In xentral, there are two types of BOMs:

• Bill of materials → The Bill of materials is stored as a whole set with a number and is booked out in shipping
• Just-in-Time Bill of Materials (Set items) → The components are stored as individual items and also booked out individually during shipping

The first type of bill of materials refers to a bill of materials, which is a finished product with an item number in the warehouse. The product, consisting of the individual components of the bill of materials, is removed from storage during shipping as a product removed from stock. The components have already been taken from the Warehouse.

Thus, for example, a USB cable is part of this bill of materials and from the moment of storage bound to this bill of materials. (i.e. no longer available as a single cable for other BOMs). 

Check the "Bill of Materials" box in the item in Details → Other. Also, you need to tick the box in the "Stock item" field. 

So check the following boxes: 

• Stock item 
• Bill of materials

A just-in-time bill of materials is a bill of materials, that is stored in the warehouse as individual parts, each with its own part number. The parts contained in this type of BOM may also be used in other Just-In-Time BOMs as well. This bill of materials will be multiple products when shipped out and scanned. In this way, duplicate warehousing of a wide variety of products is avoided.

So you can use, for example, a USB cable in many Just-In-Time BOMs, without the material in the warehouse having to be assigned to these Bill of Materials.

Note: Partial delivery of individual components of a BOM is not possible! Xentral assumes that a BOM may only be shipped in its entirety.

In the item itself, in the Details → Other settings, check both the "Bill of Materials" field as well as the "Just-In-Time Bill of Materials". By ticking off the latter field, another field "Pre-produced BOM" will appear, in which you can enter the pre-produced BOM:  

So check the following boxes: 

• NONE Stock item
• Piece list
• Just-In-Time Bill of materials (always both parts lists selected)

The central starting point here should be muesli as an article. The muesli is mixed from various cereals and can be ordered both as a single pack as well as a set of 4, or purchased.

Single pack.

The single pack is a normal item list, which has the various cereals/ingredients as items and is Is kept as a stock item: 

Set of 4

The set of 4 consists of four units of individual packaging and is a Just-In-Time-piece list without stock control: 

In the "BOM" tab in the article, you can add new BOM items: 

On the documents, you can hide individual bills of material items for the customer. For internal processes (e.g. shipping process) the single items are displayed. The setting "Hide single item" in the Just-In-Time parts list has no effect on the pro forma invoice and refers to order, invoice and delivery bill.

You can mark an item as a "production item" to transfer it from an order into a production item. This setting takes the item into a production: "Continue order as production":

1. Select an item
2. Select the bill of materials option by ticking it and click on "Save"
3. New tab "Bill of materials" appears in the menu

1. Click on "+New item"
2. Search for an item and click on it using the blue box 
3. Enter the number and click "Save"
4. The rest of the fields are optional and therefore do not necessarily have to be filled out by you

Note: From version 19.3 you can, under point 2 in the blue field, also search for item numbers of suppliers or customers from the sales or purchase prices. To do this, you must under Administration → System → Basic Settings → System activate the advanced item search:

Note: Until version 21.1 it's via Administration → Settings → Basic Settings → System.

This is what a parts list with different parts looks like:

If you add to a piece list an item that already exists in the item list, the item should be added individually, or the quantity should be added to the already existing article (from 18.4):

In the piece list there is the possibility, to define an alternative item. This option is purely for information in the article and initially has no direct effect on the piece list. So that you can define the alternative article in the piece list, the alternative article must be in the bill of materials. In the production itself, the unneeded bill of material item is removed accordingly. The following example shows this in more detail.

1. specify an alternative article in the bill of materials 

Set an alternative item in the parts list using the "Alternative item" button.  

2. adding the alternative article

Then you add the alternative article, which you can either enter manually or select it from the list using the "magnifying glass" icon. In the field below you can additionally enter a reason for the alternative: 

You will then see an overview of the added, alternative articles. You can add more via the "Alternative" field: 

Finally, click "Save." 

3. Information about the alternative item

Informationabout the alternative article you see now in the parts list of the Article, where this is supplemented:

4. Display in production

In production, the alternatives to the article are displayed textually in gray, this is only the display in the item overview:

The piece list is also clearly displayed in a tree structure. Thereby the individual levels as well as sub-items are easier to see - especially for sub-bill of materials:

You can import existing parts lists. You can import these at Item → Piece list → Piece list. Import → Select template. When importing BOMs, the old Bill of Materials is deleted. and replaced by the new imported Bill of Materials:

When importing, a CSV file is required, which consists of item number and quantity. For example:

You can select this file with the "Browse..." button and click on it with the button "Load piece list". If the upload is successful, it will look like this, for example:

By clicking on the "Import now" button, you confirm the import of the piece list.

The following imports are currently supported: 

• Standard import
• Altium - Bill of Materials
• Solid Edge - Bill of Materials

In the standard import, you can select in the first column which row contains the first relevant data, in the example above row two. In columns two and three you select which information is in these columns. With the button "Import now" you finish the import and in the tab "Overview" you can now see the imported articles:

You can import an Altium - bill of materials with up to up to five attributes. These five attributes are "Value", "Quantity", "Part number", "Package" and "Reference". There is already a preset order of the attributes from the Altium - part list, but you can change the order. The default order is that the quantity in the second column, the part number in the thirteenth column, the package in the fifth column, the value in the sixth column, and the reference in the third column.

Here you can select, as in the standard import, the row where the first relevant information is for the import. In the first row of the columns are drop-down fields, in which you can select which information is information is located in these columns, as visible in the highlighted fields in the example below:

The attributes "item number" and "quantity" are transferred to the top item piece list. The other three attributes are stored in the top item Placement:

In addition, it is currently possible to create a Solid Edge Bill of Materials to import. With this bill of materials, the quantity and the article number will be taken over. By default, it is set that the article number is in column two of the part list. and the quantity in column five. You can change this via dropdown fields. In the first column is the selection for the row, where the first relevant information for the import is located, as well as with the other two bills of materials:

A bill of materials you can always also import directly to the shipping center without production. Prerequisite is the storage of the individual articles. For internally produced articles it is advisable to run them through production and then put them into storage. For purchased parts, you can store the goods directly via goods received or manually. 

The bill of materials consists of one main item. This is the item that the customer buys from you, e.g. here it is called "Bill of materials Device" and has the item number 16-1020. This item now contains three more articles, because the customer receives with one delivery 1x the device itself "device" and two accessories: 1x "accessory part 1" and 1x "accessory part 2".

A part list then has this structure:

Bill of materials device (main item. = this item the customer buys → includes the device itself and here two accessories)

• Device (Device 1x)
• Accessory part 1 (part1 1x)
• Accessory part 2 (part2 1x)

First, create the main article (ex. "piece list. Device"). This article is the "shell" that the other articles will be added. For the main item, activate the "Just-in-Time-Bill of Materials" field, which automatically activate the "Bill of Materials" field: 

Now create the BOM items (in the example these are the three items: "device", "accessory part 1" and "accessory part 2". These all need an independent article number, so they are all separate articles. For the sub-articles (parts list articles) activate the "Stock item" field in the article:

Now click again directly into the main article (ex. "Piece list. Device"). Click on the tab "Piece list" → Overview and add to this item (the "shell") the sub-items (the actual stock items):

• Click on "+New Item." In the tab that appears, enter the quantity and click "Save"
• Add all desired items

Note: Only four decimal places are available for specifying the quantity of your BOM item. A more precise specification, e.g. for production, is currently not possible.

The main product now contains all related items. Since these sub-items are stock items and the main item is a just-in-time bill of materials (i.e., not an in-stock item), only the sub-items are kept in the warehouse. That is, if all of these items are in stock, the order traffic light for the warehouse turns green and the order can be shipped.

At the bottom of the page there is a gray text box. It shows you how often you can produce this just-in-time bill of materials with the current stock. This way you can quickly see how often the BOM is available without having to manually recalculate. You can view this "producible" stock at any time in your BOM product in the Parts list tab.

In the order (minidetail → log view), the inserted main item looks then looks like this: 

The order traffic light for the warehouse is orange when items from the item list are not in stock. The main item is displayed as "set." This item is not a stock item. As soon as the missing articles are put into stock, the traffic light switches to green during recalculation. Then you can submit the order to logistics.

For this example, the process "Simple stock posting + scanning in the Shipping Center" has been selected:

The order is now transmitted to the logistics department and can be processed:

For a bill of materials, under Purchasing → Costing, the purchase prices of the individual components are listed. You see the minimum (lowest) purchase prices as well as the maximum purchase prices:

Also displayed are the possible prices taking into account the Scale prices, if the individual components of the piece list have one. Should a certain (scale) price be missing for one of the components, in order to get a different price for the entire piece list, you can read here, how many prices are missing for this (i.e. they are not created in the system) and to which component of the Bill of Materials they belong. 

In Item → Details, there is a field called "Preproduced Piece list". Here you can create an alternative piece list (normal piece list. as stock item - not JIT) to this JIT item, which can be stored in parallel: 

When inserting the items in the order, if the quantity is taken completely from the pre-produced bill of materials then the items are exchanged and the JIT bill of materials is replaced by the pre-produced bill of materials in the order.

Note: The name of the original item will remain the same. It changes in the document view only the item number and thus the underlying article in the background.