Understanding the Order Board

The Order Management board is where you manage all of your orders. Everything lives here on one screen, organized into columns called stages that flow from left to right.

The top bar

At the top of the board you have:

Smart Search allows you to find orders by customer name, decedent name, cemetery name, stone color, monument or service type, specific service description (Cleaning, Restoration, Lettering, etc), order number, phone number, or email. It also matches an order's type by the labels on the card's type badge: Monument, Service and Service & Monument. Whatever matches is highlighted on the order card, and the board filters to show only matching orders. A decedent is found whichever way round the name is typed: John Smith, Smith John, "Smith, John", or with a middle name.

Learn more: How to Search for an Order

Expand or collapse all sits between Smart Search and Archive. Click it to open every visible card's task list at once, or to collapse them all. The button switches between Expand all and Collapse all depending on whether any cards are currently collapsed.

Archives is the archive-box icon button in the board toolbar, and its tooltip Archives (N) counts what is waiting inside. It opens the Completed and Cancelled Orders window, which has All, Completed and Cancelled tabs, a search box and a count of the orders listed. Each archived row carries three buttons: Open order, Restore to board, which puts the order back on the board in the stage it was in, and a red Delete order, which takes the order off the board, out of the archive and out of every list and report.

Finished orders move to Archives by themselves. Every night MonuDesk archives each order that has been in Completed for at least 24 hours, is paid in full and has every to-do done (a to-do counts as done when it sits on its Done step, or on its last step if its list has no Done step). The 24 hours count from the moment the order entered Completed, so editing the order does not restart them. Nothing is deleted: you find the order under the Completed tab in Archives, and Restore to board brings it back. If it still qualifies, it is archived again the next night.

Learn more: How to View Archived Orders

Order totals at the top of the board show how many orders are on it, their total value and what is still outstanding (for team members who can see prices). To count only the work in progress, switch on Settings → Order Management → Count active orders only: the count and both amounts then leave out the Quote and Completed columns, and the header reads N active orders. The setting is yours alone, so your teammates' boards stay as they are.

Settings → Stages is where Edit stages configures your pipeline stages (including stages of your own between Quote and Confirmed Order, such as Contacted or Quote sent), and Settings → Accessories holds your photo and vase options. Learn more: How to Manage Pipeline Stages and How to Set Up Your Photos and Vase Options.

Filters

The board has a Filters control that lets you narrow down the visible orders without typing anything into Smart Search. Use it to focus on what's actually demanding attention right now.

You can filter by:

• Stage: pick one or more stages to keep only orders sitting there.

• Date: filter by date range using the order's date label (Draft Created, Quote Started, or Order Started).

• Customer type: filter by Retail or Wholesale. This uses the contact category label on each card, so picking Wholesale brings up only orders from Monument Companies, Cemeteries and Funeral Homes.

• Type: the TYPE list narrows the board to one kind of work, in two groups. Monuments offers Uprights, Flats, Bevels, Slants, Benches, Bronze, Ledgers and Footstones, plus Other monuments for types without their own option. Services lists every service type from Settings → Service Types, custom and deactivated ones included, plus Other services.

• Cemetery: the CEMETERY list holds your cemeteries plus a pinned option, No cemetery (pickup / ship), which brings up the orders marked as customer pickup. It can be picked whenever you have orders like that on the board.

• Tasks: this is the most powerful one. Pick a specific to-do and the board only shows orders waiting on that step. Use this to answer questions like which foundations are pending, who hasn't paid yet, which family still needs to approve a drawing, which orders are waiting on a stencil, or which installs are scheduled this week.

Filters combine with AND logic. If you select stage In Production and task Stencil, only orders that are in In Production and waiting on a stencil show up. Filter selections reset when you reload the board.

Stages and order cards

Each stage column shows how many orders are in it. On a computer, order cards can be held and dragged to move them between stages, or clicked to open the full order details. On an iPad or other touch device, dragging works a little differently. See Moving cards on an iPad below.

Dragging stays smooth even in a column holding hundreds of orders. If you move the same order through several stages in quick succession, the card moves on every drop and MonuDesk saves the stage you finish on. A move that asks you to confirm something, such as the payment warning or the Completed prompt, is always saved as its own step.

A job with several quote options shows as one card: the primary option, which is the one you confirm.

With MonuDesk Max, quotes that families send from your website form or MonuStudio land in the Quote column by themselves. Their cards carry a green Website tag, or an amber Ad tag when the family came from a Google ad. See Website Leads: Get Quotes from Your Website.

Each card shows the customer name, order number, decedent name, cemetery name, a date label, promise date (if set), balance due, and a round assignee bubble for whoever owns the order. If your company runs more than one office, the order number also carries a location prefix, such as L2-ORD-123, and you can switch locations with the office switcher in the top navigation bar (on a phone, the location chip next to search on the Orders tab). While Staff can open orders from other locations is on in Settings → Office Locations, which it is unless your owner turns it off, an order from another location where a to-do is assigned to you also shows on your board. The date label changes based on the order's stage: Draft Created for drafts, Quote Started for quotes, and Order Started for confirmed orders. Click any date on the card to open a date picker and edit it inline.

On an order marked as customer pickup, the cemetery row is replaced by a Delivery row reading Customer Pickup, in plain text rather than a link.

Next to the order number, a label shows the contact category: Wholesale (blue) for Monument Companies, Cemeteries and Funeral Homes, or Retail (gray) for every other category, such as individual customers. Click the label to quickly change the contact's category.

At the bottom of each card is a task counter (for example, "0/11 tasks completed"). Click the counter to expand the card and see all to-dos. Click it again to collapse them. On a computer you can also hover over the customer name on a card to open the order, or hover over the balance due to open the log payment popup directly. On an iPad these become tap targets instead. Just tap the customer name or the balance due.

Learn more: What Each Order Card Shows

The stage column headers stay pinned at the top of the board as you scroll, so you can always see which stage you're in. Each column also scrolls independently, so moving down through one busy stage doesn't shift any of the others.

Right after you click Save as Quote or Save as Confirmed Order, the column shows a placeholder card, "Creating the quote. It appears here in a moment." or "Creating the order. It appears here in a moment.", and the real card takes its place.

Assigning an order

Every card has a round assignee bubble. Click it to open a member search and pick a teammate to put them on the order, or choose Unassign to clear it. The bubble shows the assignee’s initials once someone is assigned, or a “+” when the order has no owner yet.

The change happens right away, and the teammate you assign gets an in-app notification letting them know the order is now theirs.

Moving cards on an iPad

On a touch device the card body scrolls, so dragging uses a dedicated grip handle beside the card title. Here is how it works:

• A quick swipe on the card body scrolls the column up and down, or the board left and right. It does not move the card.

• To move a card, press and hold the grip handle for a moment (about a fifth of a second) until it lifts, then drag it to another stage.

• Two fingers pan the board and cancel any drag in progress, so you can scroll around without nudging an order by accident.

• While you drag, a translucent preview of the card shows exactly where it will land, and the board auto-scrolls gently when you reach an edge.

On a tablet the board also sizes itself to fit your screen, so you don't have to pan sideways through empty space.

Zooming the board

Once your account has at least one order, a small white pill sits in the bottom-right corner of the board. It holds a − button, a percentage chip and a + button, and it lays the whole board out smaller so more columns and cards fit on screen.

• − (tooltip Smaller cards) goes one step smaller.

• + (tooltip Larger cards) goes one step larger.

• The percentage chip (tooltip Reset to 100%) takes you straight back to full size.

There are five fixed steps: 100%, which is the default, then 90%, 80%, 70% and 60%. At 60% the − button is greyed out, and at 100% the + button and the chip are greyed out.

Zooming scales the card text, the spacing and the column width together. Dragging cards between stages, the column pan arrows, the card pop-ups, the order popup and the toasts all work exactly as they do at full size. Only the board contents change size.

Your zoom level is remembered in the browser you set it in, so it comes back after a reload. A different computer or a different browser starts at 100%, and signing out resets it. The zoom applies to the board only: it does not change the list view or the order popup.

Sorting a stage

Each stage column has its own sort menu, set independently from the other columns, and each column remembers its own choice. Open the sort menu at the top of a column and pick how to order it: Manual order (your saved drag order), quote started newest or oldest (order confirmed newest or oldest on the stages after Quote), Promise date soonest, order value highest or lowest, task amount highest or lowest, Group by cemeteries, or decedent last name A to Z or Z to A. For example, sort In Production by oldest quote so nothing slips, and sort Quote by value so you chase the biggest ones first.

Promise date soonest puts the order with the nearest promise date at the top and the orders with no promise date at the bottom. To see the date on each card, switch on the Promised by row in Settings → Card Display.

With Group by cemeteries, orders marked as customer pickup are gathered under their own Customer Pickup heading.

Related articles:

• How to Search for an Order

• How to View Archived Orders

• How to Manage Pipeline Stages

• What Each Order Card Shows

• How to Set Up Your Photos and Vase Options

• What's in the Insights Pages