ThreadCloud SOPs

For the ThreadCloud team only

◐ ThreadCloud SOPs

Build Order

Turn a supplier linesheet into a fully structured order. The heaviest workflow in ThreadCloud — and the most important. Get this right and everything downstream just works.

When to use
Every time you place a new buying order with a supplier. Replaces the old “make a spreadsheet, manually create products in Shopify” process.

What you’ll need before you start

  • The supplier’s linesheet (PDF or Excel)
  • The order’s buying season (e.g. PF2025) — set up under Buying Seasons if it doesn’t exist yet
  • The supplier set up under Brands & Suppliers
  • Roughly known delivery window (start–end dates)

The five stages

  1. Create the order — pick brand, season, delivery window
  2. Parse — upload linesheet, AI extracts every style
  3. Review & fix — eyeball the grid, fix anything wrong
  4. Submit for supplier review — send ack link, wait for confirmation
  5. Push to Shopify — see the Push SOP

Stage 1 — Create the order

Open ThreadCloud and click New Order from the dashboard (or /app → New).

You’ll be asked for:

FieldWhat to enterNotes
BrandPick from dropdownIf brand is missing, add it first under Brands & Suppliers
SupplierAuto-fills based on brandOverride only if the brand has multiple suppliers
Buying SeasonPick from dropdownMust exist under Buying Seasons
Delivery WindowPick a windowEach window is e.g. “Aug 15 – Sep 1, 2025” — set up under Delivery Windows
Order CurrencyAuto-fills from supplierOverride only if this PO is in a different currency than the supplier default

Click Create. You land on the new order’s page with an empty Parse zone.

Tip
The order’s id appears in the URL (e.g. /app/orders/247/…). Write this down — it becomes the tc-order-247 tag on every product, so you can search Shopify Admin for “everything from this PO”.

Stage 2 — Parse

Drag the supplier’s PDF or Excel onto the Parse zone, or click to browse.

What happens behind the scenes:

  1. ThreadCloud uploads the file
  2. AI reads it (vision pass for PDFs, structured pass for Excel)
  3. Each style is extracted with: style code, colour, sizes, retail price, cost, fabric, country of origin, and a dozen other fields
  4. The styles appear as tiles in the order grid, one tile per style

Expected time: 25–60 seconds for a typical PDF. The PARSING ambient bar fires at the top of the screen.

Heads up
Don’t navigate away during the first parse. The page is hooked up to revalidate when parsing finishes, but if you click around you might miss the tile updates. Wait for the ambient bar to flip to “Document threaded”.

If parse fails

See the runbook: parse timeout. Short version: try once more, then ask the supplier for Excel, then add styles manually as a last resort.

Stage 3 — Review & fix

Scroll the style grid. Each tile shows:

  • Style code, colour, retail price
  • Size grid with quantities
  • A small image (if the supplier included one)
  • A NEEDS REVIEW badge if AI wasn’t confident

Click any tile to open the edit drawer on the right. From there you can fix:

FieldWhen to fix
Style nameIf parsing pulled in something cluttered (“M / Navy / [LRD] 2024”) — clean it up
Colour name + groupIf colour mapping is off (e.g. “Sulfur Oak” → group “Yellow” should be “Brown”)
Sizes & qtyAlways double-check — this is the most common parse error
Retail priceIf parse pulled the wholesale instead of retail, or the wrong column
CostUsually right but verify against the linesheet
Fabric / COOOnly if AI flagged low confidence

Speed tip
Use Next Issue (top right of the order page) to jump between only the NEEDS REVIEW tiles. Saves scrolling.

Editing in bulk

If many tiles share the same fix (e.g. fabric is “100% Cashmere” on the whole order):

  1. Use the checkboxes to multi-select tiles
  2. Click Edit Selected
  3. Set the value once — applies to every selected tile
  4. Click Apply

Adding a style manually

If the supplier added a style after sending the linesheet:

  1. Click Add Style (top of the order)
  2. Fill in the form
  3. Click Save — it appears at the bottom of the grid

Stage 4 — Submit for supplier review

This sends the supplier a link to confirm the parsed order before you commit to it.

  1. Click Submit for Review at the top of the order
  2. ThreadCloud generates a unique supplier ack link and emails it to the supplier
  3. Order status flips to SENT TO SUPPLIER
  4. The supplier opens the link, reviews each line, and either confirms or marks changes
  5. When they confirm, your order flips to CONFIRMED

Why this step exists
Supplier confirmation is your paper trail. If a price or quantity later turns out wrong, the supplier’s confirmation is your evidence. Don’t skip it unless you really know the supplier well and have authorization.

Supplier didn’t respond?

If a supplier is slow, you can:

  • Resend — Open the order → PO tab → click Send to supplier again
  • Approve as-is — Click the Approve-as-is button in the PO tab. Skips supplier confirmation entirely. Use sparingly.

Supplier sent back changes

If the supplier marked changes on the ack form:

  1. Open the order → Supplier Review tab
  2. See a diff view: their values vs your parsed values, line by line
  3. Click Accept next to each row you agree with, or override manually
  4. Click Apply changes to commit

Stage 5 — Push to Shopify

Once status is CONFIRMED, you’re ready to push. See the Push to Shopify SOP.

Common mistakes

Wrong size scale
If the supplier ships EU sizes and you push without checking, customers will see EU numbers on the storefront. Always verify the size scale matches what your shopper expects. Settings → AI & Models sets the default scale per category.

Currency mismatch
If the order is in EUR but you set it to CAD, every price gets multiplied by ~0.7 silently. Check the order currency in the header before pushing.

Approving a row with empty fields
A NEEDS REVIEW row that you mark as ready WITHOUT filling in the empty fields will push to Shopify with blank metafields. Smart filters won’t catch those products. Always fill every yellow cell before approving.

What the system does automatically

You don’t need to think about these — they happen on push:

  • ✅ Generates SKUs (format: STYLE-COLOR-SIZE, max 40 chars)
  • ✅ Writes SKU into Shopify variant barcode field (for label-printer fallback)
  • ✅ Adds tags: tc-imported, tc-order-{id}, {seasonCode}, brand-{name}, plus category/colour/pattern tags
  • ✅ Builds the full Shopify product description (multi-image gallery, fit notes, fabric, country)
  • ✅ Sets up all 60+ Shopify metafields (tc_core, tc_measure, tc_trade)
  • ✅ Locks the FX rate to the buying-season currency

Next steps