Admin guide: where to start — Admin panel

This section is a step-by-step guide for the administrator of a firm that runs on the iFurn.pro platform. Goal: configure the admin panel in a single pass so that customers can place orders and production receives correct programs and deadlines. The guide is aimed at a new administrator who has just received access; experienced users can use it as a checklist.

All links below point to separate articles with the full description of each section. We recommend opening the guide and walking through the steps with this document in one tab and the matching admin panel section in the other.

Architecture: what is yours and what is shared

The iFurn.pro platform is multi-tenant: a single installation serves many production firms simultaneously. This means a strict split of data into three layers.

Your firm (isolated layer): Your firm's catalogue, prices, services, machines, tooling, warehouse cells, customers, orders, staff, message templates, delivery methods. No other firm sees this data. You change it — you change it only for yourself.
Global reference data (read-only): Material manufacturers, material types, service types, surface treatment types, base order statuses, message types (system events), CNC operation templates (milling, drilling, handle patterns). These references are common to all firms and are maintained by the iFurn.pro team. You use them but do not edit them. If the variant you need is missing — contact support.
System settings (platform): List of locales, available messengers, payment gateways, OAuth providers, base HTTP-route configuration. You do not see this at all — it lives at the development level.

Practical conclusion: work confidently. Any mistake in your firm's settings is fixed in the same admin panel and does not affect other firms. All changes are logged — the history is browsable.

Step 0. Before you start

Make sure you have:

Administrator login and password for your firm (issued by the firm owner or by iFurn.pro support).
Email and phone that you are ready to confirm — system notifications will arrive on them.
List of your workshop equipment: machine models, tool types, processing ranges. Steps 3 and 6 rely on it.
Excel price list from the manufacturer of your main materials — for the import in step 4.
Contact details for iFurn.pro support (email and/or Telegram bot) — for the case when a variant is missing from the global references.

Time required for a full setup from scratch is usually anything from half a working day (one sales point, one machine) to a week (several branches, a diverse fleet of machines, thousands of catalogue items).

Full guide map — 14 steps

Each step below is a separate admin section and one or more help articles. The steps are grouped by dependency: first configure what the other steps need as a foundation (roles, currency, service types), then the production loop (machines, tools, treatments), then the catalogue and warehouse, then the customer loop (points, orders, messages), and finally analytics and additional modules.

Step 1 — Users and roles

Category: Users

This is the first thing to configure: who will work in the admin panel, with what rights, and which workshop staff will be bound to production operations.

Fill in your own profile. Top-right corner — click on your name → "Profile". Specify full name, phone, email. Without confirmed contacts you will not be able to receive system alerts.
Open User roles and create 3–5 base roles for your team structure (Administrator, Manager, Technologist, Storekeeper, Accountant — a typical set). For each role check the boxes for access to the admin panel sections.
Open Users and create cards for every employee who will work in the admin panel. Assign each one a role from the previous step.
Open Firm workers — this is a separate register for the workshop: machine operators, packers, storekeepers. These people have no admin login — these are records for tracking production operations and calculating payroll.

Why this exact order: roles first (because you can only assign a role to a user from existing ones), then users, then workshop staff (which can be added at any time, but it is logical to gather all the people in one go).

Step 2 — Firm parameters

Category: Parameters

Here are the general firm settings, currency, customer message templates and the list of available delivery methods.

Open Firm parameters and walk through every section: contacts, legal details, base currency, time zone, regional settings, functionality flags (per-order stock tracking, auto-calculation of deadlines, whether to hide the readiness date inside the service name, etc.). Each parameter has a description — read it carefully before changing.
Open Currency rates (this is a separate main-menu item, not a sub-section of «Parameters»). Enter rates for the currencies in which you have products or services. If you work in a single currency — the section can be left empty.
Open Order statuses and check that the base statuses (new / confirmed / in production / ready / issued / cancelled) are worded the way you call them. If needed, add your own extra statuses for firm-specific scenarios.
Open Message types and look at the list of events on which the system can send notifications (order created, order ready, payment received, etc.). The types themselves are global, but the decision «send or not» is yours in the next step.
Open Message templates and create the email/SMS texts for every event relevant to you. Use the variables {client_name}, {order_code}, {order_total} etc. — the system will substitute them on send.
Open Delivery methods and add the delivery options the customer will see in the calculator: self-pickup, courier, transport company.

After step 2 you can open Message test and confirm that a template renders correctly and the SMS/email actually leaves — this saves time compared to catching a problem on a live order.

Step 3 — Production base: machines, tools, services

Category: Services

The most substantial step. Here you describe what your production physically can do: which machines you have, what they cut/drill/mill, at what price and within what deadlines.

Open Machines and create a card for every machine: model, processing dimensions, CNC program formats (g-code/MPR/DXF/XML), post-processor, checkboxes of supported operations (cutting, milling, drilling, six-sided processing, etc.).
Open Machine services — this is the «which exact operations each machine performs» link plus the base prices of those operations.
Open Machine tools. This is a critically important section — saws, milling cutters, drills (blind and through) with their real sizes and ranges. Based on this tool stock the post-processor automatically selects the tooling for every part and adapts operations to what is actually installed. Do not tick «by datasheet» — tick by the actual physical state.
Open Service types — this is a global read-only reference (cutting, edge banding, sanding, CNC, packaging). Used when configuring deadlines.
Open Services and create your price list for customer-facing services. This is what ends up in the order calculation.
Open Extra services per part and Extra services per order. Here you create your own services that need special calculation logic (per m², per perimeter, per volume, per piece, fixed). Per-part extras are counted for every part of an order separately; per-order extras — for the whole order as one.
Open Production deadline and walk through every service group, setting realistic deadlines (in days) and, if you want to enable load-based auto-calculation of deadlines — the production capacity (minutes per day) for every operation. The calculator promises the customer a specific readiness date based on this data.

Dependencies: machines must be entered before tooling (tooling is linked to a machine); service types must exist before the production deadline (the deadline references a type); calculation services — before the goods catalogue (you can attach service recommendations to goods).

Step 4 — Catalogue: manufacturers and goods

Category: Goods and the related Manufacturers

First check the manufacturers reference. If the brand you need (Egger, Kronospan, Swiss Krono, Blum, Hettich, …) is missing — ask iFurn.pro support to add it. A regular firm only writes into the «Manufacturers» reference via support; this is done deliberately, so that duplicates like «Egger» / «Эггер» / «Egger Gmbh» do not proliferate per firm.
Open Goods — the main register of the firm's materials and components. Boards, edge banding and hardware live here. Every item belongs strictly to one of three types: sheet material (m²), edge banding (linear m), hardware/item (pcs). The type is picked once — afterwards it effectively does not change.
If the catalogue is large (hundreds/thousands of items) — do not enter manually, use Goods import xls. The import wizard walks through 5 steps: upload, column mapping, duplicate comparison, image processing, final report. Before the first import always download the example Excel — the comments in its headers save hours of guessing.

After the catalogue you should upload an image for every item — without a preview a customer will not visually pick the material in the calculator (see step 7).

Step 5 — Surface and edge treatments

Categories: Surface treatments and Edge treatments

«Treatments» are what the firm does with an already-cut part: sanding, patination, lamination, painting, corner rounding, chamfer, integrated handle, diagonal mitre.

Open Surface treatment types and make sure the types you need (sanding, patination, lacquering, etc.) are present in the global list. This reference is read-only — additions are only made via support.
Open Surface treatments and create your specific treatments: name («Sanding 16 mm chipboard before painting»), price per m², material filter (optional — for which board types it applies), machine link. If a treatment applies only to MDF — be sure to set the filter, otherwise it will also be offered to the customer for chipboard.
Open the «Edge treatments» sub-section — there are 4 operation types:
- Integrated handles — profile grooves for integrated handles on the front edge.
- Edge chamfer — a narrow flat bevel on the edge.
- Edge rounding — a radius arc on the edge (important for children's furniture and corner countertops; 2–3 mm of radius often improves how the PVC edge band adheres).
- Edge mitre — a diagonal cut through the full board thickness at a given angle (for a 90° «corner-to-corner» joint: each board is cut at 45°).
For every operation you need, create concrete variants (angle/radius ranges, price, material filter).

Step 6 — CNC templates

Article: CNC templates

Templates are ready-made milling/drilling operations (decors, typical drillings for hardware, handle templates, shaped edges). The templates themselves are developed centrally by the iFurn.pro team; your task is to pick the ones that suit your equipment and to set your own restrictions:

minimum part dimensions on which the template will be available to the customer (separately for an edge-banded and a non-edge-banded side);
ranges of template parameters that the customer can change in their project (for example, groove depth — from 4 to 12 mm);
your own template description that the customer will see when picking it.

Why this matters: so that a customer does not place an order you physically cannot fulfil. If a template requires a 25 mm milling cutter width and your maximum is 12 — the system will not show this template to your customers.

Step 7 — Images and 3D

Category: Images and 3D · overview: Images and 3D — overview

Without images your catalogue is invisible. In the calculator the customer picks material visually — without a preview the choice goes to a competitor.

Goods images — photos of boards, edge banding, hardware (available to firms with the goods_edit=1 right).
Surface treatment images — a preview for every treatment in the calculator (available to all firms).

Additionally for furniture-assembling firms (BOX_FIRM flag):

Part images — sketches of cabinet parts (side, top, bottom, shelf, front) with a dimensional schema. SVG is preferred — scales without quality loss.
Cabinet images — main photos of furniture models (3D renders, real photos, interior photos). Angles: front, side, iso, 360.
3D hardware objects — 3D models of hinges, runners, handles, feet (.obj / .glb / .gltf). Used in the 3D constructor.

Recommendation on images: upload the files to Google Drive in advance (with public access) and put the links in the goods catalogue — then the xls import (step 4) will pull the images automatically. This is tens of times faster than uploading them one by one.

Step 8 — Warehouse

Category: Warehouse

The warehouse subsystem consists of four interlinked sections; start in exactly this order:

Storage cells — the physical warehouse grid. When creating each cell exactly one type is picked: «Whole raw material» (the supplier-receiving zone), «Sheet material offcuts» (the cutter's working zone — pieces with known dimensions), «Finished orders / pallets» (the dispatch zone). Name by the «row-rack-level» pattern (e.g. A-3-2), dimensions in mm, maximum fill limit in %.
Sheet material stock — current quantities for every material: how many whole sheets, how many offcuts, in which cells. Import the initial stock in a single receipt, after that the system keeps the accounting automatically.
Plan-vs-fact offcuts — a register of obligations: «the cutting optimizer promised that such-and-such offcuts will remain from each order — where did they go». This is one of the most important sections for controlling storekeepers. Active only if the per-order stock tracking flag is set in the firm parameters.
Finished goods — closes the other end of the cycle: where the assembled order pallets physically lie until they are issued to the customer. On the storekeeper's mobile portal, receiving from production and issuing to the customer are done by scanning the order barcode.

Principle of the whole warehouse loop: not a single mm² of raw material is lost. Every offcut either returns to a stock cell (and is counted by the plan) or is officially written off with justification. No state of the material exists between these two.

Step 9 — Customers and sales points

Category: Customers

Open Customer sales points and add every physical address of your firm (showrooms, warehouses, production sites). Each point uses checkboxes to mark which roles it plays: «Sales», «Dispatch», «Production», «Trimming only». A point without a type is invisible to anyone — be sure to set at least one.
Open Customer sales points and, if needed, attach specific customers to their «home» point. This affects order routing and manager reports, but it does not forbid a customer from ordering through any point.

Step 10 — Orders and production integrations

After steps 1–9 your customers can already place orders in the calculator. Then there are two sections that close the production cycle.

CNC program generation — for every order you can generate a program for a specific machine: cutting maps, drilling/milling operations. Supported formats: MPR (Homag/WoodWOP), BPP (BiesseWorks), XML-KDT, SCX (Nanxing), CSV for Cutrite. From you — describe the tooling correctly in step 3; the post-processor assembles the rest itself.

All message-template settings (step 2) fire automatically on every order status change: the customer receives an SMS/email at every key stage.

Step 11 — Payroll module (optional)

Article: Payroll module

If the workshop staff (step 1) are entered with rates (hourly rate or piece rate) and the operation log records who did what — the module automatically computes the payroll for every worker for the selected period. Access — only for users with the «payroll module access» flag enabled in their profile.

Step 12 — API and integrations (optional)

Category: API

API — request log — the reference of all external API methods (200+ methods): orders, customers, materials, services, production, cutting, payroll. If you have your own online store, mobile app, CRM or external accounting system — you can integrate via the external API. There is one endpoint: POST /api/external, with mandatory headers Key (your API key) and Action (method name).
accounting system integration sandbox — the points through which our system itself calls your accounting system: requests prices, checks stock availability, pulls the material↔edge links. Every endpoint can be tested with a live request directly in the admin panel and you immediately see what the accounting system returned.

Step 13 — Analytics

Article: Sales statistics

Once orders are coming in — open «Sales statistics» and look at the firm's summary for the period: order count and totals, dynamics per day/week/month/year, breakdowns by manager, top goods and top services, conversion from «all» to «confirmed». The «Detailed statistics» button opens the breakdown for four categories at once (Goods, Services, Customers, Managers) — convenient for a quarterly or annual report.

Step 14 — Additional modules

Category: Other

Translations — editor for the interface translations of the whole platform (access only for users with the «translation editing» right). If you spot a spelling mistake or a typo in any interface label — fix it here.
Landing pages — single-page landings of your firm (for marketing campaigns, presentations). Available only to firms on their own servers (self-hosted).
Registration content — what a new customer sees when registering with you on the landing: title, firm description, image, list of your services with approximate prices.
Message test — a sandbox for checking notifications before they fly to real customers. Especially useful after changing an SMS provider or editing message templates.
Data format — description of the platform's internal data format (for developers building integrations).

Common scenarios

«We just signed up — what to configure first?»: Steps 1 → 2 → 3 → 4. After this the customer can already place an order for your assortment at a realistic price. Then follow the rest of the steps as needs arise.
«We have a new machine — what to update?»: Step 3: add the machine card, its services, the new tooling. Then step 6: check which CNC templates have become available to customers.
«The supplier sent a new price list — how do we refresh the catalogue?»: Step 4: xls import with the same file; on step 3 «matching» the system will offer «update existing» for matching articles. Images are replaced automatically only if the new ones have a higher resolution.
«A customer complains they "never got the ready notification"»: Check: (1) the template for the order.ready event in Message templates is active; (2) the customer has a valid contact channel (email/phone with confirmation); (3) Message test to that number succeeds. Most often — item 2.
«A customer placed an order for a size we cannot make»: This means that in step 6 (CNC templates) or step 5 (treatments) the minimum/maximum size restrictions are not set. Fix them — it will not happen again.

Common mistakes

Creating «your own Egger» instead of contacting support. This breaks the unity of the global manufacturers reference. If a brand is missing — write to support, we usually add it within a day.
Ticking «6 drilling directions» in a machine tool when only 3 are physically installed. The post-processor will generate a program with operations where there is no spindle, and the machine will stop with an error. Tick only what is actually available.
Not uploading goods images. In the calculator the customer sees impersonal text rows and leaves. An image is not cosmetics — it is part of the sale.
Importing a 5000-item price list without a preliminary test. First run the import on 10 rows, sort out the column mapping, then launch the full file.
Changing the product type (sheet/edge/hardware) after the first use. The type changes the entire calculation logic. If you made a mistake — better create a new entry.
Overstating «minutes per day» in the production deadline. The calculator will promise the customer deadlines you cannot meet. Fill in by the real figures.
Deleting an old delivery method / treatment / template that is used in orders. Orders will keep the reference, but a new order with this variant can no longer be placed. If you just want to hide it — uncheck «Active», do not delete.

Where to get help

Every guide article has a «What matters» section — a short list of the most frequent questions for that section.
Hints in the interface. Most complex fields in the admin panel have a hover-hint with an explanation.
iFurn.pro support. Email and/or Telegram bot are listed in the site footer. When contacting support always include the ID of the relevant order / customer / product / template — this speeds up the response by an order of magnitude.
API documentation (request log) — for developers who build integrations.

Good luck with the setup. After completing the 14 steps your firm is ready to go and the admin panel turns from «a pile of sections» into a clear daily working tool.