Keep Phasio in Sync with Your Existing Systems Using Custom References and Metadata

Most manufacturing operations run across more than one system. Phasio handles quoting and production. An ERP or accounting tool handles invoicing. A CRM holds customer contacts. Every time something happens in Phasio, someone on your team needs to know which record it corresponds to in every other system you use.

Three features in Phasio close that gap: custom order references, customer article references on documents, and customer organisation metadata. Together they give your team and your connected systems the identifiers they need to stay aligned without manual cross-referencing.

GETTING STARTED

All three features are available in the manufacturer dashboard. Custom order references are added directly on any order. Customer organisation metadata is managed from the customer detail page under the Metadata panel. Customer article references are available in the document template editor via the variables panel.

WHAT CHANGES FROM DAY ONE

Attach a reference code to any order. Custom order references let you add a free-text identifier to any order — a PO number, an ERP code, or any cross-system tracking reference your workflow uses. The reference appears in order lists, kanban cards, and webhook payloads, so it's visible wherever your team works and flows into any automation you've built on the API.

Customer article numbers appear on the documents that go out. Customers often have their own internal part numbers. Those numbers can now be included on invoices and packing slips through the document template editor. When a customer reconciles an invoice against their own procurement system, they see their own references rather than having to map back from yours.

Store any identifier against a customer account. Customer organisation metadata lets you attach custom key-value data to any customer record — ERP customer IDs, Shopify IDs, Xero contact IDs, internal account tiers, a flag for whether a PO is required, or anything else your workflow needs to track. Metadata is available via API with a key-based upsert endpoint designed for integrations, and the values can be included in document templates so those identifiers appear on outgoing documents automatically.

WHY IT MATTERS

The friction in most manufacturing operations isn't inside a single tool. It's in the space between tools — finding which Phasio order corresponds to which ERP entry, matching a customer to their Xero contact, confirming whether a PO is required before accepting a job.

Custom references and metadata don't change how orders or customers work inside Phasio. They make the connection between Phasio and your other systems explicit, so nobody has to look a reference up manually or copy it from one tab to another.

For teams using the Phasio API, the key-based upsert on customer metadata is particularly useful. You can sync identifiers from an external system into Phasio without needing to check whether a given key already exists on the customer, which makes it straightforward to keep both sides in step as your customer records change over time.