Lettering Work Orders and Production Calendar are live

Two new ways to get a job through the shop — a real work order for lettering, and a calendar for what happens at the bench — plus 30+ fixes, most of them MonuDesk being more careful with what you've already typed.

✍️ Lettering jobs get their own work order

A lettering job cuts new text into a stone that's already standing. Until now the only place to type names and dates was the sketch — and the sketch is what the engraver cuts, word for word. Put Mary Jones there for reference with a 2026 date under it, and Mary Jones gets cut into the stone a second time when all you needed was the 2026.
Every service order now has a Lettering & Inscription card in step 3 of New Quote: which stone, the names and dates with an Engrave this box against each one, and a free-text inscription that reaches the engraver exactly as you typed it. Unticked means it's already on the stone, don't re-cut it. Copy from plot details pulls in the decedents you already entered and deliberately ticks nothing — you choose what gets cut.
The shop ticket then prints three separate blocks: the stone, ENGRAVE THIS in larger type, and Already on stone — DO NOT CUT.

🗓️ A Scheduling tab on every order, and a Production calendar

Open any order and there's a new Scheduling section between Order Details and Activity Timeline. It holds the crew's install and the shop's bench work behind one Installations / Productions slider, so both live on the order instead of behind two separate buttons. An amber icon on either side means nothing is booked there yet, so you can see what's outstanding without clicking in.
The Production calendar is the new half. Plan Cut, Carve, Sandblast, Engrave, QC and Ready against a day, drag events to a new date, color them by production stage or by office, and filter down to one person. It sits on the dashboard and the Installations page behind an Installation / Production toggle.
Update, 3 August: the early-preview limit below has been lifted. Production events are now saved to your MonuDesk account and shared with your whole team, so the office and the shop floor see the same schedule from any computer or device. Anything you entered before this change lived only in the one browser you typed it into and needs entering again. The Installations side is unchanged and still opens first.
While we were in there: you can now set an install date before the cemetery paperwork catches up. A missing cemetery is a note above the form instead of a wall in front of it.

The rest of the update

Everything below is a smaller win, but there are a lot of them. Skim the groups that apply to how your shop works.

🛟 MonuDesk stops losing what you typed

These fixes stop MonuDesk writing over what you'd already entered. They can't recover what's gone, so older orders are worth a spot-check.

• Customer contact details stop getting partly wiped — New Quote was writing a stripped-down copy back over the real contact
• Looking up a customer no longer creates a second one — searching Olafson used to leave a stray contact called Ola
• Cemetery & Plots stops reverting what you're typing, which was visibly shortening decedents' last names
• Inscription & Artwork stops wiping details it doesn't own — middle names, and lettering setups it never touched
• "Client update failed" is fixed, and no longer throws away the name and address you just typed

📄 Documents and drawings

• Front and back drawings get a full page each on contracts and quotes, instead of printing two inches wide
• Blank pages and duplicate drawings no longer print — documents take the newest sketch per side
• Unticking a drawing sticks on the stored copy your customer, your email and QuickBooks receive
• Documents spell out which finish goes on which face (F: Polished | B: Steeled) instead of "Custom Finish"
• A custom top shape prints the words you typed, not the literal word "Custom"
• The drawing picker shows your sketches — it only ever recognized uploaded files, so most orders never asked
• You can delete a back drawing, every saved revision of it
• Files show a real thumbnail instead of four identical rows all labeled "Drawing"

📋 Orders and the timeline

• Saving a sketch or an order is fast again — dealers were seeing 30 to 60 seconds
• Record something that happened off-system — an Add event button on the Activity Timeline for the day a monument was set, a foundation poured, a stone delivered
• Timeline entries show who did each thing instead of leaving a blank
• The order archive loads again — one bad order used to blank the entire list
• Dragging cards between stages no longer throws a full-page error

🧾 Vendors and cemeteries

• Purchase orders no longer say BRP when you chose Steeled — vendors were being told to rock-pitch a steeled face
• Every vendor shows up in the dropdown — the pickers loaded only your 10 most recent, then searched within those ten
• The Sexton Address saves and comes back — it was stored correctly, but every screen reopened blank

💬 Conversations

• Archiving and trashing lines up with Gmail — handled as label changes, so an archive done in Gmail comes back
• Disconnecting a mailbox no longer leaves it nagging you to reconnect

Open app.monudesk.com, open any order and try the new Scheduling tab.