Bills of Materials (BOM)

What is it and what is it for?

Every Bill of Materials has a header (name, code, class, ledger accounts) and up to four detail tabs:

• Finished Products: the item(s) produced by manufacturing this bill, with the quantity each production run yields (for example, "1 batch produces 10 units").
• Raw Material: the items consumed to manufacture the finished product, with quantity, unit of measure and an expected scrap (waste) percentage.
• Services: labor or other services that are also part of the manufacturing cost, with their quantity and cost.
• Operations Path (Work Centers): the steps or stages of the production process, with the hours they take, the work center, the position and the equipment (fixed asset) involved. Only available with the Advanced Manufacturing module.

When you create a Production Order from a Bill of Materials, AdmCloud automatically copies its finished products, materials, services and operations path onto the order, so you don't have to enter them again every time you manufacture the same product.

How to use it

1. Open the Bills of Materials list and click New.
2. Enter the Name (required) and, if you want, your own Code; if your company set up automatic numbering for this document, the code is generated on save. Also pick a Class to group your bills and, if your company has Subsidiaries enabled, the Subsidiary it belongs to.
3. On the Finished Products tab, add at least one item with the quantity this bill produces and its unit of measure.
4. On the Raw Material tab, add at least one item (or service) with the quantity consumed, its unit of measure and, if applicable, the scrap percentage.
5. If your company turned on Work Centers, fill in the Operations Path tab with the description, hours and, optionally, the work center, position and equipment for each step of the process.
6. If your company turned on Quality Assurance, add the quality tests (with their unit, maximum and minimum allowed) the finished product must meet, on the matching tab.
7. You can fill in your company's own custom fields from the Create Field button, if that feature is enabled.
8. Click Save.

Approval statuses (Draft / Pending / Approved / Rejected)

If your plan includes BOM Statuses, every Bill of Materials has one of four statuses: Draft, Pending Approval, Approved or Rejected. You can change the status from the list (filtering by status with the links at the top) or from the document's detail screen, with the matching buttons. This workflow lets you control which production recipes have already been reviewed and authorized before you manufacture with them.

Main capabilities

• Filter the list by status (if your plan includes it) and customize which columns show and in what order, saving your own configuration.
• Search Bills of Materials by name or code from the autocomplete lookup, optionally filtered by item (used, for example, when picking a finished product's bill of materials on other screens).
• Duplicate an existing Bill of Materials to create recipe variants without re-entering everything.
• Create a Production Order directly from the button available on the bill's detail screen.
• Print the full bill of materials (finished products, raw material, operations path and quality tests), even with custom templates configured by your company.
• If a finished item is linked to only one Bill of Materials, AdmCloud can auto-select it on other screens (for example, when creating a Production Order for that item), without you having to look it up manually.
• Add your own custom fields to the form, if your plan allows it.

Key fields

Validations when saving

• Name is required.
• Code can't repeat between Bills of Materials; if the document doesn't use automatic numbering, the name can't repeat either.
• At least one finished product with a valid item is required.
• At least one raw material line (item or service) with a valid item is required.
• Unit of measure is required for Item-type items (not for Services) and must exist in the system.
• If you use Work Centers, every operations path line requires a Description; hours can't be negative, and the referenced work center, position, equipment, production line or operation must exist.
• If you reference BOM Stages on any line, they must exist in the stages catalog.
• If you set Attributes (Color, Size, etc.) on a finished product or material, they must be valid options for that specific item.
• A finished product's or a service's cost can't exceed the maximum cost limit configured in the system.
• If your company has Subsidiaries enabled, the document's Subsidiary is required.
• Code (when present) and name can't exceed 200 characters.

Deleting

A Bill of Materials can't be deleted if it's already been used on a transaction (for example, on a Production Order) or if any Item has it set as its default bill of materials. In those cases, AdmCloud shows you exactly which documents or items are using it, so you can decide whether to unlink them or simply mark the bill as Inactive instead of deleting it.

Availability, plans and conditions

• This feature requires the Manufacturing module active in your company (available as an add-on module of the Enterprise edition). Without this module, the screen shows a "not available on this edition" message.
• The following extra capabilities additionally require the Advanced Manufacturing module: the Operations Path tab (Work Centers), Quality Assurance, BOM Stages, the Approval Statuses workflow (Draft / Pending / Approved / Rejected) and tracking of Rejected Products.
• The Attributes columns (Color, Size, etc.) only appear if your company has the Item Attributes module enabled (Advanced Inventory).
• Access is controlled with the "Bills of Materials" permission of the user group, with separate levels for browsing, adding, editing and deleting.
• With Subsidiaries enabled, the list is limited to your current Subsidiary and the Subsidiary is required when saving.

Tips and common mistakes