Product Updates

There can be a lot of complicated calculations and assumptions required to do accurate job costing. For example, if you have a job where you’re making 10 parts, you might pick a full sheet of material, return some of it, then cut one part at a time (incrementing by 1), make 9 parts, and scrap 1. Then go back and pick more material to make the 10th part, etc.

Previously, per unit cost changes were applied moving forward. Now, Fulcrum can retroactively update costs based on the new information (additional picks, etc). Note: this doesn’t change the total cost on the job, but allows us to more effectively apply the costs across every transaction related to the job - reducing fluctuations in transaction values and creating more consistent per unit costs.

To help increase the visibility here as well, there will be job logs for these updates with tooltips that provide more information about these adjustments.

Increment Quantity

We’re deepening our integration with machine data. To make this possible, and more accessible to anyone, there’s a new public API endpoint for incrementing additional quantity on a job operation. For example, let’s say you’re running 100 parts with a cycle count of 4. You could use this endpoint to increment up 4 units every cycle to keep Fulcrum up to date in real-time.

Timer Times

The Job Tracking Timers endpoint will now include data related to the total time (ex. labor time). It will also show whether the timer was running concurrently with other timers (a case where the elapsed time does not equal the labor time, since the labor time is split among multiple operations).

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The team has a continued objective to build out additional functionality for the materials feature. This week’s updates include two new functions related to additional materials on jobs.

• When adding an 'Additional Item' from the Job Tracker that is a material item, it will now function as a material item. You can create remnants, only pick whole quantities, etc.
• When adding material items as a new Required Item to a job from the material list on the job page of an in progress job

If you had a default location on an item and added inventory directly on the item’s page, the default location didn’t populate. Now it will!

As part of our ongoing effort to improve the work order workflow, we introduced a beta with the ability to edit operations for in-progress work orders, with the goal of increasing flexibility in managing work orders to account for human error and real-world production changes.  We’re removing the beta and releasing this fully to all customers!  Here’s a video of the new functionality.

Expected Receive Date was recently added to Outside Processing line items.  This field will now be used for the schedule, with a fallback of the expected receipt date on the PO.

A Promise Date field was recently added for purchase orders and line items.  This field will now be used to calculate the vendor quality score (as opposed to using the expected receive date).  Any historical data was automatically populated to ensure that scores did not get reset during this change.

Fulcrum has a ton of data, and we want to surface that data when and where you need it.  In that vein, this release includes a couple of improvements to viewing job costing.

• Jobs Page - More obvious subcomponent costing dropdown.
• The ‘Associated Jobs’ section on Sales Orders
  • Now displays the estimated / actual costs of the jobs.
  • The progress bars will change color based on the job’s margins (green for under 100%, dark green at 100% and orange when over 100%)

Beta Release: To alleviate confusion in purchasing for raw materials, we've added a size selection interface to Purchasing Planning.

• Grid rows for raw materials will now prompt users to "Select Sizes" rather than directly add to the purchase order.
• The side panel now contains a "Sizes" tab that will display all demand on a raw material based on the estimated bounding boxes on the routings.
• Users select which of the jobs they want to purchase for and Fulcrum will adjust an estimate of how much of any of their stock sizes they need to cover all that demand.
  • Users can override that estimate as needed.
• The rest of the purchase order creation flow remains the same.

Currently looking for new Beta participants! All participants must already be using the materials feature.

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If you have the Autopick Material setting on, any material associated to an operation will automatically be picked once that operation is completed.  This enhancement times the automation of the pick to be closer to when the material would actually have been pulled from inventory, creating a more accurate, real time experience.

Previously, once a make item was completed, you couldn’t reopen any associated work order operations.

This update introduces two new capabilities:

1. Reopen work order - You cannot reopen operations if the work order itself is completed. You must first reopen the work order to reopen its operations.  Reopening a work order will also reopen any associated jobs that were completed.
2. Reopen work order operation after completing an item - The behavior is the same as reopening normal job operations. Reopening an operation for the completed item will revert the associated inventory receive transactions and the operation status will set to In-Progress again.

Previously, if you had already added units to inventory, then closed the job with 0 additional units, this could result in job costs not matching the value added to inventory. This mismatch occurred for two main reasons:

• Reserved Value for Final Units - When fewer units were added to inventory than planned, the system “reserved” part of the remaining cost for the final unit(s). If the item was later closed without adding more units, that reserved value had nowhere to go.
• Post-Add Cost Changes - Since the item was still open, other value-affecting actions could occur after units were added—such as timers running, additional picks, or other adjustments—creating further discrepancies. This scenario created inconsistencies in cost recognition, even when no more units were physically added.
  

What’s Changed:

Now, when a job is closed with 0 units added in the final step, the system retroactively updates the value of all previous inventory adds. The updated value is based on:

      Total Item Cost ÷ Total Quantity Created

This ensures that inventory values match actual job costs.

Fulcrum tracks inventory transactions with their associated cost/accounting/financial values.  However, there are cases when these can get updated.  For example, adjusting the billed subtotal on a PO after receiving, or if job costs get recalculated.  This report will show the original and updates values and dates, and is available on the Accounting > Reporting page.  It’s designed to provide clear visibility into these modifications, helping ensure that accounting records can be updated accurately when needed.

Beta release: Previously, material items added to BOMs operated at a fixed quantity. With this update, material items will now scale based with the parent quantity and the bounding box indicated in the "Estimating" tab.  Here’s a video overview!

As mentioned last week, the Item page got a much-needed makeover.  However, we received some feedback on some important follow ups and added those this week!  Specifically:

• Fixed the search for inputs / dropdowns
• Removed the scroll from the summary panel
• Added deeper recognition of user permissions
• Added back the inventory transaction note to the tooltip on the transactions grid