Creating Inventory Assemblies

An Assembly is a collection of individual items that make up one item altogether.  This is common for the installation of a large piece of equipment that might require an installation kit of various quantities of various parts.  A part must be designated first as an assembly part in the Part Type field of the Inventory Entry screen. The parts that comprise the assembly must also be set up as stock or serialized parts prior to listing them in the Assembly tab. 

An Assembly part is never purchased in its assembled form; it is something that you buy the components of, and assemble yourself.  This assembly is billed to the customer through Sales Invoicing with its own selling price.  For costing purposes, the costs of the individual parts and quantities are totaled together.  When invoiced, the assembly will also deduct from inventory the quantities of the individual parts that make up the assembly.

Creating a New Assembly

1. Click on the Item List button on your icon bar.
   
   
   
   
2. Click the Add button on the toolbar and select Inventory Part.
   
   
   
   
3. Assign this Assembly a Part Number and Description.  
4. Set the Part Type field to Assembly.  You will immediately be switched to the Assembly tab where you will need to fill in the parts that will make up this item.
5. For every item within this Assembly, enter the Part and the Quantity for that part.  Billing Codes can also be added into an Assembly item to account for fees, expenses and other charges that may not come from materials.
6. Once all of the items have been added, switch back to the General tab.  You'll see the total costs of the items within the Assembly filled into the Average Cost and Base Price.  Select a Category and Sub-Category for this item.  If these do not automatically assign a Markup Code, select one for this item.  The Price fields should be filled in automatically for you.  

At this point, you have completed all of the necessary fields for this Assembly item and can Save the item at any point.  However, the Inventory Entry screen also provides a wide array of features that help with tracking, reporting and the behavior of this item.  

Optional Features

In addition to the basic Pricing and tracking capabilities of inventory items, there are several optional features that can be setup on a per item basis.  You'll definitely want to view these items to see what you want to work with and what you don't need.

General tab

• You can assign a Spiff Method and Spiff Value to particular items in order to encourage technicians to upsell.  If an item is assigned a Spiff and then placed on an invoice, the Salesperson on that invoice will earn the Spiff.  You can view a Salesperson's Spiffs on the Commission Report under Sales → Reports.
  
  
  
  
• Post to Equipment - Do you want this item to appear in the customer's Equipment record when sold?  If so, select "Yes" for Post to Equipment.  If you select "Yes" here, you will also be required to fill out the Manufacturer tab (2) with a Manufacturer, Module, Equipment Type and the length of the Warranty on this item.
• Post to History - Selecting "Yes" next to Post to History will mean that this item gets recorded in the customer's History record each time it is sold.  This makes for easy reporting and tracking of certain items.  You won't want every item to Post to History, however, since this could cause a customer's History records to become overloaded and difficult to read.  You may also designate a specific History Code to be used when this item is transferred to the customer's History.
  
  
  
  
  
• The financial path of an Inventory item can also be controlled.  By default, the Income Account will be blank and the Inventory Account and Cost Account will be filled in by the defaults in the Company → System Setup → System Accounts tab.  These settings are not something that need to be changed and should only be changed with the guidance of an experienced accountant or bookkeeper.  For more information on the financial aspects of inventory tracking, please see our article on the financial side of inventory tracking.
  
  

Notes

The Notes tab provides you with a place to record specific information on this part for viewing by other users.  This information does not post to other screens, such as Invoices or Purchase Orders.