Product Updates

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.

For users with job edit permissions, you can now click on the priority or due date fields of a job operation card and edit those properties of the associated job. Note this applies to jobs that are not associated with work orders.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We’ve made some improvements to the Equipment Utilization Report to give you more options to customize how you view the report.

Updates include:

• Display Filter: Group information by day, week, month, or year.
• Date Range Filter: Select specific time periods.
• Department Filter: Tailor your view by departments.
• Sorting: Sort by utilization or equipment name.
• Downloadable Reports: Download reports with selected filters intact.
• New KPI: Track Average Equipment Utilization (current year to date)

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:

• Sales Order Bar Graph Filtering
• Sales Order Status Deep Dive
• Increased Operation Progress Visibility
• Throughput, Equipment Utilization, Makespan, and Dwell Time Reporting
• Ease of Use Improvements to Job Tracking
• Data Import Templates and Uploads

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.

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.

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.

The Open Operations Tab shows one row per open operation that gives status, quantity, and scheduling details. This gives production managers key info on everything that needs to be worked in one place.

In addition to an updated look and feel, the Operations Progress section now provides a couple of additional data points: the planned and actual time, as well as the planned and completed quantity. You can see these updates on each Job.

The 'Sales Order Value by Status' graph on the Sales Order grid was updated to be more interactive and dynamic. You can now click into the different datasets and filter the grid based on the status and time frame selected on the graph.