Track a blank into a finished good: screen printing, embroidery, garment dye, heat transfer, sublimation and embellishment. Map source garments to finished styles, see blanks required against blanks on hand, and run decoration jobs stage by stage.
Buy a case of blank tees, print twelve designs on them, and your catalog just multiplied while your stockroom did not. Screen print, embroidery, heat transfer, dye sublimation, garment dye and embellishment are the same problem wearing different clothes: a blank goes in, a finished style comes out, and something has to keep the count honest on both sides. AIMS360 does that with source garments.
By treating the blank and the finished style as two separate inventory records and putting a mapping between them. The blank, which AIMS360 calls the source garment, is a style in its own right: a white 6.0 oz tee, sizes S through 3XL. The finished style is a different record: that same tee carrying a specific print, dye color, stitch file or applied component. Each finished style points at the blank it consumes.
Once that link exists, the arithmetic works in both directions. Take an order for 240 units of a printed style and AIMS360 knows it needs 240 of that blank in those sizes. Create the decoration job and the blanks come out of stock while the finished units appear as work in process. Receive the job and finished goods land in inventory, costed, ready to ship on a wholesale order, an EDI order or a Shopify order like anything else.
AIMS360 runs this through the Garment Dye module. The name is historical and undersells it: the same program handles screen print, embroidery, heat transfer, sublimation, embellishment and any other process where a blank is consumed to create a unique finished style. If you decorate, that module is yours whether or not a dye vat is involved.
Most inventory tools treat every sellable item as an independent thing with its own count. That assumption holds for a brand importing finished goods. It falls apart the moment one physical garment can become many different sellable items.
Take a modest program: twelve designs, printed on one blank tee, in three blank colors, six sizes.
| What you are counting | How many records | What it really is |
|---|---|---|
| Finished styles you sell | 216 | 12 designs × 3 colors × 6 sizes |
| Blanks you own | 18 | 3 colors × 6 sizes, one shared pool |
| Physical garments on the shelf | 18 stacks | The 216 do not exist yet |
This is the most common complaint from brands that decorate, and it is why storefront inventory alone stops holding the business together once volume arrives. The fix is not more spreadsheets. It is one master stock record for the blank, with the system knowing which finished styles draw on it, so wholesale, EDI, marketplace and Shopify commitments all subtract from the same truth.
Operators argue about these methods for good reason, because the equipment, the minimums and the failure modes are all different. From an inventory and costing point of view they are identical: a blank is consumed, a process is applied, a new style exists.
| Method | What happens to the blank | What has to be tracked around it |
|---|---|---|
| Screen printing | Ink is pushed through a mesh screen, one screen per color, then cured. | Screens and color count per design, ink, and spoilage on the run. Setup is charged once per design, not per shirt. |
| Embroidery | Thread is stitched from a digitized file. The classic left chest logo on a polo. | The stitch file per placement and size, thread colors, backing, and stitch count, which is what drives both the price and the run time. |
| Heat transfer and DTF | A printed film is pressed onto the garment with heat and pressure. | Transfers as a stocked component in their own right, plus press time and transfer waste. |
| Direct to garment | Ink is jetted straight onto the fabric. | Pretreat on dark blanks, and the fact that runs can be a single unit, which changes how orders arrive. |
| Dye sublimation | Dye turns to gas and bonds into polyester fibers. | Polyester blanks only, transfer paper and ink, and placements that can cover the whole garment. |
| Garment dye and wash | The sewn garment is dyed or washed after it is made. | Prepared for dye blanks, dye lots, shade variation between lots, and shrinkage after processing. |
| Embellishment | Rhinestones, patches, appliqué, puff, foil or studs are applied. | The applied component as its own inventory line, and the labor to apply it. |
A golf brand embroidering club logos onto stock polos and a streetwear label screen printing graphics onto blank hoodies are running the same workflow. So is a uniform supplier heat pressing names onto team jerseys. AIMS360 does not care which machine you used. It cares that one blank left stock and one finished style arrived.
Eight steps, most of which you set up once and then reuse every season.
The source garment gets a style record with its own colors and sizes, exactly like anything else you stock. It has a cost, it lives in a warehouse, and it can be counted.
The decorated version is a separate style: the design, the dye color, the logo placement. This is what customers order and what appears on the invoice.
On the finished style Garment Dye tab you connect the source garment, either style and color across all sizes at once or size by size. Size level mapping matters when a retailer changes a size scale late, or when the usual blank is out and a substitute with a different scale has to cover it.
The Source Garment Stock Status report reads customer orders, existing stock and work in process, then shows how many blanks the order book requires against how many you hold. Negative means buy or make.
Buy them on a vendor purchase order to your blanks supplier, or sew your own on a cut ticket from prepared for dye fabric. Brands that do both run both against the same source garment record.
Create Allocated WIP builds the job directly from unallocated customer order lines, so the quantities match the orders exactly. Or build it manually against a forecast. Either way, blanks come out of stock when the job is created, and a pick list exports so the warehouse can pull the right sizes.
Production tracking follows named stages such as print, dye, launder, finish and QC, each assignable to a different contractor. A shirt that goes out to be printed, comes back, then goes out again to be embroidered stays visible the whole way.
Completed units land in finished goods inventory carrying their cost. Damages and shortfalls get recorded at receipt rather than discovered at year end, and a setting controls whether cancelled units put their blanks back into stock or write them off, because a shirt that has already been through the dryer is not a blank any more.
| The situation | How it behaves |
|---|---|
| A finished style has no blank mapped to it | The job will not build, and AIMS360 lists the unmapped style colors so you can map them and continue. Annoying once, cheaper than discovering it on the floor. |
| Blanks are spread across more than one warehouse | Manually created jobs can search other warehouses for the blanks. That search needs bin locations active with at least one real bin per warehouse, and it does not apply to jobs built from Create Allocated WIP, where the blanks need to sit in the same warehouse as the orders. |
| You want a bill of materials issued during decoration | Extra components consumed at decoration, from thread to applied trims, are issued through production tracking rather than from the job material tab. Set that up if the decoration itself eats inventory you care about. |
A decorated unit carries at least two costs and usually three: the blank, the decoration, and the setup that made the decoration possible. Miss the third and every short run looks more profitable than it is.
| Cost | Where it comes from | How it behaves |
|---|---|---|
| The blank | Your vendor PO to the blanks supplier, or the bill of materials and labor on the cut ticket if you sew your own. | Per unit. Moves with your buying volume and with mill pricing. |
| The decoration | A per-unit price entered on the job, or contractor charges against the tracked stages. | Per unit. Usually falls as the run gets longer. |
| Setup | Screen burning, digitizing, sampling, strike-offs. | Once per design, whatever the quantity. This is the line that quietly kills small runs. |
| Spoilage | Misprints, mis-hoops, dye faults. | A percentage of the run. Ordering blanks with an overage is normal practice, not pessimism. |
In AIMS360 the blank cost follows it from purchase or production, the job carries its per-unit decoration price, and material and labor costs from the source style can be copied onto the finished style so the finished record holds the whole picture rather than half of it. Setup charges are a costing decision worth making deliberately: spread them across the run and your unit cost is honest, book them separately and your margin report will flatter every short order you take.
Decorated apparel software splits into two camps, and knowing which one you are shopping for saves everyone a wasted demo.
Color separation, raster image processing, digitizing artwork into stitch files: none of that happens in AIMS360. Those stay in the art software your production team already knows.
Production tracking follows stages and contractors. It does not schedule presses by head count, sequence the screen room, or tell you which automatic is free at 2pm.
If your business is quoting one-off jobs for local teams and schools, with artwork proofs and customer approvals in the loop, a print shop management tool sits closer to that daily work than an ERP does.
The system of record for the goods and the money: blanks and finished styles on one inventory, orders across every channel, purchasing, warehouse, shipping, retailer EDI and accounting. Brands that decorate a line and sell it wholesale, to majors and direct, are the fit.
Plenty of operations run both: a shop tool on the production floor and AIMS360 holding inventory, orders, costing and the books. That is a reasonable setup, and it is worth deciding on purpose rather than discovering it eighteen months in.
What brands ask when they buy blanks and sell decorated goods.
An undecorated garment bought or made to be printed, embroidered, dyed or embellished later. A plain tee, a blank polo, an unprinted hoodie. AIMS360 calls it a source garment, and it is a stocked style in its own right with its own colors, sizes and cost.
The blank and the finished style are separate records, connected by a source garment mapping on the finished style. When a decoration job is created, the blanks are relieved from inventory and the finished units become work in process. When the job is received, finished goods land in stock carrying their cost.
Yes. The name is historical. AIMS360 documentation states the Garment Dye program is used for any finished goods style where a process such as dye, screen print or embellishment turns a source garment into a unique finished style. Embroidery, heat transfer and sublimation run the same way.
By mapping every decorated style back to the blank it consumes, so the system knows a hundred designs on one tee share one pool of shirts. AIMS360 holds one master stock record for the source garment, and the Source Garment Stock Status report shows blanks required against blanks on hand across all open orders.
Yes, and many brands do both. Purchased blanks arrive on a vendor purchase order. Blanks you make yourself are produced on a cut ticket from prepared for dye fabric, with the bill of materials issued against it. Both land in the same source garment record.
Source garments can be mapped at the size level, so a blank with a different size scale can cover a finished style size by size. This comes up when a retailer changes a size requirement late, or when your usual blank is out of stock and a substitute has to fill in.
Yes. Production tracking follows named stages such as print, dye, launder, finish and QC, and each stage can be assigned to a different vendor. A garment that is printed at one shop and embroidered at another stays visible across both.
That depends on a system setting. By default, cancelling finished goods on the job returns the source garments to inventory as though they were never used. There is an option to switch that off, which is what you want when the garments have already been through part of the process and cannot go back to stock.
No. Artwork preparation, color separation, raster image processing and embroidery digitizing stay in your art software. AIMS360 handles the goods and the money around them: blanks, finished styles, inventory, orders, costing, shipping and accounting.
Blank cost plus decoration cost plus setup, with a spoilage allowance on the blanks. The blank cost follows it from purchase or production, the job carries a per-unit decoration price, and source style material and labor costs can be copied onto the finished style. Setup charges such as screens and digitizing are once per design, so spreading them across the run is what keeps short orders honest.
Yes, if the system can see them coming. Decoration jobs are work in process with expected dates, so orders can be written against production that is still out at a contractor. That is how brands take wholesale bookings and retailer purchase orders before the print run finishes.
No. The same pattern covers any product where a base item becomes several finished items through a later process: decorated headwear, printed bags and accessories, branded drinkware, personalized home goods. If one thing in your warehouse can become many things on your price list, this is the workflow.
Last reviewed 19 August 2026 by the AIMS360 team. AIMS360 capabilities described on this page, including source garment mapping at style, color and size, the Source Garment Stock Status report, decoration jobs created from allocated customer orders or manually, stage tracking by contractor, multi-warehouse source garment search and receiving with damages, reflect the Garment Dye and production tracking workflow as documented in the AIMS360 support knowledge base. Decoration method descriptions follow standard trade practice and are not AIMS360 features. The 216 style example is illustrative arithmetic, not customer data. Your own configuration is set during implementation.
In thirty minutes we will map a real blank to a real decorated style, run the blanks required report against your order book, and build the job. Bring the messiest one you have.
