This has been a highly requested feature within Fulcrum! Now when a job has subcomponents, if the subcomponents are in stock they will be reserved for the job. An indicator will appear both on the item page. Additionally, you’ll see in job tracking if the inventory is reserved for another job it will have an indicator in the pick menu that the inventory is reserved.
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We’re continuing our work on improved picking in job tracking. Now, in job tracking we’ve added indicators to show if the correct amounts have been picked.
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You can now adjust the quantity to make on job labels from Job Tracking. This is to accommodate continuous flow, so operators can print a label that travels with a subset of the total quantity to make.
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We’re enhancing our in-app notes to be real time. This allows for real-time communication to the shop floor. The notes are available through job tracking and the jobs page and will have indicators when new messages are received. This is a great feature to help save time and improve communications within your shop!
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The customer page now includes an associated records tab which will show the quotes and sales orders for the customer. This will help you see the sales history for your customers.
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The schedule now takes material associations into account at the operational level, rather than at the job level. Previously, jobs would not start until all material had been received, regardless of where the operation requiring the material fell. This will allow for increased efficiency for jobs to move through production.
We’ve added new job cost information to the jobs page which will let you see cost breakdowns for the full job, as well as line item breakdowns.
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We’ve added a setting to automatically turn on lot tracking for all newly created items. When enabled, the item creation will have the Lot Tracking toggle turned on. Additionally, we’ve added the lot tracking toggle to items created on quotes and sales orders.
You can now create single-use billing and shipping addresses on quotes and sales orders.
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The job tracking operations list now includes a material missing flag when an operation does not have the material required to complete it. This will only apply when the material is specifically for an operation. Additionally, if multiple operations require the same material the flag will not appear until available material has been picked on one of the operations.
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We’ve added even more customization to Fulcrum documents! Now when a dark color is selected for the document the font will automatically change to white.
You can now manage customer returns through Fulcrum! You could already add a refund to the sales order, now when you are refunding an item, you can also indicate a return. This will create a receiving record for the item being returned. Check out the below video for a walkthrough of this new feature.
This has been a highly requested feature! You’ll now be able to import routing steps and required items from another item’s BOM and routing. When you select a new item, you’ll see the additional steps added and can remove if needed.
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It’s finally here! We’re launching the updated quotes interface to match our previously updated sales order page. With the update, you’ll see a cleaner UI and improved performance on the page. When adding items to a quote, you’ll be able to see related attachments and make changes to the BOM/routing. The new quotes page also features auto-save functionality.
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As part of our continued work on data exports, you can now download data from the Work Order and Time Management grids.
Users will now be able to add rework for operations on work orders. The rework will be specific to individual jobs within the work order. The button is on the details tab under each job specific dropdown and is available as long as the job is not completed.
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We’ve added a setting that will allow users to view their own time management! Users can access this through Live > Time Management to view.
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If a discount is applied to a quote line item, the margin listed in the quote's KPI will update to account for the discount. The margin in the main pricing section will remain unaffected by discounts.
This feature will automatically add new equipment to the department shift(s) of the relevant work center. If the department has multiple shifts, the equipment will add to each non-overlapping shift.
We’ve made some back-end performance improvements to the inventory transactions grid.
We’ve added permissions settings for existing reports and grid downloads. The permissions can be set at a page level. You can set the permissions in Business Setup > Permissions and then grant access by user role.
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We’ve done some work behind the scenes to improve the performance on work order picking. You should notice a faster experience when picking items for work orders.
You can now download a report with in process tracking data! This report will pull data from the previous year. The report can be downloaded directly from the jobs grid or from the Quality tab of a specific job.
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This new feature will allow production to change the quantity of items to make from the pick menu in Job Tracking. This will automatically update the quantities that need to be picked. This allows for more flexibility and ease on the shop floor.
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Users with schedule editing permissions can now unschedule operations that are in the freeze window. This change applies to operations that are not currently running, and will allow them to be rescheduled. This feature gives you more control and helps you to have a more accurate schedule.
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A new Salesforce integration is available. The integration allows the creation of sales orders or quotes in Fulcrum to create accounts and opportunities in Salesforce.
Users can now open and preview job attachments directly from the operations list in Job Tracking. Additionally, this list will now show the quantity to make and quantity completed.
This new setting for the schedule will take into account jobs that make subcomponents to stock when scheduling any jobs that consume them, and schedule accordingly. Operations that require a made to stock subcomponent will be scheduled after the expected completion date of enough required subcomponents. This is a schedule setting that can be enabled in Business Setup > System Data > Scheduling > Scheduler Settings.
You will now see Purchase Orders in the Associated Records of a Sales Order. This will help you to view all relevant POs for a SO to have a better understanding of their status, and to have better visibility overall into everything that impacts your Sales Order.
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We continue to improve our email feature! You can now include attachments from any related record when emailing a sales order. You already saw SO attachments as options when emailing – you will now also see attachments from any related record (jobs, items, etc.) to attach when sending the sales order.
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From the sales order you can now refund all line items, including taxes and fees. Previously, you could only refund the item, but you can now refund other costs for a smoother workflow.
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The details tab has had some design updates and now shows the quantity to be made. This update will make it easier for your production team to view the information they need.
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We’ve added more options to the lead time dropdown on quotes to fit your needs.
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We’ve made performance improvements to the Pick All function in Job Tracking.
Filters for customers and vendors have been added to the items grid so users may now filter to be able to see all items with a certain specified customer or vendor. One example of a good use case for this is for easily finding all items from a specific vendor to be able to update costs.
Users will now be able to reopen jobs and operations that were recently closed! Previously when closing the last operation of a routing sequence, there was no way to reopen the job to continue or make adjustments from the job tracker.
This ability will still have a few exceptions so that we can maintain costing and inventory transaction integrity. Basically, you can reopen a job if there hasn’t been a subsequent inventory transaction consuming the job that you’re attempting to reopen.
We have added the option to put a job on hold from the status drop-down on the jobs page. When a job is placed on hold it will be pulled out of the scheduler and job tracker but will remain in the purchase and demand planning calculations.
When you put a job on hold it updates the job's status and wipes the scheduled times for any operations that have not yet started (even if they are in the freeze window). Removing a hold puts the job back in its original status and allows those operations to be rescheduled on the next run.
Exceptions: job must be open and not in needs review status; no timers can currently be running for the job (paused timers are fine); no open operations can be part of a work order
We have made a bunch of large speed improvements to the jobs page and job tracking. You should notice a much faster experience when loading the jobs log, completing final operations, adding items to inventory, and searching the job tracker.
You can now render 3D images in Job Tracking that are not operation specific. Previously we required a direct association between the rendering and the operation within the BOM. Now you can render any 3D file stored on the job within the job tracker by clicking them in the attachment section of the job tracker like a normal image.
We have also updated the default background image when you click into an operation. Priority will go
If the default background image is a CAD file, it will render automatically instead of having to click the thumbnail.
New functionality to Create an NCR from the job tracker. Once clicked the NCR will be created with the job with the following fields prepopulated:
New fields/changes to the NCR page:
We are rolling this out slowly so if you don’t see it yet you will soon!
One of our goals over the next few months is to add more visualization and decision-making tools to the quality data that we’re already capturing. This is a big step in that direction!
This new scrap report allows you to see the amount and value of scrap over time by equipment or operator in a heatmap form so you can easily narrow in on problem areas.
You can access this under Quality > Scrap report. This is rolling out slowly so if you don’t see it yet you will soon!
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A commonly requested feature! We have added a setting that will prevent negative picking. When the setting is turned on, if the picked quantity input will result in a negative on-hand value, the pick button will be disabled. To turn on this feature go into System Data > Job Tracking Setup > Prevent Negative Picking.
We have added the ability to rotate pdfs from directly within the job tracker. This function is already available for some of the other attachment types but was missing for PDFs. This will alleviate a big pain point for some of our operators.
In the past, the minimum production quantity field did not influence the unit cost of an item. In some cases, there are cost savings when producing a higher quantity of an item if there are fixed costs that can be amortized across a higher quantity of units.
This new price will be reflected on the estimated costs on the BOM/Routing on quote, sales order, and items. This will allow you to have more accurate costs and reduce inflated pricing on items. You’ll also see a small note on the bom/routing cost breakdown indicating that a minimum production quantity is being used in the calculations.
Another thing to note with this change is that when an MPQ is set on an item and ‘make’ subcomponents used in that item will inherit the parent item MPQ unless the subcomponent already has an MPQ equal or greater to the parent.
Now in the job tracker, when you pick materials the locations will sort by the quantity of on-hand inventory. This will make the lots/locations with the most available inventory show at the top which should help in our goal to eliminate negative picking.
We’ve been working on some fixes to drag-and-drop scheduling to make it easier to use. Customers using drag-and-drop functionality will notice the following improvements:
Fulcrum obviously doesn't have a full RFQ module meaning most of you are likely managing RFQs outside of the system via email and other methods. We do plan to build out a robust RFQ feature in the future in order to kick off RFQs from the quoting process and elsewhere.
In the meantime, we've added a somewhat 'hacky' way to utilize the Purchase Order module to send an RFQ. You can now customize the PO PDF so that if the PO is in a 'draft' state the PO PDF will actually say 'RFQ' in the header.
Please note, there's no additional functionality on top of this to manage RFQs. You'll still need to go back and cancel/delete old draft POs (RFQs) in order to keep your data clean, but it should give some ability to manage this process inside of Fulcrum for those wanting to do so.
There is now an option to create and schedule jobs when sales orders are created from ShipStation saving you clicks and time. This feature requires you to have the Auto-Create Jobs process app setting enabled.
There is now an option to create and mark invoices as paid alongside created sales orders!
Now you can select any equipment in the shop when editing the routing on the items, sales order and jobs page.
You can now navigate through in-process tracking steps in job tracking using the arrow keys. This update allows you to move through the steps more quickly and efficiently.
We have made some improvements to the shipping status so that it takes into account sales order ship by date and priority.
Previously, if there were 100 pieces in inventory available to ship and three sales orders needed 100 of that item, the shipping grid would show all three SO as ready to ship even though you really only had enough inventory to ship one. Now, the shipping status will take into account priority and ship by date, so that the only SO showing as ready to ship will be the one with the highest priority and closest ship-by date.
This should give your shipping team a clearer picture of what is ready to ship. We’ve also added tooltips, including one on the shipping status of records where there is technically enough inventory but it isn’t showing as ready because another shipment is higher priority.
This was a big effort to improve the UI of the Sales Order page. The new Sales Order page features a clearer look and design and improved performance. The upgrade allows for faster and easier data entry, condensed information, better visibility into job status, and overall more intuitive interactions. It will be rolling out to some early Beta group users this week and then gradually released from there. Let us know if you’re interested in opting in for an early release!
New Functionality and Notable Changes
Autosave: The Sales Order page will now autosave to prevent you from losing important data.
Visual Jobs Status: More information on the amount ordered, produced, and shipped per job from the SO page.
Ability to edit price/quantity/margins directly from a new summary grid.
Another big revamp! We have updated the purchase planning grid to align with much of what you saw in the new Demand Planning Grid.
This upgraded page features the cleaner look and design and improved performance you’ve seen in other upgraded pages. You’ll notice new KPIs, better search and filter functionality, and more! The page will automatically sort to ‘Purchase Recommended’ to give you a high-level look at what items need to be purchased to meet demand and required minimums. A details panel will show what jobs are driving purchase recommendations and show you the expected on-hand supply for a given item.
New Functionality and Notable Changes
A call out for ‘timing issues'. Specifically, this KPI looks for any item in which there’s incoming supply but the receive date is after the expected need date of the item based on the schedule.
- A details panel displaying what jobs are driving the purchase recommendations as well as a graph that shows expected supply over time.
- Aggregate all POs from a given vendor and create them right from the Purchasing Planning page
- Top-level KPI’s to keep you on track of what’s needed
We’ve added a new way to export purchasing data from Fulcrum! You’ll see a new button on the purchase order grid to allow exporting either an open PO report or your Grid Results. This exports an excel file of the current grid results (max 10k rows). If you have any filters applied to the grid, these will be applied to the exported results as well. We plan to continue to roll this type of data reporting/downloads out to other areas.
This will be available on the new Sales Order page only. With the new feature, you'll be able to move job inventory directly to real inventory once a job is completed (instead of waiting for it to be fully shipped with excess availability). When you do want to ship, you'd be able to ship from the location that this job inventory went to or if there are other jobs for this partline ship from that as well.
More updates for Shopify customers! You can now sync Shopify inventory against custom field mappings instead of just the default of fulcrum number -> shopify sku.Let us know if you have any comments or questions!
Previously, when an item created on a job is associated to a sales order we lock in a few areas of shipping where we can no longer use regular inventory. This adjustment allows for shipping to pull from both regular and job inventory when an item is not custom. We'll also give an indication that there's a job pending when shipping and warn if a user tries to ship from inventory when there's an incomplete job associated.
Customized items will still need to be shipped from the associated job.
You can now define price breaks for customers at the tier level to be applied to all customers tagged to that tier. Additionally, this feature now supports multi-currency!
New “Select All” button on the create Work Order grid which will speed up the work order creation process. This added button will allow you to add all operations based on the filtered grid data. To view this feature go to Work Orders > Create Work Orders and filter to an operation.
New negative inventory warnings! If the quantity input to pick from an item/location/lot in job tracking will result in a negative on-hand value, the pick button turns red (instead of the standard blue) as a visual warning that the pick will have negative consequences. This should bring more awareness to negative picking.
You can now choose to include only the customer’s first name on email templates. While the contact's full name is still an option, being able to greet contacts using (only) their first name will allow for email templates that sound more personalized.
By popular request, we have added the ability to filter by status on demand planning so you can see “active” vs. “archived” or “draft” items. By default, you will see all items but can filter to display items in a way that is most useful for you.
You can now search on the items grid by the customer or vendor name for an item! This will make it easier to find items based on what the customer or vendor calls them.
The new functionality will allow you to customize your view of the schedule to match your workflow. You’ll be able to filter and create presets based on priority level, departments, work centers, and equipment. You will also be able to choose a default view that will be displayed anytime you go to the scheduler.
All saved presets will be able to be shared/viewed by all your team members making it easier to collaborate. This is helpful to be able to segment and view a specific department's schedule.
We’ll be gradually rolling this out over the next few weeks. So if you don’t see it next week in your site, you’ll see it soon!
You can now filter by company on the sales order grid making it easier to see all sales orders for one company!
We’ve added functionality to labels printing to allow for more rows. We were previously limiting descriptions on the labels to 2-5 rows depending on the label. Now the limit will be determined by your label height. This should allow for significantly more description rows for medium and large labels.
We’ve added a large new feature to allow for additional pricing strategies! With our new customer pricing groups (tiers), you’ll be able to set up groups or tiers of customers and assign them different pricing or discounts. This will allow you to set discounts or item-specific pricing by group (rather than by individual customer).
You’ll be able to view this feature on the Customer page. We are slowly rolling this out so if you don’t see it yet, you will soon. Reach out to your launch or success manager to learn more.
Now your orders can now be automatically marked as fulfilled in Shopify based on the Fulcrum shipping status. With this feature, once a sales order in Fulcrum is marked as ‘fully shipped’, the associated order in Shopify will be set to ‘fulfilled’. This eliminates clicks and allows any additional non-Fulcrum Shopify integrations to be triggered.
To turn this on go to Business Setup > System Data > Integrations > Shopify to turn on this feature.
You can now set up default vendors, price breaks, lead times, and accounting codes on outside processes. This will allow for more accurate quoting for oustide processing operations with fewer steps. By setting this information at the business setting level, the defaults will automatically pull through when a routing step is added. To use this feature go to Business Setup > System Data > Operations and select an outside process operation to add defaults.
On the Jobs page, you will now be able to view information for canceled jobs. This includes in-process tracking, scrap, and job costing data. This will allow you to review information about canceled jobs along with your other jobs.
You can now set your Shopify integration to immediately sync inventory changes in On-Hand and Available from Fulcrum to your Shopify store. A faster, real time update will ensure items show in/out of stock to your shoppers as soon as inventory levels change. To take advantage of this change, go to your Shopify settings in Business Setup.
To provide more flexibility to sales orders as details change in progress, we added functionality that allows you to edit and delete more line items like discounts, fees, and taxes.
You can now search the job tracker by customer! Similar to the search functions for jobs, we expanded to the ability to search with in Job Tracking. This makes it easier for you to locate a job or operation by the customer name.
You can now set default deposit settings for customers including if a deposit is required or not, % vs. $, the amount and the deposit accounting code. This allows you to set a default deposit requirement on a customer and have it carry over to any sales order for that customer. You can access this feature on the customer details page.
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You can now set default CC and BCC recipients for your emails, specific to each module (i.e., invoices and quotes could have different CC/BCC recipients). These can be set in Business Setup >System Data> PDFs & Email. Email addresses entered here will show up automatically when you send an email from Fulcrum.
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Never miss a sync issue. You will now get integration notifications on invoicing and purchase order grids. This allows you to view all records impacted and resync all at once, right from the grid.
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Now you can bulk print and download packlists and shipping attachments right from the shipping grid. This is especially helpful for customers who mass download or print other documents associated with shipments. It will download all attachments on the shipping record.
Downloaded file names include shipping ID, customer, date, and attachment name, making it easy for you to sort the folder once downloaded. You'll be able to print multiple packlists at once, right from the grid. In addition to printing for previous shipments, you'll be able to print for shipments that are saved but not yet marked shipped.
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Improved Demand Planning! This upgrade has been a huge effort toward optimizing the current algorithm, speeding up queries, adding new functionality, and making all data much clearer.
What to Expect:
The upgrade includes a cleaner look-and-feel, with improved performance. Expect new KPIs, improved search, and filters. Items on the grid will be automatically flagged as “finished good,” “subcomponent,” or both to help you prioritize your job creation. The grid automatically sorts to “production recommended,” giving you a high-level view of what items have demand. Demand is calculated using quantity on hand, required minimums, sales orders, and incoming POs. A details panel shows you where demand came from and a graph that shows expected supply over time.
New Functionality:
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This has been coming for a while and we are so excited for you to use it! The upgrade includes a cleaner look (one line per item, clickable KPIs), better functionality (easier to view all sources of demand and edit inventory), and improved performance.
A new side panel gives you visibility into further item details and a new inventory adjustment component for quick inventory changes without leaving the page. New filter options include tags, locations, and whether the item has expired inventory and the entire grid is searchable. All these features were added to make it easier for you to see and edit your items.
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We've added a new field to the Invoice Summary Report so that you can now see the total with tax added.
One of our most requested features! Our Quickbooks Online integration will now sync updates to POs and Invoices when the price has been changed in Fulcrum. This means that changes made will sync into QBO when changes are made, simplifying your workflow. Previously, price changes would need to be made in both Fulcrum and QBO independently. To turn on this setting, go into your integrations settings (Business Setup > System Data > Integrations). This new setting will only apply to POs and Invoices created after the feature has been turned on.
Now you can add a note when doing an inventory adjustment. This will give you additional visibility and records on inventory transactions and adjustments in the items page.
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We've made some back-end improvements to the loading speeds on both the Real Time Operations Report and Scheduler. Additionally, improvements were made to the overall performance of the schedule. These updates will provide you with quicker load times so that you can get the information you need faster.
Similar to our work on the grids throughout Fulcrum, we’re also working on updates to our forms that you’ll start to see throughout the site. This month we rolled out a fresh vendor and customer forms. Expect improved performance, zero ‘time-outs’, cleaner interfaces, as well as changes to optimize for fewer clicks.
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You can now partially receive items from outside processing to be added to inventory immediately, and can be used on the job. Before this update, partially received items weren’t accounted for in inventory and weren’t available to be used on a job. Now you’ll be able to begin work on a job while awaiting the remaining items.
When creating sales orders, you can now see the customer’s outstanding balance and receive a warning when the sales order is sent and will push them over their set credit limit. This new warning will help everyone on your team have better visibility into your customers’ current standing when taking on new orders.
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We’ve added the ability to print both raw material and job labels directly from Job Tracking. This will allow your operators to re-label materials that go back on the shelf when unused, as well as label items that are for a specific job so that you’ll always know what’s been made.
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We’ve added options for Returns and Warranty as NCR types to give better visibility and help you track these processes within your shop.
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We’ve added more options for the email addresses that show up on PDFs generated throughout Fulcrum, including Quotes, Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, Pack Lists and Certifications. You can have the email default to the creator of the document, or add a different default email address. To configure, go to Business Setup > System Data > PDFs & Email, select the template you’d like to update and choose an option from the dropdown menu.
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We’ve added even more data to the job log. Now the job log will capture status changes, as well as who changed the status and when the change was made. This will give you more visibility as the job progresses and once it is completed.
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The Real Time Operations Grid now shows you quantity completed and quantity required for the job. Now you can use this data to compare with the timer and gauge progress.
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We’ve added more customization options to our Shopify integrations. You can choose to use “Available” rather than “On-hand” inventory when updating your Shopify inventory. Additionally, if you have multiple Shopify stores, you can choose to update each store separately using Fulcrum inventory locations. Both of these settings can be configured in your Shopify integration page.
We’ve added new settings to our ShipStation integration to allow you to specify the status of a sales order when creating via ShipStation. Now you can also mark sales orders complete after fully shipping them via webhook.
We know that your customer’s often make changes to orders after they’re in progress. To make this easier for you to manage, we’ve added the ability to make changes to sales order line items after the order has been marked sent, as long as no job is associated with the items being removed. Now you can remove the item from the sales order or make changes as needed to the BOM and routing and then add it back to the sales order. The other option would be to make changes at the job level or delete the job and re-create it.
As you saw in our last update, we’ve been rolling out updated grids throughout the site. This month we redesigned four more grids – NCR, CAPA, Receiving and Purchase Order grids. Expect improved performance, zero ‘time-outs’, cleaner interfaces, advanced filtering, and new key performance indicators at the top.
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We launched our Fulcrum community to a select group of users this month! This gives us the opportunity to hear directly from our users and gain valuable insights, as well as provides a place for our users to share information and best practices - both about using Fulcrum and the manufacturing industry as a whole. We'll be continuing to add Fulcrum users to this community as we grow. If you're interested in joining, reach out to your customer success manager!
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Now you can add a default tax code at the customer level, so when a quote or sales order is created for that customer the correct tax code will automatically pull through.
We’ve added additional data downloads to help with month-end accounting needs. These reports can be found in the Accounting module, under Reporting.
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