xTuple ERP Reference Guide

Select if the Item is an Item you purchase. A Purchase Order is the normal supply order. However, you may enter a Work Order for this Item Type.

Select if the Item is an Item you make. A Work Order is the normal supply order. However, you may also enter a Purchase Order for this Item Type. Job Items are considered to be manufactured Items. Use the Job costing option at the Item Site level to distinguish Job Items from regular manufactured Items. For more information about the Job costing option, please see Job.

A transient subassembly containing component Items commonly used together during a manufacturing process. Phantom Items require a Bill of Materials, but not separate Work Orders. Since they are not stock Items, Material Requirements Planning (MRP) logic blows through phantom Items and only plans for their component Items. Phantom Items should be used to simplify complex Bills of Materials.

Select if the Item is an Item you sell—but you neither manufacture nor purchase it. Services are an example of Reference Item. The company sells consulting services, but it doesn't manufacture or purchase them. Reference Items may be configured. This means you can add List Prices to any Reference Item Characteristics. These Characteristic Prices are then added to the Base Price of Sales Order Items when the Characteristic is selected at Sales Order entry.

A kind of pseudo-Item used solely to provide a costed value for a Costing Element. When a user-defined Costing Element is linked to a Costing Item, the Costing Element assumes the Costs associated with the Costing Item. For more information, see Section 6.6, “User-Defined Costing Elements”.

A material resource used in the manufacturing process that is returned upon completion of a Work Order—for example, a reusable mold, apparatus, fixture, or tool. It may be included on a Bill of Materials for an Item, usually specifying a fixed quantity. Tooling Items can be purchased, manufactured, or sold. A manufactured tool can have a BOO, a BOM, and a Work Order. As with other material Items, tools can be tracked as serialized Items. The cost of a tooling Item is not included in the overall cost of the parent Item where it is used.

Select if the Item is an external process or service that is performed by someone outside your company. Outside Process Items are treated by the system in much the same way as purchased Items are. For example, Outside Process Items will be handled in the same way as purchased Items are when Material Requirements Planning (MRP) is run.

An Item whose Bill of Materials (BOM) groups together other Items so that a Production Plan may be defined for the Planning Item—and then exploded down to the lower level Items during a Master Production Scheduling (MPS) run. Planning Items are frequently used to group together product families or product lines of MPS Items. MPS Items are typically top-level saleable Items. By grouping together MPS Items under a Planning Item, the family may be forecasted through with a Production Plan for the Planning Item, thereby simplifying the planning process. The system automatically sets the Planning System as "MPS" by default when a Planning Item is created.

Kit Items automatically explode their Bill of Material (BOM) components on to Sales Orders for shipping. When Kit Items appear on Sales Orders and Return Authorizations, sub line numbers are generated for Kit components because Kit children are sub line items of the parent line item. Kit components are displayed as an indented tree on the Sales Order or Return Authorization—and they are view-only. Also, Kit components will appear on the Pick List report. Kit components may be issued to Shipping, whereas the parent Kit Item may not be. The automatic "Select for Billing" option takes effect for Kit Items when all Kit Items are shipped.

A logical Item from which Co-Products and By-Products are produced. An example use for a Breeder Item is the screening of raw gravel to produce different sizes of gravel. The Breeder Item's Bill of Materials (BOM) defines the inputs—in this case raw gravel—and the outputs are defined on its Breeder BOM (i.e., Small, Medium and Large gravel). A Work Order is created for the Breeder Item, but this Item is never stocked or produced; again, it is a logical Item. Instead, raw gravel is consumed by the Breeder's Work Order, along with labor, and the resulting quantities of Co-Products and By-Products are recorded.

Co-Products are Items that you keep and which absorb Costs. They are produced during a manufacturing process. See "Breeder" Item Type above.

By-Products are things that you throw away and incur Costs doing so during a manufacturing process. See "Breeder" Item Type above.

Specify the Product Category if the Item is sold. All sold Items must be assigned a Product Category.

Specify the List Price for the Item, based on the selling UOM (i.e., "Per" UOM). List Prices may also be created and modified in the Item Pricing section of the Sales module. Changes made to the List Price in either location will be updated system-wide.

Specify the Wholesale Price for the Item. The Wholesale Price may be used as the Unit Cost for markup purposes, depending on your pricing configuration. For more information, please see Use Wholesale Price as Unit Cost for Markups.

Specify the selling Unit of Measure (UOM) for the Item. The List Price should be based on this selection. By default, the Inventory UOM will be used here. You will not be able to select a different UOM until you first manually create a selling UOM using the options found under the "UOM" tab on the Item master.

Select if the Item is sold exclusively. If a sold Item is marked as Exclusive, it may only be sold to specified Customers or Customer Types. To link Exclusive Items to Customers, you would first include the Item on a Pricing Schedule—indicating relevant Prices and Quantity Breaks. You would then assign the Pricing Schedule to specified Customers or Customer Types, using the Pricing Schedule assignment functionality found in the Item Pricing section of the Sales module.

If the Item is sold with a warranty, specify the number of days the warranty extends for. The warranty period begins on the date the Item is sold and ends on the specified number of days afterward. Setting this option to "0" days indicates the Item does not come with a warranty.

Specify the pre-packaging weight of the product, in pounds.

Specify the weight of the product packaging, in pounds.

This is a scrolling text field with word-wrapping for entering Notes related to the Item. Any Notes entered on this screen are for internal purposes only.

The Extended Description field is for entering descriptive Item information, which may be printed on Sales and/or Purchasing documents. You would add the Extended Description to printed documents using the report writer. The report writer enables you to customize Forms to include data stored in the database. To enter an Extended Description of an Item, select the "Extended Description" option.

To view system-generated Comments associated with an Item—or to add new and edit Comments of your own—select the "Comments" option.

Enter a value for the source UOM to be used in the conversion ratio for the alternate Item UOM.

Enter a value for the per UOM to be used in the conversion ratio for the alternate Item UOM.

The Alt. Capacity UOM should be used to provide an alternate UOM for viewing Inventory details. For example, a Sales Manager may be satisfied looking at a group of Items normalized to their selling or Inventory UOM, but a Production Manager may need to look at the same Items normalized to a Production UOM—say, Cubic Feet (CuFt).

In Capacity Planning and Sales Analysis reports, the Capacity UOM enables you to make apples-to-apples comparisons of Items that use different Inventory UOMs. For example, let's say that Item A is a carton containing 24 Item B"s—and that you sell both Items. However, Item A and Item B use different Inventory UOMs. Item A is measured by the CASE (24), and Item B is measured by EACH. By utilizing the Capacity UOM, you have the ability to track total load and total sales for Item B—even though the Inventory UOM for Item A obscures the quantity of Item B's contained therein. If, when you query the database, you request data to be displayed in Capacity UOMs, then the system will normalize the quantities of Item A to EACH, allowing you to see the total quantity of Item Bs.

The Material Issue UOM defines an alternate UOM for use when creating Bill of Materials (BOM) Items. On the BOM Item screen, you have the ability to select an issue UOM. This issue UOM is used whenever the specified component Item is issued to a Work Order. If you define a Material Issue UOM on the Item master, then that UOM will be available for selection whenever the Item is used in a BOM.

If an Item is sold, its List Price will be based on the Selling UOM. While the Selling UOM may often mirror the Inventory UOM, in some scenarios the two UOMs will be different. For example, cans of soda may be stocked in Inventory as individual units (EACH), but sold by the case (CASE24). In this example, Inventory transactions will be recorded using the Inventory UOM (EACH), but all pricing—including List Price and Pricing Schedules—will reflect the Selling UOM (CASE24). An Item may also have multiple Selling UOMs, for example SIX-PACK, CASE24, PALLET, etc. You specify the Selling UOM you want to use at Sales Order entry time.