AWRA Help Center

Open Inventory → Items, then the Bills of materials pill in the row at the top of the page. A bill of materials (BOM) belongs to one item — the thing it makes — and lists its components and how many of each it takes.

Creating A Bill Of Materials

1. Choose the item it makes — the finished product, which is an item in your stock list like any other. If it does not exist yet, create it under Items first. Optionally give the list a name (the item’s name is used if you leave it blank).
2. Set how many units one run of this list makes — the output quantity (1 unless the recipe makes a batch, such as 12 bottles).
3. Add each component and the quantity it takes for that output, with an optional note per line.
4. Save. A BOM is active or archived; only an active one can be built from.

An item cannot be a component of itself, and a component that is itself made with the finished item is refused, so a BOM can never loop. Components can have BOMs of their own: build the sub-assembly first, then the product. Editing a BOM changes future orders only — orders already raised keep the components they were raised with.

Checking Stock Before You Build

The BOM page shows today’s cost of one finished unit from current component costs. Enter a quantity and choose Check stock, or pick a warehouse, to see per component what that quantity needs, what is free to use there, and how much you are short. Free to use is what is on the shelf less what is reserved for customers, which is what a build is allowed to take; a component listed on more than one line is judged on its total.

Stock is held in whole units. If a quantity would need a fraction of any component — half a bottle, say — it cannot be built or issued, and the page says which component is the problem. Choose a quantity that uses whole units of every component, or set the output quantity so it does.

Building And Unbuilding

1. Plan the quantity and warehouse at the top of the BOM, then under Build or unbuild choose the direction. The order is raised for exactly the quantity and warehouse planned — a whole number, at most 100,000. Components are drawn from wherever they sit in that warehouse, and what arrives — the finished item, or the components an unbuild recovers — goes to the warehouse’s default bin, where a check-out can take it.
2. Raise order. This creates a draft order (ASM for a build, DIS for an unbuild). Nothing moves yet.
3. For serial-tracked items, enter the serial numbers on the draft: one per finished unit built, and the units of each tracked component used (or recovered, on an unbuild). They are checked when the order is completed.
4. Complete — move the stock. All of it moves, or none of it.

• Build: each component leaves the warehouse and the finished item arrives. The finished item’s average cost moves to take in the cost of what was consumed, and the order records the total and the cost per unit.
• Unbuild: the finished item leaves and the components come back. Its current cost is shared across the components in proportion to what they cost now.
• A draft order can be cancelled; a completed one stays as it is.

A build refuses stock that is reserved for a customer order or frozen by an open stock count, and says so plainly.

What Posts To The Ledger

A build moves value from components to the finished item. When both use the same inventory account — the usual case — that nets to nothing and nothing is posted. When the component and the finished item use different inventory accounts, the value is journalled from one account to the other.

Issuing A Kit Straight To Use

Some lists are used up rather than built into stock — a procedure pack in a clinic, a recipe in a kitchen. Plan the number of uses and the warehouse at the top of the BOM, then under Issue every component choose a reason and Raise check-out. It needs the permission to check stock out as well as to view bills of materials. This raises one ordinary check-out with every component on it, which then goes through approval like any other; reservations, the reason’s accounts and custom fields all apply.

Permissions

• View bills of materials — see BOMs and assembly orders.
• Manage bills of materials — create and edit BOMs.
• Build assemblies — raise, complete and cancel build and unbuild orders, and record their serials.
• Check out — issue every component as a check-out.

Common Mistakes

• Expecting the order to move stock when raised. Only completing it does.
• Building at the wrong warehouse. Components are taken from, and the product is put into, the order’s warehouse. Transfer components in first if they sit elsewhere.
• Missing serials. A tracked finished item needs one new serial per unit built before the order completes.
• Using a build for something consumed. If nothing is put back on the shelf, issue the components instead.

Related

• Batch, Lot & Serial Traceability — following serials through a build.
• Inventory Adjustments — the approval path an issued kit takes.
• Bills of materials and assembly — the feature overview.