Product Updates
Weekly updates to Fulcrum, always included with your subscription.
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To help fabricators send competitive quotes faster, we’ve integrated nesting into the quoting module. This feature calculates estimated material costs and run times automatically.
Simply drop in your DXF files, and Fulcrum generates a soft nest, estimating material costs based on the flat file dimensions. It also calculates machine time by analyzing Pierce points and referencing your machine’s speed and feed table, which can be uploaded and stored in your settings.
Once machine time and usage estimates are generated, they’re applied directly to the quote—giving you faster, more accurate estimates for your customers.
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In this episode of Fulcrum in 4, Launch Manager Mitch LaFrance breaks down the latest updates designed to make your manufacturing workflow more efficient. We’ve expanded the materials database, improved the purchase order workflow, enabled in-progress job edits, and enhanced quote estimates for nested work.
These updates are designed to help you maximize shop capacity and streamline daily operations. Watch now to see them in action!
Chapters
We’re continuing work on editing in progress jobs. With the next update, you’ll be able to change the items on the job, both adding additional items to make and changing the required materials of the job.
We recently added a bit more flexibility around updating the purchase price after receiving. You are now able to change the purchase price (select ‘Yes’ for ‘Different billed subtotal?’ and enter the new subtotal in the ‘Billed Subtotal’ field), if the items received have not been consumed (no inventory picks against those items). This is a small change from the previous functionality where any inventory transactions against the item prevented changing the purchase price. We're continuing to work on expanding this functionality out even more.
The main goal here is to help receiving answer the question “what do I do with this material?” when it shows up at the dock. Warehouse and receiving teams often bring material to specific staging locations, apply labels that include the relevant job number(s), or kit items. With that in mind, there will be a new section on purchase order part line items called “Associated Jobs”.
Clicking the plus button will bring up a list of jobs that require that item, including the job status, job demand, and quantity picked.
Selecting one or more jobs adds them to that section for visibility, and also makes the association visible in receiving so that warehouse teams can properly distribute material. Additionally, it will add the association on the PO itself. This way, the job association will show in the PO grid, receiving grid, and on the job itself.
There will also be a new variable for receiving labels called {{ lineJobs }}. This will, you guessed it, put the job names associated to that line item on the receiving label.
Note: the primary goal of this release is visibility. This does not currently do any specific reserving of material, especially since requirements and priorities are often changing.
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After the addition of 10,000+ new materials, we are pivoting and narrowing our focus in order to improve the general material workflow for all users.
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We’ve been working on the ability to update in progress jobs by updating the BOM. The first step of this feature is allowing you to change Operations. For example, you’ll be able to add a new operation or edit the instructions. Once the feature is enabled, the Edit Quantity button at the top of the job becomes Edit Job and the routing will be unlocked. You can make changes to the Routing Operations and then save the Job at the top of the page. The updates will be reflected at the bottom of the Job page and in Job Tracking.
This feature is in testing now and available on an invite basis. Further work on the feature will include being able to add/edit items to make and materials.
We’re making a technical change to how Webhooks sent from Fulcrum work. Currently, by default Webhooks will always return the full content of the relevant entity. For example, the body of a Webhook for Job Approval would by default include all of the data for that job. In addition to sending much more data than the consumer needs, this behavior negatively impacts the performance of Fulcrum’s site by making unnecessary queries to the database.
Going forward, newly created Webhooks will only contain the ID of the entity. If additional information about that entity is required, please use the public API to fetch that information. Using the public API has the additional requirement of having a stable schema.
This change does not impact Webhooks that have already been created.
When looking at the NCR grid in the quality module, it wasn’t easy to tell which NCR was for which event. Now, NCRs have a new ‘Title’ field. This can be used to add a short title or description for identifying the NCR and will appear in the grid view.
You can now view an audit log of changes made to a job, similar to the change history recorded on items, sales orders and quotes. Hover over the Last Updated [Date, Time] below the job number and click View Audit Log for a history of changes from job creation including edits to the BOM and Routing, quantity and due date.
We’ve been hard at work at adding a material database to Fulcrum. This feature changes the way that Fulcrum manages raw material and drives powerful features such as nesting and remnants. We’ve significantly increased the materials captured in the material database and will be further expanding this in the next few weeks! The materials database already had the below forms of steel, stainless steel and aluminum:
Below are the forms recently added for steel, stainless steel and aluminum:
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We're enhancing Fulcrum's handling of order changes by improving the link between Sales Orders and Jobs. Now, updating the quantity on a Sales Order Line Item will automatically update the linked job's quantity if the job is under review or in engineering status. We're working to expand this functionality further.
The “Associated Records” sections on the Sales Order page will now link to NCRs and CAPAs tied to that Sales Order.
Fulcrum sites using SQL can send automatic emails or Slack/Teams messages, now including NCRs and CAPAs. We're in the process of migrating all sites to SQL, but let us know if you'd like to migrate sooner to access this feature!
Operators are human, and sometimes forget to start a timer. This is fixable by going to Live > Time Management > Add Record. Previously, however, an exact start and end time was needed. With this release, you can alternatively enter a start time and duration when adding new time records.
