Product Updates

Once again, we’re giving you the ability to get the real-time information you need as quickly as possible. With the new jobs grid, you’ll be able to see what is waiting to be reviewed, what jobs are currently in progress, and what jobs are late — and how late they are. With the newly added progress bars, you’ll even be able to get a feeling for what’s about to happen on the floor based on what’s about to finish on a machine. This may not look like a crystal ball, but you’ll still feel like you can see the future!

‍

Think of this as a companion to the real-time operations report we released last month: At a glance, you’ll be able to see who is clocked in, what job they’re clocked into, and how long they’ve been working on it compared to the estimated time. This is a great way for managers and owners to see what’s running long, who is working efficiently, and who could benefit from additional help or oversight.

This will work for every Fulcrum user, but there are aspects of it that will be less useful for those not currently using the time clock feature within Fulcrum. If you’d like to move onto Fulcrum time — which will easily integrate with your current payroll system — let your launch team member know and they’ll get you set up!

‍

Reports show you what has happened, real-time data gives you the ability to react to what's actually happening and make changes as needed. Our real-time operations view shows what's scheduled for the day on the shop floor, what jobs are late, what excess capacity you have, and more, and it's all filterable and searchable. This is the difference between driving a car using the rear-view mirror and looking out the actual windshield.

You've likely run into a job that seemed straightforward on the surface only to have it turn out to be far more complex than they appeared. These PDF updates were that type of a job for us, so we're excited to finally get them to you!

We've updated our PDFs to be cleaner and clearer starting with quotes and sales orders. Expect updates to all pdfs in the next couple of weeks. We've added the ability to update the legal and notes sections, and we're in the process of adding more customization options for you to do on your own. In the short term, reach out to your launch team member if you'd like to make color changes to the document.

‍

Sometimes a piece isn't up to your standards and needs to be reworked, that's life. Now, Fulcrum handles reworked pieces smoothly and easily, allowing operators to flag that rework on a job is required, reopen an operation, and add specific notes about what is required. This will allow you to track for your own internal quality purposes or for ISO compliance.

Our barcoding system has always been a great way to track inventory and raw materials, but we've made accessing it even more convenient! Right from the job tracking page, users will now be able to scan labels as well as print new ones when necessary. So, if you've got a long pick list of raw materials, you can scan the label from the job tracker to quickly add it to what you're working on.

Finally, we're adding QR search capability gradually to more and more grids. If you see the QR code icon next to a grid in Fulcrum, it means you can scan a QR code into that search bar!

‍

If you're finishing a piece supplied by a customer or further adding to a piece that's in process before sending it back to them, a receiving record will now be automatically created for every piece in the BOM supplied by a customer. This way, everyone on the team knows what should be arriving in your facility soon and your production team will know when something finally arrives once the receiving team has scanned it in.

‍

Fulcrum helps you price the products you're selling to your customers, but the other key element of pricing is how much you're paying your vendors for the material you need. We've updated the system to not only store the contracted prices or price breaks you've gotten from your preferred vendors on your purchase orders, but also to help advise you on how much to buy based on the PO quantity and the jobs you have scheduled.

‍

Whether you need photo documentation of processes and products for certification and audit purposes or just have a customer that really likes to see how production is going, now you can take and upload photos right from the job details page. The photos will stick with the job as an attachment within Fulcrum, ensuring everyone from the floor to the front office has access to them when they need them.

‍

Since our work order function was released at the end of 2020, we've been working to make it an even more powerful planning and scheduling tool. The work orders page will now include suggestions of similar operations for you to group together as well as include the ability to group entire jobs onto work orders.

We've also taken steps to streamline the work order creation process and given you the ability to change details right from the work order creation screen. Armed with these improvements, you'll be creating work orders and maximizing your throughput in no time!

‍

You can now mark shifts and departments as unavailable to help account for planned maintenance, holidays, known staff outages, etc. This will keep your schedule as up-to-date as possible and help you account for the days and shifts work will actually get done, rather than holding your team to an idealized version of the time allotted.

‍

Whether you’re sending quotes, sales orders, purchase orders, or invoices, you can do it right from within Fulcrum thanks to a new email integration. Anywhere you see a pdf, you'll now see a new email button along with the download and print buttons you've always had. The email will come from your normal account and still show in your outbox, but now you’ll no longer need to save a PDF and then attach it within the standalone email program.

The system will use whichever email system you have set up, either as its own program or within your browser, and will automatically fill in a template for you to use, which can be customized to fit your business in the system data setup. The templates for the emails can be created in the system setup section of Fulcrum by anyone with access. Have no fear, you'll still be able to give it a last look before pressing send, so if you catch something you want to change, you can.

‍

On the schedule page, a cleaner grid makes everything easier to read, and late jobs are now labeled and have a red outer glow so you can easily see what needs special attention.

The redesigned schedule page flows beautifully and now offers tags for each priority level that are visible on the job cards, as well as an easy-to-read button with the percentage of jobs currently running late. Press the button to filter to late jobs automatically.

We continue to work to make the schedule as user-friendly as possible, so there’s more to come on this as well.

‍

The BOM should be everything you need for a job, but sometimes additional or different material is necessary. When that’s the case, you can now add different materials even after the job is closed to reflect the changes made and to help keep inventory counts accurate.

‍

Within the job scheduler, you can now display your most important item tags, allowing you to make sure that key characteristics about a particular job are readily available to everyone from the shop floor to the back office.

We also added the option to configure a tag on the scheduler page specifically for new jobs.  This is a great way to communicate on-the-fly that a job may take more time or has unusual steps involved.

‍