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If there's a production aspect of your business, and you're creating new Items out of singular components, then you're likely to grow very familiar with creating a Work Order. Work Orders amalgamate the two major aspects of production: parts and processes. The Work Order form in All Orders 4 offers you a split view to help you more easily see how these two aspects interact:
Every Work Order consists of a number of Steps / Operations. This describes the labor and manufacturing involved with producing the Item in question. All Steps are drawn from the Steps Profile List. Just select the Step from the drop-down menu.
Each Step can contain one or more Components. These are the Items that go into producing the final product. To add a component, highlight a 'Step', and then select (or scan in) the component.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. To start a new Work Order, choose New Work Order from the Production menu, or simply press Ctrl+W.
At the top of the screen, you must first select the Item to be produced as well as how much of the Item was ordered. As you go into production, you can also tally how many of the ordered units have actually been completed thus far:
In the upper right-hand corner, you can enter both the order date and the date the order is due. You can alter these dates using the drop-down calendar control.
Also, if you do not wish to record this transaction within QuickBooks, just click NC Only, which will prevent it from ever going to QB. If you do wish to record the Work Order in QuickBooks for invoicing, click the Record to QuickBooks button on the Work Order's tab:
Of course, you must first finish all steps before it can ever be recorded in QuickBooks.
Each step will have a status which can have one of the following values:
Waiting: Components need to be allocated. You can enter quantities directly into the Allocated column of the Component List, or use ‘Pick All’ or ‘Pick Select’ to automatically allocate components based on available quantities. All components must be allocated before status can be changed to ‘In Production,’ unless you have the ‘Allow status forcing’ option selected in Preferences.
Ready: All components have been allocated and the step is ready to be placed into production.
In Production: The step is currently is being worked on.
Finished: Production is finished for the step.
Status will automatically change from Waiting to Ready. To change to In Production, you use the standard Details column at the end of each row that gives you the option to change status.
To finish this step, choose Finished, and you'll be able to begin the next step. You can skip In Production and go directly to Finished by selecting ‘Allow status skipping’ in Preferences.
Note how the date and time is recorded for you, both the Started time and the Completed time. Of course, since you're not always right at your computer while in production, you can also manually track the duration required for each step:
The budgeted duration (that which is stipulated on the Item's Bill of Materials) is listed under budget, and you also have the UOM (hours, minutes, etc.) listed as a reference. The Actual field is editable, and it enables you to record the actual time taken to complete the step.
Keep in mind that you have a number of Work Order related commands on the toolbar. First, let's examine the commands available from the Activities drop-down menu:
Finish All. This will automatically finish all steps, provided there's enough allocated inventory. Additionally, you must have Status Skipping enabled in your Work Order Preferences for this command to work.
Restart. Starts the Work Order over from scratch, setting the Produced field back to zero and resetting all steps back to Ready status.
Split. If you have already completed at least one assembly (and have the inventory available to produce the remaining total ordered), you can split off the remaining unfinished assemblies into a new Work Order so that you can bill for the ones you've already produced.
Pick Selected. For the selected step, All Orders automatically fills the Allocated column with available stock.
Pick All. For every step in the work order, All Orders automatically fills the Allocated column with available stock.
Flatten. In the case of a multi-level Bill of Materials, you might want to do a single Work Order, listing all the components of the entire hierarchy as though it were a single Bill of Materials. This button allows you to do that. In order for the Flatten function to drill down to the components of the sub-assembly, the sub-assembly must be parked as a ‘Phantom BOM’.
Drill Down. In the case of a multi-level Bill of Materials, Drill Down will to automatically create the chain of work orders for the top level item's sub-assemblies. All work orders that are part of the chain will have the same Drill Down Ref being the work order # of the top level item. You can filter the work order list to by Drill Down Ref to view only the work orders in the drill down chain.
Create Purchase Orders. Opens the Reorder Analysis tool, allowing you to place orders for components required directly from the Work Order.
Create Work Orders. Allows you to create related work orders in order to produce components that are sub-assemblies.
Additionally, you can pull up other information via the Details drop-down list:
Instructions. Brings up any special instructions that pertain to the current Work Order.
Dependency. A dialog appears that shows all current inventory dependencies for your Work Order components.
Lot/Serial #s. If your components contain lot or serial numbers, this command will display available lots, allowing you to choose which lots to access for this Work Order.
Bins.
Brings up a dialog that allows you to specify the bins from which you'll
draw your components:
Clicking on the Get Available
button will pull inventory from wherever it is available.
As always, you can click the Save button at any point to save off your Work Order and its progress. Once a Work Order has been finished, click the QB Record button to send it on to QuickBooks for invoicing. If you ever change your mind, a button will replace it called QB Undo. Click it to wipe the bill from QuickBooks.