Create work orders for the inventory items to manufacture. The system allows you to copy line item data from existing work orders or from sales order transactions; thus, allowing faster entry time. In copying sales order data to your work orders, you can define to copy only the items with open quantity.

Work orders that are active are automatically exploded during work order creation in order to reduce data processing time. Explosion of work orders into its components enables you to determine whether you have enough resources to manufacture the work order. Explosion of work order allocates the raw materials to the work order; this increases the inventory item's allocated quantity. During the explosion process, you may also specify whether to include the set up and teardown time of machine resources if the manufacturing time is less than the sum of set up and teardown time. It is also during this process where you may specify to use component subassemblies that have enough quantities instead of manufacturing the component items.

You may place work orders into work-in-process; thus, this will save time because the system will automatically post work-in-process for all subassembly jobs at the same time. Alternatively, you may place a particular job in a work order into work-in-process, without affecting any related parent or subassembly jobs that you place into work-in-process with different start dates.

The system automatically creates a journal entry to record the costs of the component items that are work-in-process. When you post a job into work-in-process, the system allocates the required raw materials and subassemblies to the job (reducing on-hand quantities) and schedules the required machine and labor resource time. In this regard, the resources become available for work-in-process and reduce their availability to other manufacturing jobs and sales.

You may post work orders as finished for a particular master and/or parent item on a work order. This will save time because the system posts all subassembly jobs as finished at the same time. Alternatively, you may post a work order as finished for a specific job, without affecting any related parent or subassembly jobs. Moreover, you may post finished jobs without first posting to work-in-process.

The system gives you the option to choose how to compute for the finished job cost. You may choose to use the actual cost, standard cost, or standard cost for master items only. This provides you greater flexibility in recording and recognizing finished cost when manufacturing inventory items. You may also define to include overhead costs in your finished job cost. You may further define whether to calculate the overhead cost based on a percentage rate of your finished cost or a flat amount.

During creation of work orders, the system gives you all the information you need about inventory items at a glance. You may view during work order creation inventory information, such as item classes, product lines, unit of measurement, substitute item, warehouse to which you store the inventory item, on-order quantities, in-process quantities, in-transit quantities, allocated quantities, on-hand quantities, booked quantities, and available quantities. You may define an inventory item to be active or inactive. You can only use inventory items with active status in work order transactions.

You may set up, maintain, and delete inventory type records. Inventory types represent groups of related inventory items, such as tables or chairs. Inventory type records are set up to apply default data in the inventory item records to which you assign the inventory type.

You may set up warehouse and bins when you set up inventory type records; thus, you will save a great deal of time and effort because you no longer need to input such information every time you create a new inventory item that belongs to a particular inventory type.

You may set up machine and labor usage records. Machine and labor usage records define the machine and labor resources that you may include in the bill of materials records. The information that you may store includes production rates, costs, work shifts, authorized work center(s) and time before next overhaul. You may also define the general ledger account ID to which the system posts the machine and labor costs when completing a work order.

You may set up and maintain bill of materials records for inventory items that you want to manufacture. A bill of materials record defines the inventory items, machine usage units, labor units, routing steps and instructions required to manufacture one unit of a master or subassembly item. You may copy and/or edit components from an existing bill of materials to a new one; thus, reduces input time and errors.

The revenue code defines the general ledger Account IDs to which you want to post the sales, returns, discount, and costs of goods sold values in transactions affected by the revenue code. You may set up revenue codes in the system by customer, inventory, or salesperson depending upon the revenue-tracking method you have specified. If you chose to track revenue by inventory item, you may assign different revenue codes to each inventory item.

The system provides you with a function in which to adjust the quantity, cost, and total value of your inventory items to match the actual number of units and value of the inventory item in stock. This function is very useful in recording inventory shrinkage, spoilage, and other inventory item changes that are not results of the manufacturing process. You may adjust an inventory item at anytime and you may specify the general ledger Account ID to which you want to post the adjustment.

You may manufacture each job in a work order in several phases, with each phase starting on different dates.

When you post work order into work-in-process, the system allocates the required raw materials, subassemblies, machine resources, and labor resources for the job; thus, preventing overbooking of resources. The MA Module Setup function provides an option to allow overuse of inventory items for component items. To prevent the system from processing work-orders with insufficient resources, you must unmark the Allow Overuse of Component Items checkbox in the General Information page of the MA Module Setup function.

You may rearrange your inventory items in the Line Items page of the Work Order Transactions function in any manner you want to organize the work order. You may also insert items between line items that you have previously entered. You may enter as many master items in the Line Items grid as may be necessary.

Each work order can include an unlimited number of master item and unlimited routing steps for each. Each routing step consisting of any number of machine resources, labor resources, raw materials, and subassemblies. For example, a work order may contain multiple master items and each master item may contain components that are parent items (a subassembly that you manufacture in-house and requires its own bill of materials and components) or raw materials (a labor or machine resource or a basic inventory item not manufactured in-house).

You can set up and maintain labor grade records that represents the type of labor that will be done at a certain step in the manufacturing process. Labor grade records includes information such as the labor, rate type, and labor rate. These records allows you to define the type of labor required in the bills of materials and work orders.  

Work centers are common areas wherein a production process is performed. Work center records represents locations or areas in the shop floor where a certain production process is on-going which includes information such as labor and machine usage, outsourced and settings for the overhead cost calculations.

You may define to use system-generated numbers and specify the next number the system will use for your work order transactions.

You may close work orders without manufacturing all units of the ordered inventory items. You may cancel backorder quantities, return unused inventory items to stock, and release labor or machine resources. The system considers a job and its subassembly jobs as complete and cancels backordered quantities when you cancel backordered quantities of a master item job. The system returns to stock any allocated but unused materials in the cancelled work-in-process; thus, the resources are available for other transactions.

You may prevent a user from posting to finished jobs if you have not yet posted work-in-process for the jobs. This feature ensures that you post all your work-orders into work-in-process.

Work orders can include unlimited remarks. The system maintains a list of user-defined system remarks that you may add and/or edit on work orders. You can also enter remarks directly on a work order, with or without saving them as system remarks.

You may define to print your company name and logo on work orders, routing slips, pick lists, and/or production slips. You may even define to double-space your line items on the mentioned documents.

Date sensitive transfer allows you to transfer data to GL in summary or detail format based upon posting dates. You may post MA transactions to any period of the prior, current, or next year that is still open in general ledger. You may perform transfers as often as you desire at any time during the period; thus allowing you with greater flexibility in posting transactions.

This feature allows you to close the company’s current period in the Manufacturing module and move on to the next period.