Design Manager is a flexible Project management and accounting package. Although there is a common utilization of Design Manager, the system is flexible enough to allow steps to be skipped. For example, say that one of your long-time Clients wants to order a chair. Since you have a good history with the Client, you do not have to give them a Proposal nor do you have to collect any deposit money from them. All that you have to do in Design Manager is enter the chair as a specification, print a Purchase Order to send to the Vendor, and an Invoice for your Client. You can skip the Proposal and Client deposit steps.
Parts of the system may also be ignored from the point of view of practicality. For instance, you might have a very small design business with little time to enter information into the software. Since you can mentally keep track of your Projects, you can choose not to bother entering acknowledgment information, receiving status, etc. In other words, it might be enough for you that Design Manager knows when the Items were ordered, how much they cost, and when you paid the Vendor for the merchandise. Design Manager tracks purchase order acknowledgments, expected shipping dates, back order quantities, received quantities, delivery dates, etc., however, you are not required to utilize all of those features. You can pick and choose the dates and order tracking information which is important for you to record and ignore the rest!
Moreover, all the features of Design Manager need not be utilized. For instance, if your company does not record and/or bill for time spent on a project, the Time features and associated functions can be left completely unused with no negative effects!