Providing non-consumed items during subcontracting

We manufacture sticks that we apply labels to. The labels can have different artwork, but the artwork itself is not consumed during printing/manufacturing. The whole process is outsourced to a printer once we give them the artwork.

In the documentation, it says in reference to the “Include Item In Manufacturing” checkbox that “in case there are operations or services you need to include in the BOM that are not necessarily an Item used for manufacturing, uncheck this checkbox.”

However, when I create a BOM without Operations, but include the artwork item on it under “Materials”, when I create a Purchase Order for (say 9) sticks, it requires 9 artwork.


What’s the best way to handle artwork on the BOM? What I’d like to is avoid tracking stock on them entirely. Suggestions?

@ebsjbulcher this is a edge case in ERPNext.

There’s no workflow on the code to handle properly manufacturing and sub-contracting!

Thanks for the reply Max! I was hoping for a different answer, but it’s also the answer I was expecting. I’m considering creating a new unit, with something like a 1000:1 unit:ea ratio. Then at least stock wouldn’t dwindle very quickly, and we wouldn’t have to manage it in a real way.

How about you create a separate section in the BOM that go: Returnable Items or something and with a bit of code/scripting you can get a Stock Entry Purpose Materials Transfer submitted along with the Stock Entry purpose Send Material to Supplier. And when you do the Purchase Receipt, another stock entry Purpose Material Transfer is created. You could create a vendor specific virtual warehouse so that checking the stock balance report for the Vendor would give you the items and quantities that are with the vendor.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

Jay

That sounds like an interesting idea, and I would love to see something like that in ERPNext! In our case it is more like the stock item is duplicated and shipped, since it’s just a file.

Unfortunately my workaround is more cost-effective and fits within our time-frame, so I can’t take on the project myself.