Product Updates

Fulcrum allows you to change the header on your PO PDF based on the status (ex: RFQ or PO).  Previously, downloaded PDFs always used ‘PO’ (e.g., ‘PO1234’). Now, the same rule-based logic applies to the file name.  This helps avoid confusion as to whether the document is a PO or RFQ.

If you already use a custom PDF header, no additional change is needed!  The header logic will automatically apply to the file name so that they’ll be the same.

Note: if you don’t have this set up, and would like to, head to your Business Setup > PDFs & Emails > Purchase Orders and use this as your ‘Custom Title.'

We’ve updated status colors across Scheduling, Jobs, Work Orders, and Job Tracking to make them consistent for both Production Managers and Operators. What changed:

• Job Tracking was using different colors for Pending and Paused — those now match the rest of the app for consistency.
• Scheduled and Approved used to share the same light blue, making it harder to scan some grids. Now:
  
  • Scheduled is dark blue
  • Approved stays light blue

Details:

• Jobs / Work Orders:
  
  • Scheduled = dark blue
  • Needs Review = slightly new purple tint (easier to scan)
• Job Tracking:
  
  • Paused = changed from yellow to grey
  • Pending = changed from grey to purple
  • Chat = changed from purple to blue, matching selected user profiles

This is a continued focus and priority for the team.  This release includes optimizations to:

• Faster Loading for Timers - anywhere timers are used will experience improved performance, such as job tracking, real time personnel/operations, and time management.
• ‘Can Make’ Calculations - for quoting, Fulcrum will calculate how much of an item you can make based on existing quantity (so you know whether you will need to order material or have enough on hand).  However, because the calculation considers demand from other jobs, it can become complex.  This has been improved to run faster.
• Sales Orders and Quotes - the scrolling blue line across the top was from loading a lot of calculated data.  This release improves how loading this data is handled to avoid so much blue bar loading.
  Settings - lots of pages reference settings, so adding some optimizations here yields small performance gains across several pages.

More to come!

We’ve been gathering lots of customer feedback and taking action on it – recent updates have enabled direct correlation between a shipment and an invoice. Expanding on this, the tracking number from the associated shipment will now be visible on the invoice PDF.

The collective efforts of the team are driving progress on performance.  This week, the team focused on the sales order and customer pages.  Specifically:

• ‘Status’ tab on a Sales Order - this page collects a lot of information from across the app, with several opportunities to speed up gathering that data. The impact will be most noticeable for customers with dozens of line items on an order.
• Sales Order Grid - similarly, the KPI graphs at the top are aggregating data across thousands and thousands of orders. Customers with over ten thousand orders will see the biggest gains.
• Customers Grid - a collection of miscellaneous improvements improve the loading times on this page. While the difference may not be readily apparent, this also frees up processing power for the rest of the app.

As part of Fulcrum’s materials database feature, it’s much simpler to create and manage remnants.  To improve that experience, this release adds some enhancements:

1) Previously, you couldn’t reopen an operation that had a remnant created on it.  Now you can!

2) You can now designate a location when adding a remnant to inventory from the job tracker.  If the material the remnant was created from is lot tracked, the remnant will use the same lot number for material traceability.

We are continuing to polish the materials workflow for sheet and plate. A variety of bug fixes have been included in this release. Most notable improvements:

• Ability to edit vendor pricing for material items from the BOM
• More robust job logs for remnant creation
• Reincorporated the active filter on the materials grid

Fulcrum gathers detailed information from every part of your business. The ability to access and report on this data helps teams keep a pulse on performance.  We’ve recently added a custom reporting module and have been steadily adding to the available reports. This release includes the following additional datasets:

• NCRs and CAPAs, including Impacts
• Shipping
• In Process Tracking

Take a look and let us know what you think!

Fulcrum now supports Shop Rate pricing—a new way to calculate prices based on a percentage of material cost, a percentage of outside processing, and an hourly operation rate. You can set a default shop rate on the item page or apply it directly to a quote or sales order line item.

To use Shop Rate pricing, toggle the shop rate switch on the item’s sales page or on a part line item. The price will update automatically as you adjust the material percentage, which is set in the input field adjacent to the price. A detailed breakdown of the price will appear when hovering over the price on the item’s sales page when shop rate is selected.

The operation’s hourly rate and the outside processing percentage are both set on their respective operation's page in System Data.

Strategically, Fulcrum has staffed a group of senior engineers to work on performance and bug fixes.  The impact of this won’t be felt overnight, but the collective efforts of this team over the next few weeks should be significant.  Some notable improvements and fixes from the first week:

• Chat mentions will correctly notify the recipient.
• Rewrite of how the receiving grid loads information.
• Improved start up procedure -  this means any midday maintenance will be mostly unnoticed, and included automated alerts to the performance team to proactively respond to issues.
• Other miscellaneous improvements, with more to come!

We’ve launched a new, more robust “Sales Order Details (Current)” dataset in the reporting module—bringing us closer to full custom reporting. Designed for flexibility, this dataset lets you build detailed custom reports using sales order line item data.

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New fields include:

• Estimated Cost to Produce
• Actual Job Cost to Produce
• Shipment Qty/Value Outstanding

Note: As part of spring cleaning, this dataset will replace the following:

• Sales Order + Line Item Data
• Sales Order Data
• Sales Order Line Item Data

Please update your reports using “Sales Order Details (Current)” going forward. Reach out to your Launch or Account Manager with any questions!

Over the past few weeks, we’ve added new datasets to the Report Builder, including Inventory Detail, Invoice Detail, Purchase Order Detail, and Vendor Issues.To create your own custom report, navigate to the Report Builder module, start a new report, and select one of these datasets. If Report Builder isn’t enabled on your site, reach out to your Launch or Account Manager for more info!

Stay tuned for additional datasets covering jobs, sales orders, and more!

Materials Workflow Improvements on the BOM & Routing
We've updated the materials workflow in the BOM & Routing to clarify the difference between raw materials and items linked to materials, along with their downstream effects.

Raw Materials on the BOM: Estimating Tab

You can add raw materials to a BOM and estimate costs using the nesting estimator tool, allowing jobs to move through production without assigning a specific item, size, or inventory. This provides flexibility in material and job costing from quoting to production.

You can assign a specific item later or let operators choose the most efficient option directly in Job Tracking, where they’ll select from a list of items linked to that raw material.
Costing is managed through the nesting estimator tool, which uses primary vendor pricing. You can create different nest sizes for estimated costs and even edit vendor details or add a new vendor directly from the BOM side panel. Important: Using raw materials is required for Nest Planning, which helps group jobs using the same material. If you plan to group work, do not assign an item instead of a raw material in the BOM.

Items / Inventory associated with Materials on the BOM: Inventory Tab

You can still add items associated with materials through the Inventory tab when you know the exact item for the job or are purchasing for it. Operators will see the specific item in the picking tab of Job Tracking.

We've improved costing flexibility by allowing you to adjust the material length used. Keep the full length for full-cost pricing or enter the actual length needed for accurate costing.

REMNANTS‍

Raw Material: Remnants from raw materials are determined by the item the operator selects in Job Tracking. The remaining cost is automatically calculated based on the portion used.
Usage based Item: If you add an item to the BOM and cost for only the length (portion) that you’ll use, the remnant produced from that will automatically receive the remaining cost.
Full cost item: If you use an item on the BOM and cost for the full piece and a remnant is produced, the value of that remnant will be zero dollars.

We’ve expanded the functionality of Quote Nestimation to provide you an estimated machine time for the part!

Because every machine’s capabilities are different, we’ve added a Feed Rate editing section to your machine setup page. Here you can use the feed rates and pierce times for each of your cutting machines based on the material they’re working with.

If you have an export of feed rates from your machine or nesting software and would like them to be bulk imported, feel free to send them to josh@fulcrumpro.com to have them imported. Nestimation is currently in beta testing, but we're planning on releasing it to all customers who are a part of the materials beta this week. This feature is not available for customers hosted on our ITAR-compliant servers.

We've improved the job status button for clarity. Now, the current status appears at the top, and clicking the button opens a dropdown to change it. Previously, it showed only the next step in a linear flow. The delete/cancel options are now in the "More Options" icon outside of the status button.