9-stage sample lifecycle
Samples are where new business is won and where follow-up dies. Nine stages, an owner at each, and a recorded verdict at the end instead of silence.
In short
Sample tracking follows a customer sample through nine stages in the KanchanFlow RFQ-to-Order CRM — from request to approval or rejection — with an owner and a date at each stage. It is in development with a Wave 1 Milestone 4 target. Starter carries a five-stage lifecycle; the full nine-stage version is Professional and Enterprise.
What it is
Every job shop makes samples, and almost none of them track what happened to them. A sample is requested, quoted, made, shipped, and then it goes quiet. Three months later nobody knows whether it was approved, rejected, or is still sitting on a shelf in the customer's lab, and the salesperson has stopped asking.
The nine-stage lifecycle makes each transition a recorded event with an owner and a date: requested, quoted, approved to make, in production, quality checked, dispatched, received, under trial, and finally approved or rejected with a reason. The stages that stall are visible, and the ones that end in rejection produce a reason you can act on.
Capabilities
What it does
Nine stages with owners and dates
Each stage has a named owner and a date it was entered, so a sample sitting in quality for three weeks is visible as a fact rather than as a suspicion.
Recorded verdict with a reason
Approved or rejected, with a reason — dimensional, finish, material, commercial. Rejection reasons across a year are the most useful quality data most shops never collect.
Linked to the RFQ and the quote
Samples belong to the enquiry that prompted them, so the eventual production order can be traced back through the sample to the original RFQ.
Stalled sample alerts
A sample that has not moved a stage within your threshold surfaces for a follow-up. Samples do not fail loudly; they fail by being forgotten.
Cost of samples
Material and process cost carried on the sample, so the annual cost of unconverted samples is a number you can look at rather than a feeling.
Step by step
How it works
The order these steps happen in matters more than the feature list above it.
- 1
The sample is requested
Raised from an RFQ or a customer conversation, with the part, the quantity and the reason the customer wants it.
- 2
Quote and internal approval
The sample is quoted — free, at cost or chargeable — and approved to make internally. Both decisions are recorded, not assumed.
- 3
Production and quality
In production, then quality checked. Inspection results and any first-article documentation attach to the sample record.
- 4
Dispatch and receipt
Dispatched with a reference, then marked received. The clock on the customer's trial starts from a known date rather than a guess.
- 5
Trial and verdict
Under trial with the customer, then approved or rejected with a reason. An approved sample is the trigger for the production quote.
What this is not
This is not PPAP or first-article inspection documentation — we track the sample's journey and verdict, we do not produce the AS9102 or PPAP submission package.
This is not an ERP, MRP, CAD, BOM, or advanced CPQ system — it manages customer RFQs, quotes, follow-ups, and order handoff.
Tier availability
What you get on each plan
These rows come from the same feature matrix the pricing page publishes. If the two ever disagree, the matrix is wrong and we fix it.
| Plan | Availability |
|---|---|
| Starter | 5-stage sample lifecycle. |
| Professional | Full 9-stage lifecycle with stalled-sample alerts. |
| Enterprise | 9-stage lifecycle plus custom stages. |
Starter is $39 per user per month, Professional $49, Enterprise $99 plus a $2,000 monthly platform fee. Annual billing is 17% lower. See the full matrix.
Interface
What it looks like
Development build of the nine-stage sample pipeline with eleven samples distributed across stages and three flagged as stalled.
Development build capture. Stage names are not final.
Development build of a sample record showing the rejection reason and the linked RFQ and quote.
Development build capture, sample data.
Screenshots are described rather than mocked up. Captures are taken from the build current at the date shown in the changelog, on a sample workspace.
Connectors
Integrations this feature uses
Starter includes one accounting connector and one lead source; Professional and Enterprise include all of them. Browse every integration.
Questions about sample tracking
Nothing of the nine-stage version — it is in development for Wave 1 Milestone 4. Starter's five-stage lifecycle is the permanent Starter capability once it ships.
See a live quote draft built from a real RFQ
Fourteen days, no credit card, sample data pre-loaded. If it does not fit your shop, we will tell you in the first call.
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