An assembly is a collection of components that have been put together to be sold as a unit. In Inform ERP, an assembly is treated as a single product, with a unique product number assigned. Kits are a type of assembly in which the final product is built and kept in inventory. Sometimes these may be referred to as bundles, but Inform ERP always uses the terms assemblies and kits. Check the detailed definitions below to see which applies to your workflow.
- Assembly: Assembled products may be made up of several individual product components, sometimes including labor charges. An assembly shows an available quantity based on the availability of the assembly components–no secondary processing is necessary. The cost and or price of the assembled item can be calculated based on the costs and/or prices of the components, if necessary.
- Kit: When you create a kit, you must create an assembly from the required components first You then mark that assembly as a Kit Production, which indicates that it must be built for inventory. Once flagged as Kit Production, you can create a work order to build that kit. Typically, these are items that you produce and keep on the shelf to sell, rather than items that you produce only when needed. Even if you have all of the components available to sell, a kit production item will not show as available until you have produced it through the Kit Production screen. When you build a kit, the components are deducted from inventory, and the kit product is added to inventory. See Produce kits
Each component in an assembly retains its own inventory value. If your assembly is made of 5 pieces of Product A and 10 pieces of Product B, then Product A and Product B are inventoried separately. If you check the inventory on Assembly C created from A and B, but you only have 7 pieces of Product B in stock, then the Inventory for product C will show 0, as you do not have enough stock to package even one full Assembly Product C.
When you sell an assembly, the Ship Confirmation displays a breakdown on the component products, making it possible to have serialized or lot enabled components for better inventory tracking. If you are maintaining bin level inventory, you can also pull components directly from a bin.
Assemblies and kits provide a lot of flexibility to your workflow. Below are links to some tasks you may perform.