Demo data
Fill a company with a realistic industry story, so every screen has something in it, and put back exactly what was there before with one click.
Demo data populates a company with a coherent industry dataset covering items, BOMs, routings, customers, suppliers, orders, production, quality, maintenance, training, accounting, scheduling, and material planning.
Use demo data to explore, demonstrate, or test Carbon with realistic records. Apply it under Settings → Demo Data or select Use a demo template during sign-up.
The templates
Each template provides linked records across sales, purchasing, production, quality, and accounting:
Seeded dates are relative to the application date and include recent orders, jobs in progress, and upcoming due dates. Parts include thumbnails, and each template includes a 3D assembly.
Templates include normal and exceptional states: lost and expired quotes, partially shipped orders, paid and partially paid invoices, voided receipts, closed accounting periods, and succeeded, failed, and skipped workflow runs.
Related stock movements and payment settlements keep quantities and invoice balances consistent. Posted invoices, payments, memos, receipts, and shipments include journal entries for financial reports.
Jobs span every work center over three weeks and include active and recently completed operations.
The signed-in user receives a job, shift, assignments, and an open time card. Templates also configure sales and storage rules, purchase approvals, and customer portals. They do not add uploaded files, so Documents remains empty.
A template is not a backup
Carbon generates demo data from current dataset definitions rather than a stored backup. To copy another company's actual data, use a backup.
Apply a template
Under Settings → Demo Data, select Apply for a template. Carbon first snapshots current company data, then replaces it with the template. The operation continues if you leave the page and reports each phase.
After applying the template, Carbon runs MRP and scheduling in the background to populate Material Planning, Demand Forecasts, Scheduling, and Priorities. If this run fails, the demo data remains and the regular three-hour MRP run retries the work.
Some companies can't take demo data
Carbon cannot apply a template when the company contains records that cannot be deleted:
A company with intercompany customers or suppliers fails with "Seed: this company trades with other companies in its group (N intercompany customer/supplier record(s)). Demo data can only be applied to a company without intercompany partners."
A company with posted card transactions fails with "Seed: this company has N posted or voided card transaction(s), which cannot be deleted. Demo data can only be applied to a company without posted card transactions."
When it finishes, the "Demo data applied" card asks you to decide:
- "Keep" accepts the demo data and permanently deletes the saved copy of your previous data, so it can't be reverted afterwards. Carbon asks you to type "I understand, keep the demo data" to confirm.
- "Revert" puts back exactly what was here before.
Only one demo-data change can be active per company. Application is atomic: if it fails, Carbon writes no rows and displays the error.
Revert works even after a hiccup
If a revert seems stuck, the card says so after a few minutes and offers "Retry revert". The saved copy of your data is kept until the revert succeeds, so retrying is always safe.
Demo data at sign-up
The same templates power onboarding. When anyone creates a new company, the data step asks "How would you like to start?":
Choosing a template then asks "Which best describes your company?" and seeds the matching industry. See Getting started for the rest of the wizard.
Who can see the Demo Data page
Anyone with permission to update settings can open Settings → Demo Data.