Guides

Parts & BOMs

A part is anything you buy, stock or build — a resistor, a bracket, a finished product. This page covers creating parts, telling BOMs Away where you buy them and at what price, and describing how assemblies are built with bills of material (BOMs).

Finding a part

Click Parts in the top menu to open the Part List. Type in the search box and click Search, or use Advanced to filter on individual fields. Columns lets you add Detail, Reorder point and Unit to the table. See Lists & search for the details that apply to every list.

Click a part number to open its Part Details page.

Creating a part

1. On the Part List, click New.
2. Fill in the form (the fields are described below).
3. Click Save. You land on the new part's details page, ready to add vendor sources.

To change a part later, open it and click Edit in the action bar.

To create many parts at once, use Importing data.

The part details page

The details page gathers everything about one part: its description and unit, a link to its BOM, where you buy it, how much you have and what uses it.

Further down the page:

• Inventory — stock on hand at each location. Click the heading to open the part's inventory page, where you can add or adjust stock (see Inventory & locations).
• Used On — the assemblies that use this part directly, with the quantity per assembly.
• Rolls Up Into — the top-level products this part ends up in, with the total quantity needed to build one. A screw used 4 times in an enclosure and 4 more times directly in the product rolls up as 8.

Use Used On before you change or obsolete a part: it tells you which assemblies are affected.

Vendor sources and prices

A vendor source records that you can buy this part from a particular vendor: their part number, the manufacturer and manufacturer part number, the price, and the pack it comes in. A part can have several sources. Vendors themselves are set up first — see Vendors & manufacturers.

Adding a vendor source

1. On the part's details page, click Add vendor source.
2. Pick the Vendor and enter the Vendor Part #.
3. Optionally pick a Manufacturer and enter the Mfr Part #.
4. Enter the Price, Pack Qty and Pack Unit (see below).
5. Click Add source.

The price is always in the vendor's currency (the Default currency on the vendor), which is why the Price column shows the currency code next to it.

Packs: buying in one unit, using in another

Many parts are sold in packs — a reel of 100 resistors, a box of 100 screws, a 50 m spool. Set:

• Pack Qty — how many of the part's units are in one pack (100 for a box of 100 screws). Leave it at 1 if you buy the part one at a time.
• Pack Unit — a label for the pack, such as box, reel or spool.
• Price — the price of one pack, not one piece.

Purchase orders are placed in whole packs. When you receive a pack, stock goes up by the Pack Qty in the part's own unit — receiving 5 boxes of 100 screws adds 500 screws. The Buy page rounds shortages up to whole packs.

Price breaks

If a vendor charges less for larger orders, add price breaks (tiers) to the source:

1. Click the caret (▸) at the left of the source's row. The panel opens with the source's edit form and its price breaks.
2. Under the price-break table, enter a Min Qty and its Unit Price, then click Add tier.

Both columns are in packs: a break with Min Qty 10 and Unit Price 0.95 means "order 10 or more packs and each pack costs 0.95". BOMs Away uses the highest break your quantity reaches, and the base price below the first break. Entering the same Min Qty again replaces that tier's price; the trash button removes a tier. A source with tiers shows a tiered badge.

Price breaks are used when a PO line is priced and when the Buy page costs a build. The inventory valuation report deliberately uses the base price.

Editing or deleting a source

Open the source's panel with the caret, change the fields and click Save source. The vendor itself can't be changed — delete the source and add a new one instead.

Delete source removes it along with its price breaks. You can't delete a source that has been used on a purchase order; BOMs Away shows "Can't delete this source — it's referenced by a purchase order." Changing a source's price or pack never changes orders already placed — each PO line keeps the price and pack it was created with.

Making a source primary

Exactly one source per part is the primary source, marked with a green Primary badge. The primary source is the one BOMs Away uses to cost builds, to value stock, and to decide which vendor a part is ordered from when you generate purchase orders from the Buy page.

• The first source you add becomes primary automatically.
• To switch, click Make primary on another source's row.
• If you delete the primary source, the oldest remaining source becomes primary.

Bills of material

A bill of material lists the parts that go into an assembly and how many of each. A BOM line can itself be an assembly with its own BOM, so you can describe a product in levels — for example, a product built from a circuit board assembly and an enclosure assembly, each with their own parts.

Viewing a BOM

On an assembly's details page, click View BOM. The BOM List shows the assembly's direct components with their quantity per assembly. In the Part BOM column, View BOM opens the next level down for a sub-assembly.

Seeing every level at once

Click Tree View on the BOM List to see the whole structure in one indented list: each sub-assembly with its own components beneath it, all the way down. Click a sub-assembly to fold its components away, and again to show them. BOM List takes you back, and Download PDF prints it.

Creating or editing a BOM

On a part with no BOM yet, click Create BOM on its details page. For an existing BOM, click Edit on the BOM List. The edit page shows one row per line:

• Add a line — in the blank row at the bottom, pick the part, enter the quantity and click the save button (floppy-disk icon). The part must already exist.
• Change a quantity — hover over the row and click the pencil button, type the new quantity, then click the save button that appears at the end of the row. The cancel button puts the old value back.
• Remove a line — hover over the row and click the red trash button.
• Reorder lines — drag a row and drop it on another row's position.

Click Done to return to the BOM List.

BOMs Away refuses a line that would make no sense: a part can't be on its own BOM, can't appear twice on the same BOM (change its quantity instead), and can't be added to an assembly it is itself part of.

Printing a BOM

On the BOM List (or the BOM edit page), click Download PDF. Anyone can download it; no edit permission is needed. The PDF shows the full multi-level structure, indented by level, followed by a consolidated parts list: every purchased part needed for one assembly, with quantities summed across all levels and costed at each part's primary source price, plus a rolled-up total.

Related pages

• Vendors & manufacturers — set up who you buy from before adding vendor sources.
• Inventory & locations — stock on hand and reorder points.
• Purchasing — the Buy page explodes a BOM to work out what to order.
• Work orders — building assemblies from their BOMs.