Walkthrough · 6 min read
Using a Bill of Materials (BOM) Effectively
Build a recipe that actually drives stock-shortage checks and cost rollups, not just a components list nobody reads.
A BOM isn't just documentation here — it's what the app checks against before letting you book an order, and what it uses to work out what that product actually costs you to make. Getting it right pays for itself the first time it stops a shortage you'd otherwise have found out about on the shop floor.
Find the product
Go to Inventory / BOM → the Bill of Materials (BOM) tab. The product picker only lists finished goods — if you're building the recipe for a sub-assembly (an "intermediate" product that's itself a component of something bigger), you won't find it in this list directly; it only shows up once it's added as a component inside the finished good's own BOM.
Create the recipe
A product with nothing set up yet shows "No active BOM found for this product" with a Create BOM Recipe button. Give it a version label (it defaults to "1.0" — useful once you're revising a design later) and, if you want the app to know how long and what it costs in labour, pick a Manufacturing Route — see building a manufacturing route if you haven't made one yet. Leaving it on "No route" is valid too — it just means the cost rollup won't include any labour, only materials.
Add every component
+ Add Component for each raw material or intermediate good that goes into one unit, with the quantity required and its unit. There's a "Create New Raw Material…" shortcut right there if something isn't in your catalog yet.
Watch out for this
There's no built-in scrap or wastage percentage on a BOM line — the quantity you enter is exactly what gets checked and costed, with nothing added automatically. If your process genuinely wastes 5% of a material, build that into the quantity you type rather than assuming the app accounts for it.
Save
Only one version of a BOM is ever active for a product at a time — this is the one the app checks stock and cost against, and the one that shows up here. There's no version-switching screen; the version label is just a note next to the product name for your own reference.
What an effective BOM actually buys you
- ·It stops a bad booking before it happens. Confirming a sales order for a manufactured product checks the BOM against what's actually in stock — recursively, so a shortage in a component's own sub-assembly gets caught too — and blocks the booking with a clear shortage list rather than letting production find out the hard way.
- ·It sets your cost and sale price for you. Saving a BOM rolls material cost and labour cost (from the attached route, if there is one) straight up into that product's own Cost Price and Sale Price — and a change to a component's own BOM ripples up through anything that uses it, so you're never quoting off a stale number.
Still stuck?
Email hello@manufacturerp.co.uk and a real person will help — not a ticket queue.