Not-Yet-Releasable Holds (Curing, Regulatory Clearance, and Custom Waits)

Some production genuinely isn't ready to sell the moment it comes off the line — soap needs weeks to cure, concrete needs days to set, cheese needs to ripen, packaged water needs a lab test. AskBiz can track this automatically as a hold: a batch of output is flagged as not-yet-releasable until either a set number of days passes, or someone manually clears it with a photo.

Four of AskBiz's 12 factory types create a hold automatically, with no setup needed, whenever a matching output or packaging capture is logged:

• Packaged Drinking Water — a regulatory lab-test hold with no fixed duration; it can only be cleared manually.
• Soap / Detergent Making — a 35-day curing hold.
• Concrete Block / Brick Making — a 7-day minimum-cure hold (full design strength at 28 days is noted for information but isn't a second blocking hold).
• Dairy Processing — a 14-day ripening hold, on the cheese line only (yoghurt and ghee/butter aren't held).

If your factory type isn't one of these, or is set to Other, output isn't held automatically — but you can still set up a manual hold, below.

If your factory type is unset or Other, go to Settings → Localisation → Factory Settings → Batch Hold and turn it on. Give it a label and, if it has a fixed wait, a number of days — leave the days blank if it should only ever be cleared manually. This applies to every output and packaging capture, not per-product.

A hold with a fixed number of days clears itself automatically once that time passes — no action needed. A hold with no fixed duration (like water's lab test) only clears when someone with the hold.clear permission (Shift Supervisor, Production Manager, or Owner, by default) formally clears it from the Production log, with a required photo as evidence.

Both a dispatch capture and a waybill check what you're dispatching against any open holds. If it matches, you'll see a warning — the hold's label and how long is left, or that it needs manual clearance — with Cancel or Dispatch anyway. This warning is there to make you stop and check; tapping Dispatch anyway always lets the dispatch or waybill go through. It's a prompt, not a hard block enforced by AskBiz's servers.

Holds stop something shipping too early. AskBiz also tracks the opposite problem — stock that needs to ship before it goes off. Today this is automatic for Bakery only: a matching output or packaging capture gets a short sell-by window (currently 24 hours). The Factory hub and Production log show an amber "expiring soon" badge in the last few hours before that window ends, and a red "expired" badge after it passes. Unlike holds, there's currently no Settings option to set a custom decay window for other factory types.