock; they are tracked as consignment stock and matched against your existing ERP. Without touching your Logo, Mikro or Netsis backbone, we feed the quantity and cost side through an integration bridge. The chronic count discrepancy finally becomes explainable.

How we set it up

  1. 01

    Observation at the dispatch gate and in the workshop

    First we stand at the factory's goods-out point: where the scale is, who writes the slip, when the van is loaded. Then we visit two or three workshops and watch at the bench how the work really runs. Both stops between Başpınar and Şehitkamil fit into a single day; designing the system without seeing these points means building a screen nobody on the ground will use.

  2. 02

    Writing the waste, price and deduction rules

    Acceptable waste per product, unit prices, quality deductions and advance rules are put in writing together. This step is commercial far more than technical, and it is usually the most valuable part: in most companies these rules are being written down for the first time, so their internal contradictions surface for the first time too.

  3. 03

    A pilot with three workshops

    We do not start with every workshop at once. With the three workshops you give the most work to and communicate with most easily, both the system and the old method run in parallel for a month. At month-end the two calculations are compared; there is no wider rollout until the system produces the correct result.

  4. 04

    Rollout and workshop training

    Once the pilot holds, the other workshops are added step by step. We deliver the training by going to the workshop, on their own phones and their own jobs; ten minutes at the bench sticks better than a group session in a hall. Resistance usually comes not from the technology but from the accounts becoming visible — and that needs to be discussed from the start.

  5. 05

    Being there at the month-end close

    We are present for the first two month-end closes. We check the settlement breakdown together and show how the system calculated any line that draws an objection. If a rule was written wrong, we fix it. The real test of a subcontractor system is not the screen design; it is the first reconciliation meeting.

Frequently asked questions

Our workshop owners don't use computers. How will this work?

No computer is needed. The workshop side is a single page that opens on a smartphone; there is nothing to install, and access is granted through a one-time link. The screen shows only the job coming in, the quantity due back and the settlement. For users who struggle with reading, we build a layout led by numbers and photos. Some workshops still will not manage it; for those, the clerk on the factory side opens the same record at dispatch and at return, and the system stays intact.

Internet is weak at the workshops. Will records get lost?

No. The app is built to record offline; once the phone finds a signal, the records go up to the server. Every slip carries a unique number so the same record is never processed twice. We factor this in from the start, because we often run into coverage problems inside warehouses and in small workshops outside the OSB.

We have thirty workshops. Do we have to bring them all into the system?

No — and we recommend that you don't. Rolling out before validating wears out both you and the workshops. In most businesses the bulk of the volume is concentrated in a small number of workshops; starting there lets you see the benefit early. The rest are added month by month, and for those never added, the factory-side entry route stays open.

How will the goods at subcontractors show up in accounting?

Goods at subcontractors are tracked separately as consignment stock: how much went out, how much came back, how much was written off as waste, how much is still outside. The quantity and cost data is carried into your existing ERP through an integration bridge; Logo, Mikro or Netsis stays in place and we never build a second accounting system. The production layer we built to write alongside Netsis without touching it ran on exactly this logic.

Will the system set the waste rate?

No — that decision is yours. The system only applies the rule you have written and makes the deviations visible. That is where the real value lies: the data that builds up over the first months lets you discuss the acceptable waste rate from past records rather than guesswork. You are free to change the rule later, but who changed it and when goes on record.

Can a workshop see its pricing or another workshop's jobs?

No. The permission model is built that way from the start: each workshop sees only its own jobs, its own quantities and its own settlement. Users on the factory side are authorised by role; viewing prices, changing rules and approving settlements are separate permissions. Who changed what and when is also kept on record.

What determines the duration and cost of the work?

The honest answer comes after the discovery visit. The deciding factors are these: how many workshops you work with, how many different process types there are, how detailed the quality control will be, and whether it will connect to your existing ERP. We split the work into phases with scope and duration written up front; when the pilot phase ends, you have a system running on real data, and you decide on the rest then.

Who holds our subcontracting data?

You do. Which workshops you use at what prices, how much waste each workshop produces and the settlement history are commercially sensitive data; we believe that data must not sit hostage on a supplier's server. The source code, the database and the installation documents are handed over to you; you can carry on later with your own team or with another firm.

Let's open up one month's subcontracting accounts together

Put last month's settlement file and one workshop's dispatch and return records on the table with us. In one short session we will see together which items a system can rescue and which cannot be solved until the commercial rules are written. We are in the same city; getting to your factory or to the workshop is a phone call away.

Call Free strategy call