QuickEasy Blog

Production Planning Software

6 May 2026

Production Planning Software: Bring More Control to Your Manufacturing Operation

If you’re in manufacturing, you deeply understand the need for production planning software. You need to know what must be made, what materials are required, whether stock is available, when the job can start, who is responsible, what it will cost, and whether you can deliver when you said you would.

You might be able to manage that on spreadsheets for a little while. Then the business grows. Orders increase. Stock moves faster. Materials become harder to track. Purchasing needs better forecasts. Sales wants accurate delivery dates. Finance needs reliable costs. Production teams need clear instructions. Management needs visibility. And suddenly, the spreadsheet, whiteboard, paper job card and “ask the person who knows” system starts taking strain. That is where production planning software becomes useful.

With QuickEasy BOS manufacturing ERP, production planning forms part of a connected business management system. A single system, where you manage manufacturing, inventory, purchasing, sales, accounting, CRM and reporting. QuickEasy ERP streamlines how you deal with tight margins, supplier delays, imported materials, customer pressure, machine downtime and daily operational noise. It lets you see what is happening before it becomes a bigger problem.

Skip the queue: Show me QuickEasy BOS

Read the FAQs

Key Takeaways

Production planning software helps you plan, schedule, track and cost manufacturing work.
MRP helps you calculate what materials are needed, how much is needed, and when they are required.
ERP-based production planning gives you wider control because production is connected to inventory, purchasing, sales, accounting and reporting.
QuickEasy BOS ERP is a single system for manufacturers that reduces manual admin, improves stock accuracy, supports purchasing decisions, manages job costing and gives clearer visibility across operations.

What is production planning software?

Production planning software helps manufacturers manage the process of turning raw materials into finished goods.

In plain English, production planning software tells you:

What to make
When to make it
What materials you need
If you have enough stock
What to purchase
Who will do the work
What stage the job is at
What it will cost
If you can deliver on time

Production planning software usually includes tools for bills of materials, job cards, work orders, material planning, stock checks, production schedules, work-in-progress tracking, job costing and production reporting. Inside QuickEasy BOS ERP, production works from the same operational system as your sales, quotes, stock, purchasing, accounting and reporting teams. That gives your business one exceptionally clear view of what is happening.

Explore: A Guide to Mastering Manufacturing ERP: A South African Perspective

What does production planning software actually do?

Production planning software helps you manage the manufacturing workflow from demand to completion. A customer order, forecast or internal requirement creates demand. From there, the system helps you plan what must be made, what materials are needed, when production should happen, and how the job should move through the business.

In practice, this means your team can:

Create job cards or work orders
Link jobs to bills of materials
Check material availability
Identify shortages before production starts
Plan purchasing requirements
Track work in progress
Record production activity
Compare estimated and actual costs
Update finished goods
Report on production performance

The efficiency gain comes from reducing the gaps between teams. When production, stock, purchasing and finance all rely on the same information, there is less chasing, less duplication and less confusion.

How QuickEasy’s production planning capabilities support better manufacturing control

QuickEasy BOS ERP – the best ERP for SMEs – gives you powerful production planning capabilities baked into your business system. That means you can manage work from the office to the factory floor. Instead of relying on one rigid planning view, your team can see, schedule and track production in the way that suits their role.

Plan production your way

QuickEasy supports customisable production documents and workflows, including:

Work orders
Job cards
Routing forms
Multiple routings
JDF and Switch integration for printing businesses

This gives your production team clear instructions in a format that fits how your business operates.

View work from different angles

Different teams need different views. QuickEasy gives you multiple interactive planning views, including:

Kanban boards
Jobs view
Materials view
Timekeeping view
Board view
Gantt charts

This helps your team manage workloads, check material requirements, monitor job progress and plan around deadlines without forcing everyone into the same screen.

Manage real production constraints

Production rarely runs in a perfect straight line. QuickEasy helps you plan around the things that actually affect manufacturing, including:

Work centre loading
Material requisition progress
Estimated versus actual time
Estimated versus actual quantities
Required dates and key job dates
Production bottlenecks
Operator availability
Job dependencies

This gives you a clearer view of where pressure is building before it causes delays.

Track progress as work happens

QuickEasy helps you monitor production activity while the work is in progress. Your team can track:

Task progress by quantity
Task progress by hours
Operator assignments
Colour-coded routing statuses
Late jobs
Busy work centres
Time to start
Job status changes

This helps management see what is moving, what is stuck and what needs attention.

Adjust plans when priorities change

Manufacturing changes quickly. Priorities shift. Materials arrive late. Customers change deadlines. Machines go down.

QuickEasy allows you to adjust production planning, including:

Reset planning from now
Dependency-based task adjustments
Batching orders by start date and status
Scheduling by required date
Timeline and dependency visualisation through Gantt diagrams

So when things change, your team can update the plan instead of rebuilding it manually.

Connect planning to the wider business

The real benefit is that QuickEasy’s production planning does not sit separately from the rest of your business.

It connects:

Timekeeping
Operator tracking
Inventory management
Material requisitions
Non-conformance reporting (NCR)
Cost tracking
Dashboards
Interactive reports

That means you can see what is planned, what is happening, what has changed, what it is costing, and where improvements are needed. Production planning now becomes a control point for your manufacturing operation.

From sales order to job card: why one system matters

One of the biggest risks in manufacturing is the gap between sales and production. Sales accepts the order. Production finds out later. Stock is checked manually. Purchasing is rushed. Finance only sees the full cost once the job is done. That creates pressure across the business.

With a connected ERP system, the flow becomes cleaner. A sales order can feed into production planning. A job card can be created with the correct customer, product and quantity information. Material requirements can be checked against stock. Purchasing can see what needs attention. Finance can track the cost impact as the job moves forward.

This reduces duplicate capturing and helps your teams work from one version of the truth.

It also helps protect customer relationships. When sales and production are connected, you are in a better position to give customers realistic delivery expectations.

What is MRP software?

MRP stands for Material Requirements Planning. MRP software helps you calculate what materials are needed, how much is needed, and when those materials are required.

Let’s say you manufacture a product that needs several raw materials or components. MRP looks at the bill of materials, current stock, open orders and production demand. It then helps show whether you have enough stock to complete the job. If stock is short, the system helps highlight what must be purchased or replenished. In simple terms, MRP helps prevent one of the most common factory problems: the job is ready to start, the team is available, the customer is waiting, but one key material is missing.

What is the difference between MRP and ERP?

MRP focuses mainly on materials and production requirements. ERP is broader. It connects the core parts of your business into one system, including production, stock, purchasing, sales, accounting, CRM and reporting.

For manufacturers, this distinction is important. MRP helps you plan materials. ERP helps you manage the wider impact of production across the business. QuickEasy BOS ERP gives you this connected view. Production planning becomes part of your full operational and financial picture.

Related: Best Inventory Management Solutions for Manufacturing Companies

What is a bill of materials?

A bill of materials, often called a BOM, is the recipe for what you manufacture. It lists the raw materials, parts, components, ingredients or consumables needed to make a finished product. For example, if you manufacture packaging, your BOM may include board, ink, adhesive, labels and finishing materials. If you manufacture an engineered product, it may include raw steel, fasteners, coatings, machining steps and assembly requirements.

QuickEasy’s multi-level BOM capabilities

For more complex manufacturers, a single-level BOM is often not enough. You may be working with sub-assemblies, semi-finished goods, bulk formulations, packaging components, different units of measure, batch tracking, version control and approval requirements.

QuickEasy BOS ERP supports multi-level BOM management, which means you can manage parent-child relationships between raw materials, intermediate components and final products. This is especially useful in industries where recipes, formulations or component structures are more detailed. Our multi-level BOM functionality helps link sub-assemblies to finished goods, supports automatic unit-of-measure conversions, improves batch and lot traceability, and helps ensure that approved BOM versions are used in production.

Because this sits inside your ERP, your BOMs connect directly to production planning, material availability, costing, purchasing and inventory control.

What is a job card or work order?

A job card or work order tells your production team what needs to be done. It usually includes the customer, product, quantity, due date, materials, instructions, production steps and job-specific notes.

In many factories, job cards are still paper-based. That may work for a while, but it becomes harder to control as the business grows. Paper gets lost. Updates happen late. Costs are captured afterwards. Management has to ask around to understand what is happening.

Digital job cards give you a clearer production record. Your team can see what work is open, what has started, what is complete, and what still needs attention. Inside QuickEasy ERP, the job card becomes part of your operational record, linked to material usage, costing and reporting.

How QuickEasy’s job tracking supports the shop floor

Planning the job is one part of production control. Tracking the job while it is happening is where the real visibility comes in.

QuickEasy BOS ERP includes outstanding tracking capabilities that help your team capture production activity directly from the shop floor. Operators can start, pause and complete manufacturing tasks using touchscreen devices or scanners, which means job progress can be recorded as the work happens instead of being captured later from paper notes. The Tracker App also supports production board timekeeping, multi-user and multi-job handling, automatic job status updates, and a touchscreen-friendly interface designed for busy manufacturing environments.

This gives you a more accurate view of work in progress, downtime, operator activity and production status. It also reduces the manual admin that usually sits between the factory floor and the office. When job tracking is connected to your ERP, your production records, job cards, inventory movements and reporting are kept more accurate, which helps management see what is happening without having to chase every update. QuickEasy also supports inventory movements through the Tracker App, including issuing materials to production, receiving finished goods, barcode scanning, batch and serial number tracking, and stock reconciliation from the floor or field.

How production planning software improves stock control

If your stock figures are wrong, your production plan is already on shaky ground. You may think raw materials are available, but they may already be allocated to another job. They may be in the wrong warehouse or bin. They may have been used but not recorded. They may exist on a spreadsheet but not on the shelf.

When production planning is connected to inventory management, your team gets a clearer view of available stock, reserved stock, raw materials, work in progress and finished goods. This helps reduce stockouts, overbuying, emergency purchasing and delays caused by missing materials. It also helps protect cash flow. Too much stock ties up money. Too little stock holds up production. The balance matters.

How production planning software helps purchasing

Purchasing works better when it can see demand earlier. Without proper production planning, procurement often becomes reactive. Someone realises material is short, production is waiting, and the buyer has to scramble. That is not efficient. It can also become expensive.

With production planning inside QuickEasy ERP, purchasing can see what materials are needed for upcoming jobs. This helps your team order earlier, plan around supplier lead times, avoid unnecessary urgent orders and manage stock more carefully. This is especially useful for South African manufacturers dealing with imported materials, port delays, supplier constraints or long lead times. Better planning gives purchasing the one thing it often needs most: time.

How production planning software supports job costing

Job costing is where many manufacturers either protect or lose margin. A job may look profitable when quoted. But once you include material usage, labour, wastage, rework, downtime and overheads, the real cost may tell a different story.

Production planning software helps you compare estimated costs with actual costs.

That gives you better answers to important questions:

Did the job cost what we expected?
Did we use more material than planned?
Did labour take longer than estimated?
Was there rework?
Are we quoting correctly?
Which products are profitable?
Which customers are putting pressure on margins?

When production planning is connected to accounting and inventory, costing becomes far more useful. You are not relying on late, manual summaries. You can build better cost visibility into the way the business runs.

Related: Say Goodbye to Accounting Silos with ERP

How production planning software improves efficiency

Efficiency is not only about working faster. It is about reducing wasted time, duplicate work, unnecessary admin and avoidable mistakes.

How production planning software can improve efficiency:

Reduce manual data capturing
Plan jobs more clearly
Check materials before production starts
Give purchasing earlier visibility
Reduce delays caused by missing stock
Track work in progress
Improve job costing
Support more accurate delivery dates
Reduce spreadsheet dependency
Give management faster reporting

In QuickEasy BOS ERP, the efficiency gain comes from connection. Teams are not working from separate files, separate systems and separate assumptions. They are working from the same operational system.

That is what makes a difference day to day.

How production planning software supports finance

Finance needs production information to be accurate. If production costs are captured late or manually, finance does not have a clear view of what jobs really cost. That affects stock value, work in progress, margins, invoicing and decision-making.

When production planning is connected to accounting, finance can see how manufacturing affects the numbers. This helps with work-in-progress visibility, cost-of-goods tracking, profitability reporting, stock value control and margin analysis. For management, this means production performance is not hidden away from the financial picture. You can see how operations affect profit.

How production planning software supports CRM and customer service

Production planning also affects the customer experience. If your team cannot see what is happening with an order, customer updates become vague. Sales may have to chase production. Production may have to chase stock. Customer service may not know whether the job is on track or delayed. When CRM for SMEs, sales and production information are connected, customer-facing teams have better visibility. They can see order status, customer history, production progress and delivery expectations more clearly. That helps them communicate better and respond faster.

Customers do not expect every manufacturer to be perfect. But they do expect accurate updates. A connected system helps you provide them.

How production reporting helps management

You cannot manage what you cannot see. Production reporting helps management understand what is happening across the factory and the wider business.

Live production planning dashboards in QuickEasy BOS show you:

Open jobs
Delayed jobs
Completed jobs
Material shortages
Work in progress
Production costs
Stock usage
Job profitability
Bottlenecks
Production performance

This real-time visibility helps you make decisions earlier. Instead of waiting until month-end to find out where things went wrong, you can spot problems while there is still time to act.

Can production planning software manage make-to-order manufacturing?

Yes. Make-to-order manufacturing can be difficult to manage manually because each customer order may have different requirements. You need to understand what the customer ordered, what materials are needed, whether stock is available, when the job can start, and what it will cost.

Production planning software helps turn customer demand into planned production work. Inside QuickEasy ERP system, the make-to-order process connects sales orders, job cards, BOMs, stock checks, purchasing requirements, costing and invoicing. That gives you better control from the first enquiry to the final delivery.

Can production planning software manage make-to-stock manufacturing?

Yes. Make-to-stock manufacturing depends on planning ahead. You need enough finished goods to meet demand, but not so much that you tie up cash in excess inventory.

Production planning software helps you plan production based on demand, stock levels, reorder points and replenishment needs. This is useful when you manufacture repeat products, supply regular customers, or need finished goods available for faster turnaround.

Bring production, stock, purchasing and finance into one system

If your production planning is still running on spreadsheets, paper job cards and manual updates, you are probably spending too much time chasing information. QuickEasy BOS ERP helps you manage production planning as part of your wider business operation. You can connect manufacturing with inventory, purchasing, sales, accounting, CRM and reporting, so your team works from one system and one version of the truth.

That means better visibility, fewer manual handovers, stronger stock control, more accurate costing and a clearer view of what is happening across your business.

Book a demo and see how QuickEasy BOS ERP can help you bring more control to your manufacturing operation.

Book a demo

FAQs: Production Planning Software

1. What is production planning software?

Production planning software helps manufacturers plan, schedule, track and manage production work. It helps you understand what needs to be made, what materials are required, when work should happen, and what each job costs.

2. What is production software?

Production software is a broad term for systems used to manage manufacturing processes. It can include production planning, scheduling, MRP, job costing, work orders, inventory control and production reporting.

3. What is MRP software?

MRP software helps calculate material requirements for production. It shows what stock is needed, how much is needed, and when it is needed to complete manufacturing jobs.

4. What is the difference between MRP and ERP?

MRP focuses on material and production requirements. ERP is broader and connects production with stock, sales, purchasing, accounting, CRM and reporting.

5. Why is ERP useful for production planning?

ERP is useful because production affects the whole business. When production is connected to the rest of your operation, your team gets better visibility and fewer manual handovers.

6. What is a bill of materials?

A bill of materials (BOM) is a list of the materials, parts, components or ingredients needed to make a finished product. It helps drive material planning, purchasing and costing.

7. What is a job card?

A job card is a record of the work that needs to be done for a production job. It usually includes product details, quantities, materials, instructions, due dates and production steps.

8. Can production planning software reduce stock shortages?

Yes. When production planning is connected to inventory, you can see whether materials are available before production starts. This helps reduce delays caused by missing stock.

9. Can production planning software help purchasing?

Yes. It helps purchasing teams see what materials are needed for upcoming jobs, so they can order earlier and avoid last-minute buying.

10. Can production planning software improve job costing?

Yes. It helps you track estimated and actual costs, including materials, labour, wastage and other production-related costs.

11. Can production planning software improve delivery dates?

Yes. It gives you better visibility of current jobs, material availability and production requirements, which helps you give customers more realistic delivery dates.

12. Does production planning software replace spreadsheets?

In growing manufacturing businesses, it usually should. Spreadsheets can work for basic tracking, but they become risky when used to manage live production, stock and costing.

13. Is production planning software only for large manufacturers?

No. Small and medium manufacturers can benefit from production planning software, especially when manual systems become too difficult to manage.

14. What industries use production planning software?

Manufacturers in packaging, printing, plastics, engineering, food production, textiles, metal fabrication, furniture, assembly and general manufacturing all use production planning software.

15. Can production planning software manage make-to-order production?

Yes. It helps you convert customer orders into planned production jobs, with linked materials, job cards, schedules and costing.

16. Can production planning software manage make-to-stock production?

Yes. It helps you plan production based on stock levels, demand and replenishment requirements.

17. Why should production planning connect to accounting?

Production affects stock value, work in progress, job costs, margins and invoicing. When production and accounting are connected, finance gets better information with less manual work.

18. What is work in progress?

Work in progress, or WIP, refers to production jobs that have started but are not yet complete. Tracking WIP helps you understand what value and cost are currently sitting inside production.

19. What reports should production planning software provide?

Useful reports include open jobs, delayed jobs, work in progress, material shortages, stock usage, production costs, completed jobs and profitability reporting.

20. What is the best production planning software for my business?

The best production planning software is the one that fits your manufacturing process, connects to your wider business, gives your team clear visibility, and can support your business as it grows. Enquire about QuickEasy BOS – a single system that brings the best production planning functionality for manufacturers.

Production Planning Software