The following fields have been added as options on the custom item labels:
- Tags
- Material shape, dimension, etc info as entered on the Item’s page
- Accounting codes - Lot quantity on hand
If you would like to opt-in for Custom Item Labels, reply to this post. It will go live to everyone at midnight on September 18.
The first iteration of our updated Item labels will go out with limited fields (pictured below). It will be turned on for new customers during implementation and any customers who opt in. Reach out to your Customer Support Manager if you'd like this turned on for your site.
We've updated the jobs endpoint on the public API to show scheduler information.
The exact changes to the endpoints are as follows:
Customers who want to access the schedule information exactly as seen on the schedule page can pass the following request body into the jobs list endpoint:
{ "statuses": ["scheduled", "inProgress"], "hasIncompleteOperations": true}
Previously if you synced a PO item receipt in QBD and then reverted it and received it again an error would occur because Quickbooks saw it as a duplicate receipt. Now for those on Quickbooks Desktop V3, reverted receipts are tracked, maintaining an accurate 1:1 relationship and eliminating the error.
Syncing Shopify orders to Fulcrum has always been one and done. Recent changes to the integration enables syncing updates from Shopify to Fulcrum which are inclusive of refunds, removing line items, adding new line items, removing line items and updating line item prices/quantities. You can also enable syncing of cancellations/deletes. This can be turned on with a simple toggle on the Fulcrum integration page.
To eliminate confusion and save users time, we have released a new feature that allows you to check the source of the price on a Sales Order or Quote by hovering over an info icon located next to the Pricing header. All you have to do is hover over the icon to see the associated pricing information!
There are currently three variations of what the info icon will display when hovered on:
- The pricing came directly from the added item. (Review the Item's Sales tab)
- The pricing came from the operations (Review the Operations for the item)
- The pricing is custom. (The price was changed from its source of origin)
A note that if the item that was added does not have any pricing data associated with it, then the icon will not appear on the Pricing field on the Quote or Sales Order. Previously, there was no indication where the pricing data on a Sales Order or Quote was pulled from, leaving users having to guess or check other pricing sources.
This feature makes operation associations visible on required Items to make it easier for our users to manage these associations.
This small update brings with it some performance improvements for the front end BOM editor that will make it less likely to freeze the browser on the largest of BOMs.
Users will now be able to update the job and operation a timer is associated with from the time management page. This is to make it easier to correct timers started for the wrong job/operation. Job costs will recalculate accordingly as with other time management adjustments.
Users will now be prevented from moving forward with a Sales Order or Quote to other statuses if the order or quote is in an invalid state. You’ll now receive a warning icon that outlines what fields need to be updated in order to make the quote or order valid and move it through to the proper status.
While these requirements were all present before, they were not spelled out or visible to users. This gives users full insights into what fields may be missing for quicker fixes.
We’ve decided to expand on some of the changes that we’ve previously made to the Item vendors. You can now save your vendor to the Item without having to save the page again.
Additionally, we’ve released a bug fix for the top navigation bar on the Items page, which was occasionally not working when users clicked on it.
The jobs, work orders and scheduler pages will now flag any jobs/WOs/operations missing required subcomponents with the material missing tag. When you hover over the tag, you will be able to see the list of missing materials. A job/WO/operation is tagged as missing materials when the quantity required less any quantity picked exceeds the quantity available in inventory (availability is based on stock inventory plus reserved inventory earmarked for the job).
You can now edit quantities of required items directly from the BOM parent view without opening the ‘Edit Items Modal’. This allows you to drag your items onto the BOM and edit quantity without having to open any modals. Editing will be disabled if you have a fixed quantity requirement or are using the "Creates X of parent" function.
Join Josiah Bondy, Marketing Manager at Fulcrum, to see the latest enhancements to the system. The new updates fall into three main themes: a new way to connect with your customers, quality improvements, and upgrades to the user experience.
Connecting manufacturers is core to our mission at Fulcrum. As such, we’re excited to announce the initial version of our Customer Portal. This introduces a new way to build relationships and provide transparency to your customers by giving them secure access to live information about their orders.
What’s included:
Read more on our blog here or watch a YouTube video for a brief overview.
QBD users will now have the option to match customers based on Company Name allowing more flexibility for customers who want to re-purpose the “Customer Name” field. You can turn this on with a toggle switch in the QBD V3 integration settings.
Quotes will now have a Closed Date on the parent record. This field is read-only, and set once a quote is marked Won or Lost. If reverted to Draft, it gets blanked out.
Using the grid exports will allow customers to more effectively analyze won/lost rates over time. A note that this will only affect quotes going forward.
In an effort to enhance production manager workflows, we’ve added the ability to view associated purchase orders (POs) for outside processing operations in the operations drill down on the Jobs page. Now, when you expand an outside processing operation, it reveals the key details of associated POs directly, eliminating the need to navigate to the PO page. This is the first step in a series of upcoming updates, all aimed at consolidating key information in one place.
We have updated the Sales Order System to track the basic changes made to a Sales Order, including when the Status changes. This is the first step in creating a comprehensive log of Sales Order changes and enables us to easily monitor all historical changes made to a Sales Order.
You can view the log through a link under the Sales Order number with the text "Last modified by". The route to the log page is https://{ your-domain}/ui/salesorders/{ your-sales-order-id}/audit-log. The log view of Sales Order modifications will save valuable time and ensures accuracy in the Sales Orders workflow.
When updating Tags in System Data, if the Tag belongs to an Item's Category, Shape, Material, Grade, Accounting Code, Accounting Code 2, Gauge, or one of the different item Tags that can be added, the updated tags will now appear on the Items page. This will make it easier to update Tags without having to go to the Item page and manually re-select the updated tag.
In Items, you will now have the ability to delete vendors, even if they are associated with an item. If the vendor is used on items, you will be warned before continuing with the deletion process. If you decide to continue with deleting the vendor, the vendor details will be removed from any Items where it's referenced. This prevents any manual clean-up needed before deleting a vendor.
The Quotes grid now allows users to have more flexibility when viewing Quotes! Previously users could only filter by Status, but we have added more filters and additional KPIs for ultimate flexibility. Now, Quotes can be filtered by Status, Priority, Sales Person, Value, Created Date, Expiration Date, Due Date, Customer, or Company. The KPIs at the top of the screen have been expanded as well to include Draft, Needs Approval, Approved, Sent, Won, and Lost.
Now you can manage customized inventory just like reserved inventory! Previously, customized inventory lacked visibility into the item’s progress and location details. With this update, you can see the customized items created on the items details page and have greater control over how it is processed.
Note: Customized inventory is excluded from any on-hand counts, and when picking or shipping requires a custom item, you will only be able to select that specific inventory location.
Now you can mark a shift as “unlimited capacity” which will replace the Max Simultaneous equipment option. This allows users to repurpose shifts to be something like ‘equipment schedules’, in case you want to only allow the use of certain equipment within a given time window (e.g., only use these machines M-F between 8-5) without otherwise constraining how many machines can be given a time. This is especially useful when the machines attached to the shift have unlimited capacity, themselves since the shift will then not artificially constrain how many operations can go on the machine at once.
With this update, you now can make changes to quantities for in-process jobs. Hitting the “Edit Quantity” button will put the page in “edit mode”, allowing you to update the quantity to make for the total job and/or its subcomponents after the job has been approved (up until it is complete).
A few caveats for which jobs will have the button available:
Join Emily Lupico, Product Manager at Fulcrum, in our latest Fulcrum in 4, where we discuss recent Fulcrum updates. These enhancements revolve around two main themes: our Autoschedule and general product improvements. As a focal point of our platform, the Autoschedule is instrumental in driving efficiency for our customers. Emily takes you through editing the due date and priority level directly in the production scheduler, changes to downtime visibility, a new alert for a stale schedule, and incorporated continuous flow details inside the operation cards.
Finally, we'll explore the Equipment Utilization Report, updated with new filters for better insight into the efficiency of each piece of equipment, thereby helping you understand and manage capacity better.
All jobs which have the 'continuous flow' checkbox enabled on their routings will now have their operations overlap in the scheduler. This will only happen when the operations fit into the restrictions outlined in the outside processing. Operations in a process group, for outside processing, or those with fixed run times (not per-unit) will not be allowed to overlap. All other operations on a job with continuous flow checked will overlap. This is a simple version of continuous flow we will continue to make adjustments to improve.
You can now upload your Bill of Materials (BOM) with our new BOM Importer. This release includes the ability to import a line item from the BOM during the Sales Order or Quote workflow. Users who have "Edit Item" permissions will be able to use this feature. This will eliminate some manual data entry and make creating BOM and Routings easier. We plan to continue to add additional functionality to the BOM Import over time.
A check was added to see if a vendor is used on items before allowing the user to delete that vendor. It will also tell you how many items the vendor is being used on. This will eliminate issues caused when PO's are made for deleted vendors. Additionally, a banner was added to the top of the page for deleted vendors that allows users to more clearly tell if the vendor was deleted. If a vendor was deleted, you can now hit “Restore” and it will become available again.
You can now seamlessly transfer specific line items from a Quote to a new Sales Order, giving you more control over the items you want to include. This update will help you save valuable time and eliminate unnecessary line item deletions during the Sales Order creation process. Just pick the desired line items from the Quote that you want to go to a new Sales Order.
To do this, open a quote, set the status of the quote to "Won" and elect to convert the quote to a sales order. A new dialog window will appear listing all the line items on the quote. Each line item will be selected by default. Click on the switch next to the line item to unselect it.
You can convert the quote to a Sales Order as many times as you wish even after the quote is won.
Shipping in Fulcrum draws in a lot of different types of data and is constantly updating from Sales to the Warehouse. To help your workflows move even faster, we’ve made a series of improvements to the processing and display of shipping records. Specific results will depend on how you use the system, but in our testing with live customer data we’ve seen speed increase by up to 90%.
Now you can see placeholders on your schedule where there is upcoming downtime. For details on downtime, simply click on the card and you’ll see the timing and work center details. When multiple downtimes overlap, the schedule will show the full duration from the earliest start time to the latest end time. Click the card when there’s overlapping downtimes to see the details broken out for each time slot individually.
We’ve updated the level of detail for alerts shown in pending schedules to indicate when a schedule has issues, unscheduled changes, or is ready to be scheduled. These updates will allow users to more easily see in advance what is preventing a job from being scheduled.
We’ve added a couple of features to the BOM editor to make quoting and updating buy item prices more convenient for our customers: When you click on the cost number for buy items in a BOM, the cost breakdown modal pops up and will now also show a vendor grid for that buy item. From this grid, you can edit vendor pricing or add new vendors and immediately see the cost of the buy item updated on the BOM! That means you no longer need to hop between the Item page for that buy item, update vendor information, go back to the Quote or Sales Order BOM and re-add the item to get the updated cost.There is a new 'Refresh Costs' button added to the BOM to allow user to refresh the costs in the BOM in case a vendor price or other cost has changed outside the BOM since the BOM was created.
If you set up a custom field with the same type and name on an Item, Quote Part Line Item, and Sales Order Line Item, the value set for the custom field on the item page will now be carried over to the Quote or SO anytime this item is added to those documents.
We’ve made some improvements to the Equipment Utilization Report to give you more options to customize how you view the report.
Updates include:
It can be difficult to navigate to the right menu option on the Fulcrum page without having the menu itself close. So, we’ve introduced a new keyboard shortcut: ⌘U or Ctrl+U ⌘. or Ctrl+. (that's a period after the modifier). This shortcut will open the navigation bar and keep it open until the user closes it using the same command.
A few notes about this feature: This shortcut is not preserved between sessions and is closed when crossing the Blazor/Angular divide. Additionally, it behaves exactly like the current menu in that it will cover up some material. We will continue working to improve this functionality over time.
The Item Summary tab on the Job Cost report has been repurposed. Previously, it showed the sum of all job values related to that item, which was not a frequently used metric. We’ve updated the system so that it now shows the average unit cost information for each item instead.
This helps you understand, in the time frame selected, what you are estimating it will cost to make an item vs what it is actually costing you, and what is driving that variance (which could be labor, material, outside processing, machine costs, etc). The default summary shows the item rollup and the job breakout so that you can see if any particular job is skewing the data.
We’ve added new details for the cost of raw materials listed in the BOM & Routing cost breakdown. You’ll now see piece counts and their distinct costs which will highlight variance from the materials from inventory or vendors.
This breakdown can be see through the Total Cost link on a buy item.
Fulcrum Product Manager, Emily Ujifusa, shows us around recent updates to some of the most popular areas of Fulcrum, including:
We’ve updated the Sales Order Status page for invoices, and you can now use all the same actions that can be used from the Invoicing Grid on the SO Status page. You can create, follow-up, issue, deposit, and view invoices right from the Sales Order Status page without having to navigate elsewhere.
If an Invoice was created without any Payment Terms, you can now select “Payment Terms” to easily update and recreate the Invoice.
If no payment terms were selected at the time of Invoice Creation, there will now be “Edit Payment Terms” text to indicate a selection of payment terms. If payment terms already exist in your system, you can edit them and remove their name and due dates, save, and then you will be presented with 'Edit Payment Terms' text to get the lookup modal for payment terms again. A note that this will only be visible when the Invoice can still be edited. If the Invoice has already been issued, you will not see the Edit text.
Makespan & Dwell Time reporting gives you a high-level view of your jobs’ active processing times and idle times, helping you to identify bottlenecks over time. The data shown populates when a job is completed and accounts for any time adjustments. To see a single month’s average makespan and dwell time, click on the bar of the corresponding month.
Makespan is the duration of a job, from the first clock into a job to when it’s completed.
Dwell Time is the total downtime within Makespan when a job has no operation running.
We’ve redesigned the Job Tracking panel to help keep the right information at your fingertips:
A) Recent gives you a quick overview of everything you’ve been working on.
B) @Mentions help show you any time someone else mentions you in a note.
C) Notes gives you an easy way to keep up with new messages on jobs you’ve worked on.
D) Review Timer History or Sign Out by opening the three dot menu.
We've introduced several enhancements to the throughput report:
1. You can now click select any of the months on the Year-To-Date chart to show details for that month (instead of the current month) in the KPIs and chart to the left.
2. Last-year comparison has been added for the selected month's Total Throughput KPI.
3. You can export month summaries for each month, this year and last year.
For customers using QuickBooks Online integrated with Fulcrum, we’ve added several more custom fields. For purchase order syncing, you can now map the Fulcrum Jobs to a custom field in Quickbooks. For invoice syncing, you can now map Fulcrum Packlist Number and Fulcrum Quote Number to a custom field in QuickBooks. The new fields can be configured in the QuickBooks settings page.
Now you can set how reserved inventory generates the shipment status in System Data! This is a helpful update for those who rely on reserved inventory. When this setting is on, shipment statuses will exclusively use the inventory reserved for that sales order to generate shipment status. When off, shipment statuses will be generated the same as stock items, marking those with the highest priority as ready first, followed by those with the earliest ship by dates.
You can now set up Accounting Code Descriptions in System Data > Tags for the 'Item Accounting Codes' category. Descriptions set up here will be available when picking an accounting code for an item on the Items page, Sales Order, Quote, Purchase Order, and Invoice.
Now you can generate and save filters in Job Tracking for yourself or team members. When a user logs in, the filters apply automatically so your team can see exactly what they need to work on. The “Create Filters” permissions in Business Setup enables users to create job tracking filters for other users.
On any Sales Order or Quote, a cost breakdown is calculated when an Item is added or the quantity is updated. This cost breakdown will not reflect changes to material costs that happen in between adding the line item to the SO and receiving new material at a different cost in inventory. If this were calculated with every material cost change across large BOMs, it would potentially slow down the system for some users. Knowing the true real-time cost breakdown is important of course, so we added the Refresh button. This will pull all the latest cost information while not slowing down performance.
We’re excited to bring you a new way to import data into Fulcrum! As you may have seen during implementations, data templates are a helpful way to organize and import data into Fulcrum. In this update we've expanded the functionality and visibility of the upload process in your Business Setup. We have several templates available, including Business Setup, Items, Vendors, Customers, and Sales Orders.
You can now add and modify default fees within your Sales setup. (A) Simply set the name, description, currency, tax, and accounting codes and you'll see the default options when adding a fee on a Quote or Sales Order. (B) Note that you'll only see fees that match the currency. You can override anything you want on the fly too, so if the fee amount saved in system data isn't what you want for this particular order, you can update it on the order but leave the default as is.
Remembering to stop Job Tracking timers can get overlooked at the end of a long day. To help, we added a "Stop All" button on Real Time Personnel that lets you bulk-stop all setup and labor timers. This is the latest update for several upgrades to make job tracking even more seamless in your workflows.
The new Shop Throughput report shows monthly totals and averages for throughput as well as the number of jobs completed. You can see month-to-month trends, and this report is interactive, so you can click on a month and get a breakdown of what was Started, Added, Completed, and Ending in that month.
For current Fulcrum customers, contact your Launch or Customer Success Manager to turn on this report.
From the list of Jobs we've added three critical pieces of information at a glance. First, you can now see which operation a job is on, as well as a count of how many operations are finished compared to the total operations. Second, you'll see the quantity of items completed on each job compared to the total needed. Third, the status bar now shows how many hours a job has been worked on, the percentage complete, and the total hours from the estimate.
All of this data is pulled live from job tracking so you'll have a current view of what's happening, now with even more critical data in one view.
The new Sales Order Status tab provides a full interactive view of any records associated with your Sales Orders. See the progress of associated jobs, whether purchase orders have been received or late, whether invoices have been issued or paid, and shipping status all in one intuitive place.
Now in addition to adding certificates for items as they are received, you can add certs directly to Items. You'll now have the option to add a cert to an existing lot from the item's page directly, or create a Purchase Order and add the cert when the item is received.
Key focuses here: ease-of-use, quality, and reporting! In this edition of "Fulcrum in 4," Product Director Alex Troesch walks us through all that's new, including:
Now you can make your chat and notes in Fulcrum even more conversational with @ mentions. When adding a note in the Job Tracker, simply type @ and the user's name, select the person you want to tag and enter your message. The person that is tagged will see the mention count in Job Tracking (A) and in the Jobs view (B).
Creating and updating BOM & Routing just got easier! Now you can search for items and operations and drag them directly into the BOM & Routing editor. You can also drag and drop to re-order operations and update When you save, your costs and material availability summaries will update too.
With new Item Audit Logs, you can now review the changes made to any Item, including who made the change, what was changed, and when. Please note that at this time, we are capturing audit data with technical bits of code in them as well, so work with your Launch or Customer Success Manager if you need help translating what you see.
We've added a new Purchasing Planning view for Outside Processing. The extends the seamless workflows and visibility from purchasing planning throughout other areas of Fulcrum to purchase smarter and faster. The grid will have filtering and KPIs to help you drill in to actionable items.
This is a report download that lives under the data dropdown on the jobs grid. It has one row for each job (in scheduled, in progress, or hold status) and gives some basic job details as well as the latest activity logged for that job and a timestamp. This will download all open jobs in alpha-numeric order.
This new report is located under the Items & Inventory tab as “Inventory Value Report” and it will be able to pull the inventory values for any specified items at a specified date using inventory events. If no items or date are specified, the report will pull values for all items on the current date.
You can now configure the labels that are generated at receiving. In System Data -> Label -> Receiving Label, you’ll see label variables like item name, description, job name, quantity, and more (A). You can also refine parameters including font size, bold text, and if the QR code should show (B). These labels are currently available for receiving from purchase orders.
As a continuation of our rollout of job specific inventory, we've changed the way that inventory specific to sales orders is handled. It will now be treated as regular inventory, with a lot number automatically generated to distinguish it. This inventory will also have tags showing that it is reserved for a specific SO, and the tags will appear on shipping and picking.
You’ll notice that item name changes are no longer possible in Fulcrum. Previously, you could change the name, but the updated name wouldn’t carry through to other areas. Going forward, we’ll be updating item edit functionality to provide more flexibility and continuity.
Check out our new video series Fulcrum in 4 where we'll highlight some of the most recent Fulcrum product updates! Watch our February wrap-up below where we dive into capable to promise calculations, live chat notifications, default margins, associated records on customers and vendors, new data downloads, and our public API.
We’ve added more currency codes throughout Fulcrum for users that use multiple currencies in the site. You’ll now see currency codes on PO, sales order, quote, and invoice PDFs. This will also show on vendor price breaks and in the vendor details section. This will help add differentiation for currencies with the same symbols, like USD and CAD.
When POs are auto-generated, users will now be able to swap the vendor it is assigned to. The purchase order will still automatically pull the item’s default vendor - but you will now be able to select a different vendor as long as the PO is still in draft mode.
We’ve added new KPIs to the vendors page for vendor quality, including a quality score for each vendor. This score will be calculated on on-time percentage and rate of issues with the vendor. This will help you evaluate your vendors and choose the best partners for your business.
We’ve added an option when editing items on the BOM that will allow you to add a fixed quantity requirement per job that won’t scale with the number of items that you’re making. As an example, if you require a certain amount of material to start a job whether making one or 100, the BOM can now accommodate that fixed quantity amount.
We've added a new setting to packslip configuration to show the sales order line item number. If you turn this setting on, instead of numbering the lines in the shipment by 1, 2, 3, etc, we will show the line item number from the sales order so that your customers can easily match up what's in the box to what they ordered. This can be turned on in System Data > PDFs & Email > Packing Slips.
Fulcrum users can now upload a profile picture that will show everywhere in Fulcrum. This feature will be particularly helpful in job tracking where we previously only showed user initials which could become confusing if multiple users had the same initials. Now users can add a unique image and help identify their own information faster.