Parts Category & Associated Parts
We’re rolling out a new set of features today designed to help our customers be more efficient when creating Bill of Materials for estimating and quoting their customers. The companion feature to this feature is the newly redesigned copy and paste functionality, be sure to watch that video as well.
The BOM Item repository is a database driven collection of Bill of Materials items your company uses all the time. Any one that has the application right to “Create and Price Bill of Materials” can now take any items from any BOM, right click on the highlighted items and add them to the repository. Once the items are added to the repository, the repository window will automatically open, if it is not open already, and the new items will be listed at the top so you can add categories to the items to group them together when you need them. There is a new “Repository” button in the toolbar right next to the Import BOM button. If you do not see the new button, you may have a saved toolbar layout and will need to remove the saved layout and create a new on that includes this button.
By default the repository opens with only the items added by the user logged into e-manage, but there is a checkbox on the top of the window to include parts added by other users.
For our furniture dealers using Project Matrix as their pricing tool, this means that you can store base items with minimal options for doing quick pricing (by copying these parts from the repository to any BOM and then double clicking on the items to re-option them, or store fully optioned items that specific customers purchase all the time. This new functionality should greatly reduce the time it takes your designers / estimators to complete their job and opens the door to allowing your salespeople to do some of their own estimating / quoting.