Assemblies and disassemblies

An assembly is a product made up of other products. It differs from a bundle in that the components which make up the assembly cannot be sold individually - the process of building the assembly uses them up. An assembly is a stock tracked product in its own right, whereas a bundle is a non-stock tracked product.

Brightpearl is not a manufacturing system, and does not have functionality within it to store assemblies, although there are apps available in the App Store which are dedicated to managing assemblies.

However assemblies can still be managed in Brightpearl using inventory corrections, where the component parts are removed and the finished item is added in.

Assembling products in Brightpearl

There are two stages to assembling a product in Brightpearl:

This can be done either manually, through removing and adding stock, or by using a spreadsheet.

 For example, say you are assembling a bike wheel, which is made up of 10 spokes, 1 rim and 1 hub. In Brightpearl, you will have four stock tracked products:

In order to add 1 x Bike Wheel, you will have to remove 1 x Bike Hub, 1 x Bike Rim, and 10 x Bike Spokes. Once you do that, you'll still have 4 stock tracked products, but in differing quantities:

Costing for assemblies

Components are removed from stock using first in first out (FIFO) costing, so their cost is automatically calculated.

However, a cost must be specified when adding in stock of the assembled product.

How that cost is determined is up to you. Some options may be:

• The sum of the costs of each component

  For example, if each Bike Hub cost £10, each Bike Rim cost £10, and each Bike Spoke cost £0.50, the cost of all the components required to make one Bike Wheel would be £25. Therefore the Bike Wheel could be added in with a cost of £25.

• The sum of the costs of each component plus a percentage or a fixed sum

  You may wish to factor in manufacturing costs when adding the final assembled product in, which can be done by taking the total cost of the components and adding a value to it.

• The cost price on a price list

  You may have a cost for your assembled product on a cost price list, which can be used to add the unit into stock.

Disassemblies

Disassemblies are commonly used when buying cases or crates from a vendor which will then be broken down into items that are sold individually.

For example, say you buy a case of 24 bottles from a vendor, which you will then sell as single bottles. 

You may purchase the case for £24. As with an assembly, you'll have two stock tracked products:

To disassemble the case, you would remove 1 x Case, and add 24 x Bottles.