2. Items

Items #

Introduction #

Manu Online supports five item types:

Of these, only materials are stockable i.e. are kept in stock with a stock value. All five types can be used in the manufacturing of a product, and the item card for a manufactured item contains the list of items consumed to make a single unit of product. We call this the “Product Structure”, rather than the more traditional “Bill of Materials” BoM, because this list is not just materials.

Materials can be planned for purchasing or planned for manufacturing. If materials are planned for manufacturing they are also associated with a manufacturing template. The manufacturing template contains data for the processes by which items are created or consumed. This happens particularly in a manufacturing template which contains the product structure and manufacturing route.

All items must be given a unique item number which cannot be later changed. This is referred to as an “Item ID”. Other names used in industry are “Part numbers”, “SKU’s”, however in Manu Online we refer to Items and Item ID’s

Anything that can have an associated cost can be an Item. Items can be produced or consumed in a manufacturing operation. Produced Items are inevitably a product or subassembly. Consumed Items can be any item. Note also that because the Item is something that is consumed, a person is not an Item, but the use of a person’s time is an Item. Similarly a machine is not an Item, but machine usage is an Item. This is worth bearing in mind when defining the naming conventions of Items. When deciding whether to have one or more work time items, consider the cost aspect. If all labour is relatively close in value then use one item. If different skills sets earn different values, then use different items e.g. “Welding” or “Assembly”. Operators are entered separately from items, so there is no reason to create different work time items for different people.

An up-to-date Item list is crucial for operating the system successfully. As mentioned it the getting started articles, data cleansing before using the system can require a significant effort depending on how badly out of date is the previous system. Typically a small company will have hundreds or even thousands of material items, but only a few items of other types.

Items can be created by copying from the system’s master template for the item or by copying from another item. The system master template can be edited in the System settings section.

Item numbering systems #

Manu Online supports either significant or non-signficicant numbering sytems. Signficant numbering systems try to classify an item in its id itself where as non-significant is just a number.

If you are not importing numbers from a previous system, then decide between the two. While it is pleasant to work with a well established significant numbering system, bear in mind that in large organisations with tens of thousands of numbers, they usually use non-significant numbers because it is just too time consuming creating all the numbers and managing the rules for them.

The next number of a created item is set in System settings -> System numbers. It is recommended not to start with 1 but with a 6 or 8 digit number such as 100001 so that numbers will always be the same length. It is strongly recommended not to use extended or non-standard characters such as ‘ or * as these risk creating trouble with barcode readers.

Item Families #

Items can be members of three ‘Item Families’. The choices of each family are defined in the system parameters. The item family lists deserve careful consideration when setting up the system, as a well-chosen list significantly helps in the benefits and ease of use of the system. However an item can be changed from one family to another without any detrimental consequences at a later date. The item families are used for filtering when selecting an item in an order or invoice, and for reporting such as Sales order analysis.

An example of the use of families in the clothing business would be:

1. Product line e.g. T – Shirts or Sleeved Shirts
2. Size e.g. S, M, L
3. Colour e.g. black, white.

In this way when searching for an item, you can find all black in size small.

Licensing #

The following license modules affect the Item Card (See the Admin->Licensing section for more details):

Creating a new Item #

New items can be created manually or imported. If you have item data in a connected accountancy system, you should import this data first. This will “map” the item in Manu Online and the item in the accountancy system. This will prevent the items being duplicated at a later stage.

Items can also be created manually, one by one, or by importing them on spreadsheets (material items only). See the article on importing data for the latter.

Sometimes it may be unclear whether a new Item is needed or not. In this case think about costs. If the cost is different, then a separate Item is needed. For instance a labour Item may be ‘Std labour’ but the same type of person on overtime may be ‘Std labour 150%’.

Items can be created from multiple places in the system where the item selector is shown. To create a new Item click ‘New’ next to the Item type you want. This defines, whether the new Item will be a material, machine, work, subcontracting job or cost item.

When an item is created using the ‘New’ button, it is actually created by copying from the template of that item. Any item can also be copied to create a new item.

Enter the required Item ID. If you are using auto numbering for Item ID’s, accept the proposed number. If not then change the number to the correct id.  New Items can be created by copying from another. After copying, the Item details can be modified to their correct values.

The item id cannot be changed later. If it is required to change an item id, copy it to a new item and then delete the original. Items can not be deleted if they have been used, but they can set to Inactive so that users can not buy and sell them, and they will not be listed by default.

The maximum ID length is 25 characters.

Product availability #

Product availability can be checked from the ‘Items’ dashboard on the Sales menu. In this feature you can see the number of free stock that exists at the moment, how much of the stock is currently in production, and the expected time that the stock will be ready for sale. Similar information is available when entering sales orders from the item selector on a sales order line. More detailed information is also available from the item popup which is linked from any place that an item id appears on the screen.

On Sales main page, select ‘Other operations’ and then click ‘Product availability’. This gives a list of products and their available quantities. You can use following criteria:

• Complete item ID

• A part of item ID

• Item family 1, 2 or 3.

Press [Retrieve] to view a list of products that match the criteria. On the list you can see product total stock quantities, free in stock quantities and quantities that are being manufactured.

Every item has an associated cost. In the case of materials the current cost is based on a FIFO (First In, First Out) cost average of items in stock. For other items the cost is specified explicitly and is fixed for the item.