V9 - Work centers
Available to Pro plan customers, work centers allow you to organize work-in-progress (WIP) manufacturing into stages. They are meant mostly to allow for manufacturing that takes days, weeks, or months to complete. Work centers can be used on both build and process transactions.
The system comes predefined with a work center called Finished Goods. The manufacturing outputs are not recorded until the work center is changed to Finished Goods.
Work center tracking can also be used in conjunction with jobs, as you can specify work centers for a given job and even run a profit/loss statement on each work center within a job.
Creating work centers and assigning stages
Create work centers by going to the Work centers list (Tools & settings > Configuration > Lists > Work centers), then select +Add. Enter the name in the Name field, enter a number in the Sort order field to indicate the staging sequence of the work center, and in the Asset account field, select the appropriate account from the dropdown list. Then save.
By default, the Finished Goods work center is at sort order 0. This means that any new transaction will default to Finished Goods. If the majority of your manufacturing will be going into WIP, change the sort order on Finished Goods to 999.
Moving and tracking a build from one work center stage to another
Once a work center has been created, a Work center field will appear on build and process transactions, as shown in the sample screenshot. After work for an item has been completed at one work center, select its next stage of production from the Work center dropdown.
Use the Work center column on the Builds list (Operations > Production > Builds) or Processes list (Operations > Production > Processes) to keep track of an item's current stage of production. When the manufacturing is a work in progress (WIP), only the raw material value is reduced and stored for reference later.
When Finished goods is selected from the dropdown, it indicates that production is complete and the item is ready for sale. When this work center is used, the value from the raw materials is transferred to the value of the finished goods.
