We’ve updated Fulcrum’s role and permissions editor. For the most part, things will work the same as before but with an updated appearance to be in line with the rest of Fulcrum. The biggest change is that now it will be much clearer which permissions are required by other permissions that you’ve granted to the role.
We’ve given the CAPA editor a brand new look. All of the existing functionality will still be present, but the UI has been updated to fit in with the rest of the Fulcrum system.
We’re rolling out our Bill of Materials (BOM) Importer to all customers next Tuesday, December 10th. This will allow you to upload a drawing file to automatically generate a BOM. Our goal with this is to help speed up quoting and item creation. Since the beta was released, we’ve made enhancements to the UI, moving it more center stage in the Quoting and Sales Order pages so you stay oriented / keep context of the work you’re doing.
To use this feature, select ‘Add New Item' from the summary dropdown and you’ll see the importer above the section where you create a new item. We list the compatible image and file types that you can drag in / upload and AI will then parse the file to create a bill of materials for that item. It will either create new items or match ones already existing in fulcrum and from there you can edit details, replace an item with one in your system, or detach items from ones we matched. Video for a workflow overview!
You can now update the customer on open Sales Orders. That change will also be reflected on any open shipments or unissued invoices. Shipped shipments and issued invoices will be left unchanged, but the system will display a notification when one of those documents has been opened.
We’ve updated the Non-Conformance Reports (NCR) page's interface to increase the ease of use and to lay the technical groundwork for future enhancements. We’ll be gradually rolling this change out to Fulcrum sites over the next few weeks
In order to streamline the Fulcrum onboarding process, we have added an option to sync QuickBooks Online customers to Fulcrum with just a click of a button!
New customers utilizing QBO can now bypass the Customer Import and instead choose to populate customers in Fulcrum by selecting the “Customer Sync” button, under the “Onboarding Tasks” section on the QBO Settings page.
You can now keep your COGS and inventory general ledger accounts in QBO automatically updated with job cost and inventory changes from Fulcrum. As job cost values flow through Fulcrum (from raw materials to work-in-progress, finished goods, and invoicing), Fulcrum will create journal entries in QBO nightly. These updates will ensure your COGS and inventory GL values in QBO match the data in Fulcrum for better reporting and simpler tax calculations.
For our beta release we will be only syncing material and outside processing costs to QBO but we plan on including labor and machine time soon.
You’ll now be able to add fees to purchase orders even after they’ve been received, so long as those fees aren’t marked as receivable. This should make it easier to accurately account for things like shipping fees, which may not be communicated until the order is invoiced.
Fulcrum automatically closes out a Sales Order after it has been fully shipped and invoiced. Previously if you manually closed out the Sales Order, the shipments wouldn’t automatically close and would need manual clean up. In the new shipping module, when you manually close a Sales Order, any outstanding shipments will be canceled.
We’ve made a change to how the “Use Reserved Inventory Exclusively” setting works in our updated shipping module. Previously, a shipment would be ready if any inventory was available to ship. Now, with this setting turned on, if there is a job tied to the sales order that this shipment is for, then the status will only become ready once that job is complete. Before the job is complete, the shipment will stay in the “open” status and can still be shipped from standard inventory if needed.
This feature is currently in testing. To be added to the beta please reach out to your account manager or launch manager.
When adding a material vendor to an item, or outside processing operation to a routing, we recommend adding a lead time for accurate scheduling. Previously, this needed to be done every time a vendor was added. Now you can add a default vendor lead time, which will auto-populate those values any time a vendor is added to an item or operation.
As a part of the new shipping module, it is now possible to print labels for your shipment and your shipment line items. These labels are customizable within your Business Setup > Label settings, and available on the shipment Details tab (for shipment labels) and Pack List tab (for line items, once packed).
This feature is currently in testing. To be added to the beta please reach out to your account manager or launch manager.
We’ve expanded the functionality of In-Process Tracking to help support additional quality control processes. In-Process Tracking steps can now be marked as “Restricted”. Only users with the new “Inspect Parts” permission will be able to fill out those steps - for all other users those field entries will be uneditable.
To make it easier for the user giving the sign off, we’ve added a quick “Switch User” button in the Job Tracking quality tracking screens.
We’ve also added the ability to mark an in-process tracking step as “First Articles Only." Job Tracking users will only need to fill out once and it can be used to trigger a quality check that needs to be completed near the start of a run.
Both of these features are being beta tested. Please let your launch or account manager know if you’re interested in signing up.
In addition, when there are required “Run” checkpoints specified on an operation, it will no longer be possible to complete individual units or add them to inventory until those checkpoints are filled out with a valid response (or the checkpoint is marked “allow out of tolerance completion”). That is, if an operation specifies a required “Run” checkpoint to be completed every unit, each unit’s checkpoint must be filled out before it can be completed or added into inventory. These last changes are live in the system today, but as always we welcome your feedback.
When things change in your shop you need to know about it. We’ve made it easier to stay on top of it all by adding Email, Slack, or Team notifications so that you can be informed even when you’re not in Fulcrum.
These notifications are set up in your Fulcrum user profile - you can choose to receive an email or to get notified via a Slack or Teams webhook when an event you subscribe to is triggered.
You can choose to get notified when a job or order is created or deleted by clicking on the bell on the matching grid. If you want to follow a particular order, there’s a bell there too.
This feature is only available on Fulcrum sites that have been migrated to SQL. If your site is on SQL and you’re interested in joining the beta group for this new feature, let your launch or account manager know.
Thank you to everyone who has been giving us feedback on our material database! We’re continuing to listen to what works and what doesn’t and one of the things that we’ve heard is that it feels like managing two inventory systems at once. We’ve taken a few steps toward bridging that gap. For most sites participating in the beta, you can now search for raw materials directly from the items grid and while adding items to a BOM and routing. Additionally, you can easily create particular cuts for a raw material directly from the items grid, making it even easier for you to work with our new database.