Conveniently replacing materials in bills of materials

Sometimes a particular material (item) in a bill of materials is no longer current and we need to replace it with an alternative. When this concerns a single bill of materials, we could retrieve this one and perform a manual replacement. But if the same material has to be replaced in multiple bills of materials, a manual replacement may turn cumbersome. With the feature Replace we can update multiple bills of materials.

In which bills of materials we must make replacements?

The first challenge is to determine in which bills of materials the to-be replaced material is used. Via the path [Manufacturing] Planning, Where-used (in Exact for Manufacturing), or [Inventory] Analysis & results, Where-used (in Exact for Wholesale Distribution) we can show all bills of materials where a particular material is used.

There may be multiple bills of materials for the same product

In Exact for Wholesale Distribution there could be only one Assembly bill of materials (Assembled item) per product. But in Exact for Manufacturing there may be multiple Manufacturing bills of materials (Versions) per product. Each bill of materials has its own Calculated cost price. If there are multiple ways to manufacture the same product, there could be multiple calculated cost prices as well.

This is how we make a replacement

In the overview Where-used we check all the bills of materials that we want to change. We will proceed with pressing the button Replace. A window will be shown where we can select the new material. By pressing Replace on this screen, the replacements will be processed.

We now also can update cost prices

The result of a replacement can be that the calculated cost price of the product has changed. That does not immediately change the (standard) cost price of the product. In Exact for Manufacturing we can update cost prices via the path [Manufacturing] Analysis & results, Cost roll up. With a Scenario we can recalculate all selected products based on the updated bills of materials. With the button Update inventory we change the Cost price of the products (and semi-finished products) into the new Calculated cost price while at the same time updating the inventory value. In Exact for Wholesale Distribution we have no capability to update cost prices in bulk.

The feature Replace is available in Exact for Wholesale Distribution and Exact for Manufacturing advanced and premium editions.