Making things is under Inventory, Production: Formulas for blends, Finished goods for kits and filled units built from parts on the shelf, Make to make a batch, and Runs for runs a contract manufacturer makes for you.
Formulas
A formula is a blend written by weight or by percent: a color mix, a lotion, a scrub.
- Open Inventory, Production, Formulas, and choose Add formula.
- Choose By weight or By percent (it has to come to 100%), and list each part and how much.
- Set the Batch size and what One batch makes. With a specific gravity, weight and volume convert for you.
- Leave the finished part empty for something mixed and used straight away, or pick a part when the batch goes on the shelf as stock of its own.
Finished goods
A finished good is a bundle or kit built from parts on the shelf: a gift set, a filled bottle with its cap and label. Making it takes the items out of stock and puts the finished item in, at what its items cost. Choose Add finished good under Finished goods, with the parts it takes.
A finished good is written By amount, or By percent for a batch that goes on the shelf as a part of its own, such as a bulk lotion: each line is a share of the batch by weight, as on a formula.
With manufacturing on, a finished good also says its Time to make a batch, in minutes, hours or days. A day is a working day on the resource it runs on. A run made from it takes that time, and the run can change it.
Stages
A line of a finished good can be Made as a stage when its part has a finished good of its own. The usual one is a filled bottle and its bulk: the bulk's batch is a stage of the fill.
- Starting a run of the finished good starts a run of each stage with it, sized for what the run needs less what is on hand and not taken by other open runs. When there is enough already, no stage is made.
- The run waits for its stages: on the schedule it starts once they are done.
- Either can still be made on its own. A stage is a run like any other.
- A run stays open while one of its stages is open. Canceling a run cancels its stages that have not begun; one already under way stays open on its own.
Making a batch
- Open Make, or choose to make one from its own page.
- Pick a formula or a finished good, and say how much.
- Check the stock it will take: what expires first goes first, or Pick the stock by hand, this once.
- Finish it. The stock picked comes out of inventory, and what was made goes in on a tag of its own, at what it cost.
Made Lately lists the batches, who made them and from what.
Starting a run
Start on a run says it began: now, or the day and time it really began when that was missed, up to 60 days back. A run on the schedule moves to when it began, and the plan no longer moves it. Not started takes back a start said by mistake, until something comes back from the run.
Taking kits apart
On a finished good, Take it apart puts its items back on the shelf: the kits come off, and their items go back on at what the kits cost, shared among the items by what each is worth. Nothing is gained or lost in the books.
Production runs with a contract manufacturer
- Open Production, Runs, and choose New run. Choose what it makes and the maker (from your vendors). The first run to a maker makes a stock place of theirs, where your materials are counted.
- List the materials one unit takes, from a finished good or by hand, saying for each whether you supply it or the maker does, and how much is expected to be lost to waste (2% on 1 oz for one is 1.02 oz). Materials the maker supplies are in their charge.
- Set Their charge for each, and see the expected cost of one: your materials at what they cost now, waste included, and the maker's charge.
- Send materials. They move to the maker's place, counted there as yours.
- As finished goods come back, Receive finished goods: they come into stock, and what they took comes out of the maker's place.
- Enter their bill from the run. It goes into the books under Inventory, because what they charge is part of what the finished goods cost. Entering it takes the books switch.
- Bring back what is left, or Write off a shortage, and close the run.
With manufacturing on, a run can also be made at your own plant: leave Maker as We make it ourselves, and place it on a tank, a line or a room under Production, Schedule. Its materials go to the plant on a transfer, and Record what was made uses them from there. See Manufacturing: the schedule, materials and purchasing.
Best practices
- Write formulas by weight. Percent is fine for a recipe card, but weight is what the scale and the costs read.
- Give every batch that goes on the shelf a lot number and a date. It is the only way to trace a complaint back.
- Set waste from what actually happens on the first few runs, then keep it current.
- Enter the maker's bill as soon as it comes. Until then, the finished goods are costed without their charge.
- Count what is at the maker before you close a run, and write off only what is truly gone.