Frequently Asked Questions

No. Cheetah Smart runs entirely in your web browser at your company's ERP address (for example erp.cheetah-smart.com). There's nothing to download or install, and it works on any modern desktop browser.

Contact your company's Cheetah Smart administrator (typically whoever set up your account) to reset it, or reach out to info@cheetah-smart.com for help.

The Dashboard is a business overview. Each area — Sales, Production, Stock, Purchasing, and Finance — has its own row of KPI cards, Inventory Value breaks out into Raw Materials, Components, Finished Goods, and Total, and a Fulfillment section shows Manufacturing Started, Orders Finished, and Materials Received. Open Tasks and active Production Runs have their own cards too. Charts are plain tables with a value for every entry. It's a starting point; click into Sales, Production, or Operations for full detail.

A main menu runs across the top: Dashboard, Sales, Production, Stock, Purchasing, Customers, Invoice & Shipping, Shopify, Operations, Tasks, and Data Manager. Most of these open a row of sub-tabs underneath — for example Production has Manufacturing, Production Runs, and BOM Builder. The gear icon in the top-right corner opens Settings from any page.

Yes. Your plan can be changed anytime from Settings → Billing as your team grows or shrinks.

Yes. Card entry is handled by Stripe's secure payment fields directly in your browser, so your card number is tokenized before it ever reaches Cheetah Smart's own servers — we never see or store your full card number.

You'll see a confirmation screen letting you know your workspace is ready, and you can go straight to your new dashboard. A welcome email also goes out with your login details and a link to the full user manual to help your team get started.

A Sales Order is a confirmed order for finished products. A Quote is a proposal that hasn't been won yet — it becomes an order once approved. Parts and Services is for sales that skip manufacturing entirely, such as spare parts shipped from stock or billable service work.

Cheetah Smart automatically raises a Manufacturing Order for the shortfall as soon as the Sales Order is saved — you don't need to create it by hand.

Check the "Show Shipped?" checkbox above the Products & Components table. It's off by default so the table only shows what's still open.

Open Sales → Quotes. Open quotes show by default; check "Show Approved/Cancelled" to bring already-decided quotes back into view.

Go to Customers and click + New Customer. Fill in the primary contact plus up to two additional contacts, billing and shipping address, payment terms, customer type, and active/inactive status, then save.

Yes. Click "Price List" on that customer's row in Customer Master to set special regular or volume pricing. It's applied automatically whenever that customer is selected on a new Sales Order.

Click "Send Email" on that customer's row in Customer Master. It prepares a pre-filled email to their address without you needing to leave the app.

Open Production → Manufacturing, find the order, and click Complete. This moves the built quantity into finished-goods stock. If serial numbers are turned on in Settings → Production Areas, the serial number was already assigned when the order was created.

A Manufacturing Order is normally tied to a specific Sales Order. A Production Run is for building to stock without any linked customer order — both support the same Start/Stop/Complete workflow and the same Print Documents options.

BOM Builder is where you define the "recipe" for a Component or a Finished Product — which raw materials and/or components go into it, and in what quantity. Go to Production → BOM Builder, choose Create New BOM or Edit Existing BOM, and add items from the search pickers into the costed basket.

On the Manufacturing Order or Production Run row, click Print Documents, check whichever of Picking List, Stickers, and Packing List you need, and click Print.

Finished Goods are sellable end products. Components are sub-assemblies used inside products (defined via BOM Builder). Materials are the raw materials you purchase from vendors. All three have their own stock table under the Stock menu.

On Stock → Materials, a colored dot next to each row shows whether it's normal, below its minimum order quantity (MOQ), or below what production currently needs. You can also check Purchasing → Reorder Suggestions for a auto-calculated list.

"Needed (Production)" is how much of that item is required by production right now. "Expected (Incoming)" is how much is already on order and due to arrive. Comparing the two against what's on hand tells you whether you're covered or need to order more.

Reorder Suggestions, its own tab under Purchasing (separate from Purchase Orders), is calculated automatically from current stock level, each item's reorder point, and its vendor lead time, so you can see what needs ordering today without checking every stock screen by hand.

From Purchasing → Reorder Suggestions, review the Suggested Qty, adjust if needed, and click Create PO — you can also select several rows and act on them together, or start one with + New PO under Purchasing → Purchase Orders. As you pick the item and quantity, the form shows a live preview — Unit cost × quantity = Total — so you can check the amount before you save.

Open a PO with View Details to see its order date, vendor, item and quantity, unit cost, total cost, ship-to (your warehouse or a drop-ship order), lead time, status, Notes (printed on the PO and emailed to the vendor), and Internal Notes (never shown to the vendor).

When creating or editing a Purchase Order, change the Ship-To from your own warehouse to the specific Sales Order or Parts Order it should ship directly to — the linked order number carries through onto the PO.

When the shipment arrives, click Receive Full on the PO row (Receive All Items on a multi-item PO). Cheetah Smart asks you to confirm before it adds the quantity to stock and marks the PO received. If only part of the order arrived, enter the quantity and use Receive Partial; the PO stays open for the rest, and the button changes to Receive Remaining. Turn on "Show Received?" to find received POs again. Cheetah Smart tracks receiving only — whether you've paid the vendor is handled in your accounting system.

Both actions change your stock numbers. Receive Full / Receive All Items adds the quantity to stock, and Mark Delivered (on a Sales Order) deducts the items from stock and completes the order. A confirmation popup shows what is about to happen so a stray click can't do it; choose Cancel to leave everything as it was.

Purchasing → Vendors holds each supplier's contact details and terms, the same way Customer Master does for customers.

Yes — QuickBooks Online, Xero, and Sage Business Cloud Accounting are all supported. Connect any of them from Settings → Integrations — you'll sign in and authorize directly on that provider's own site, so Cheetah Smart never sees your accounting password. Once connected, invoices and payments sync automatically in both directions roughly every 15 minutes.

Once QuickBooks, Xero, or Sage is connected, that system becomes your payment system of record, so Cheetah Smart's own Register Payment button steps aside on invoices tied to it — record the payment there instead, and it syncs back automatically on the next sync.

Shopify gets its own menu in the main navigation. Shopify Sync lists every material, component, and product Cheetah Smart knows about — check "Shows in Shopify" to make one a live storefront product. Online orders then flow into Sales and Inventory automatically.

Yes. Settings → Integrations has a Request an Integration box at the bottom of the page — tell us what you use and we'll log it for review.

Yes. Go to Invoice & Shipping → Overview/Unbilled and click Register Payment on the order's row (an order that has already been invoiced keeps the button until it is paid in full, and the payment is applied to its invoice). Partial payments and multiple installments are supported, and the balance updates automatically (unless QuickBooks, Xero, or Sage is connected, in which case that system is your payment system of record instead).

Check "Show Invoiced?" on the Overview/Unbilled screen to bring already-billed orders back into view. On the Invoices sub-tab, "Show Shipped" and "Show Unpaid" checkboxes do the same for shipped and unpaid invoices.

Use Mark as Shipped from an Overview/Unbilled or Invoices row to record the ship date and shipping details — separately from payment status, so an order can be shipped and unpaid, paid and unshipped, or both.

FIFO (First-In, First-Out) values cost of goods sold against the oldest raw material cost on hand; LIFO (Last-In, First-Out) uses the newest. The two only produce different numbers once a material has been purchased at more than one price — until then they're identical. Switch between them in Operations → Finance.

Operations → Finance shows Receivables Due (unpaid balance on Sales Orders, Parts Sales, and open Invoices), Payables Due (every open Purchase Order, due on its order date plus the vendor's payment terms), and the Net of the two, charted forward from any past-due amounts through your selected Reporting Period.

Operations → Inventory gives a unified view across all three inventory levels in one table, rather than checking each Stock sub-tab separately.

By design. Leaving a menu or sub-tab clears any column sort and any checked rows, so you always come back to a clean view with the newest records first and nothing selected. This prevents a bulk action from touching rows you checked earlier and forgot about.

Alphabetically (A-Z) by default — customers by name, products, parts and services by SKU then name — which makes it easy to find something you don't quite remember. As soon as you type in the picker's search box, the list narrows to what matches.

Tasks is a shared to-do list inside the ERP for follow-ups that don't belong on a specific order — like calling a vendor about a price change. The number shown next to Tasks in the main menu is how many are currently open.

Open Tasks from the main menu and click + New Task, then fill in the description and any other fields your team uses.

Watchers let you loop someone in on a task without reassigning it to them. Add Watchers when creating a task or from its detail view — search your team, check as many names as you like, or use the master checkbox to select everyone. Every watcher with an email on file is notified automatically.

Pass Task, available from a task's detail view, reassigns it to someone else on your team — the new assignee takes over ownership of the task.

Yes. Every task's detail view keeps a running conversation history — comments are visible to the assignee and every watcher.

Data Manager (manager-access only) lets you download your data or a blank template for any master table, upload a file to add or replace master data in bulk, and run a data-integrity and inventory-valuation report.

Configure serial numbers under Settings → Production Areas, choosing a fixed text prefix and/or an auto-incrementing counter. Once turned on, a serial number is assigned automatically each time a Manufacturing Order is created.

Go to Settings → Team & Licenses to manage who has a login and see your plan's seat usage.

Settings → Billing shows your current plan, seat count, and the payment method on file, and is where you can change plans.

Admin has full access, including Settings. Manager can take critical actions — add products, change prices and costs, delete products or orders. User is scoped to daily operations — entering orders, customers, and vendors.

Your plan includes a set number of concurrent logins. Signing in on a new device automatically signs that same license out elsewhere, so you always know who's actually in the system — Settings → Team & Licenses shows every active session with a Sign Out control for each.

The + Invite Teammate button in Team & Licenses records their name, email, and role so your roster stays current. To have their own separate sign-in actually issued, email cheetah-mail@cheetah-smart.com with their name, email, and role and we'll set it up securely.

Open the document's Print/Export (or Print Documents) menu and click Send Email. Cheetah Smart builds a real PDF attachment and hands it to your device's normal share or mail flow, so it's sent from your own email address rather than a generic system address. The message is written for that document type (see "What does the email say when I send a document?").

Each document type gets its own message, filled in from the record. An invoice quotes the total, amount received, balance due and due date; a purchase order lists the items, order total, lead time, ship-to and notes and asks the vendor to confirm quantities, pricing and ship date; a Sales Order confirmation lists the items, total and expected delivery; a quote lists the items and how long it is valid and says to reply to accept; a customer price list and a packing list each carry a short note about what is attached. Anything missing from the record is simply left out, and you can edit the subject and message before sending.

Yes. Use "Download PDF" in the same Print/Export menu as the Print and Send Email options — it saves an actual PDF file rather than opening a print dialog.

Yes. The full User Manual is available to read online, download, or print at cheetah-smart.com/manual, and a copy is included with every new trial's welcome email.