Assembly Builds

Assembly builds are no different in function to any other Stock Adjustment - they decrease the stock of some items and increase the stock of another. In that way, everything that I’ve said above about Stock Adjustments also applies to Assembly Builds.

Assembly Builds are essentially a shortcut process that allows you to turn a combination of some products into another product. You might use this for:

• Light manufacturing or assembly processes (building a finished item out of components)

• Cooking or similar (making a finished item out of ingredients)

• Combining smaller stock units into larger packs (e.g. stock 100g units, sell 1Kg bags)

• Making gift packs / kits out of other items you stock

Assemblies in Pakk rely on our ‘Composite’ product functionality to create a streamlined build process. The Composite product describes the ‘contents’ or ‘ingredients’ and their proportions that will go into the assembled finished product. Let’s work through an example - an office PC.

Example: Office PC

The company sells and stocks the following components separately:

• 500GB Hard Drive

• 8GB RAM (2 required for bundle/build)

• Motherboard

• Tower Case

Each of these components are sold separately and accurate stock of each is maintained on the system. The company also sells:

• A bundle consisting of the above components at a discounted price

• A fully built PC containing the above components, at a higher price (to account for the labour). Several of these are maintained in stock at any one time to allow for same-day dispatch.

The following setup is used to capture the complexity of the scenario.

• Each of the components is set up on the system as a regular Stockable Product. Stock is purchased, received, sold and dispatched as normal.

• A ‘Composite’ product consisting of each of the components in the correct proportions (1 of each, apart from the RAM, which has 2). The composite has a sell price 15% lower than the sum of the component sell prices, representing a ‘bundle’ discount.

• Another regular Stockable Product called ‘Office PC (Built and Tested)’ which is used as the ‘target’ of the build assembly. The sell price of this product is 15% higher than the sum of the components, representing a premium for the labour involved in building and testing.

All of the above are offered for sale on the company’s website:

• The components can be purchased individually at their quoted prices. Accurate stock levels are shown for each.

• The bundle is shown and its components listed (done automatically by Pakk). An intelligent stock message which draws from the availability of the individual components is shown (again, automatic with Pakk).

• The built PC is also listed for sale at the higher price. Stock availability for the final, built PC is shown (does not depend on availability of the components, i.e. it is not built on demand).

Build Assembly Targets

The starting point for an assembly build is always a Composite Product. It is the Composite Product that provides the list of components and their proportions for the build. You don’t need to offer the composite for sale separately if you don’t want to, but you’ll need it as the basis of any build you want to do.

Once you have the Composite, which you might consider the ‘source’, you need a ‘target’. The ‘target’ product is the end, finished product that you are going to assemble - the one whose stock will increase once the build is finished. In the above example, the ‘Office PC (Built and Tested)’ is the target of the build.

Running a Build

You need:

• A Composite Product which contains…

• The components that will come together in the build and…

• A stockable target product, and…

• An adjustment account to write any change in value should you decide to value the built stock higher than the combined cost of the components.

Go to the source Composite Product and consult the stock of the individual components. The available stock of each will determine the maximum number of units of the final product that can be built. Make sure you have enough stock available for the number of final units you want to build.

Click ‘Build Composite’ and provide the required information:

• Date: is the date at which the resulting stock adjustment will post

• Build Product: is the target product for the build (the final, assembled item)

• Quantity: the number of units to build

• Value Change Allocation Account: the internal account to which any value change will be posted (no change in value is created by default)

• Expiry Date (optional): the expiry date on the lot of the assembled product that will be automatically created for you.

• Currency: the currency for the stock adjustment

If enough stock is available, the build will be completed, creating a new Stock Adjustment. A new lot is always created for the assembled items (even if other lots of that product already exist) - this way you can track stock created in different assemblies separately. The value of the built stock is the combined average value of the components that go into it, so by default there is no net change in stock value after an assembly build. If you want to account for an increase in value (i.e. the value added by the assembly process), then you can edit the build post-hoc and change the average unit value assigned to the built stock. In this way, stock value is 'created' - and it will be accounted for using the 'value change allocation account' chosen.