How to make material conversions

What is it for and how do I use it?

If you buy in stock or materials in one form of unit (e,g. roll, sheet, bag, weight, number, length, box, etc.) and sell or consume in another type of the same or different unit of measure (square area, linear length, smaller bag size, volume, component units, etc.), then this feature will help you.

Some Example Scenarios

Buy screws in boxes of 1000 (for example) and sell them by the single screw. So, when purchasing, need to have a quantity of one and a description of a box of 1000.
Buy screws in a box of 1000, but sell them in various smaller quantities - packs of 10, 50, 100, etc. Breaking them down from the box and packaging them as needed.
Buy a pack from the supplier which comes in the form of a kit i.e. it has multiple components. Then break the kit up and put the items into stock as individual items.

Prerequisites

To use this feature, the parent item (the item to be purchased from the supplier e.g. a box of 1000 screws) and the child item(s) the item(s) to be sold e.g. a single screw need to be entered as Material Items in Tidy.

Material Item screen

With the Material Conversion feature turned on, you will see the Conversion icon on your Material Item display view.

This allows you to define how the material item is converted and its new form or new unit of measure.

Material Item Conversion dialogue

Clicking the Conversion button opens the Material Conversion dialogue.

Scenario 1. Conversion with a single child item

Select the Parent material item and click Add Child Item

(After selecting Conversion function on a Parent Material item to display the conversion dialogue - click "Add Child Item")

Enter the Child item and the quantity that the Parent converts into and click "Save"

In this example the Parent box will be converted to 1000.

If you want Tidy to automatically make this conversion every time the material item is received on a purchase order, check the "Automatically Convert On Order Receipt" checkbox.

To make the conversion click the "Convert" button.

Enter the quantity of Parent items to be converted from each location and click "Convert".

You will see the stock level of the Parent has decreased and the number of conversions has increased.

Also, the stock level of the Child item has increased by the conversion factor (not seen on this screen).

Make further conversions of this material item or close the Material Conversion dialogue box.

Scenario 2. Conversion with multiple options for Child items

In this scenario, the Parent item can be broken down into different Child items when required.

In this example the Parent box of 3000 can be converted in to; 30 lots of 100 or 60 lots of 50 or 6 lots of 500

Select which Child item you wish to convert to and click "Convert"

This is the same process as above, but with multiple options of Child items it is no longer possible to automatically convert into Child items on receipt of the order.

Scenario 3. Convert a "kit" into its component items

In this example we will convert a scanner kit into its component parts.

Add the components as Child items and click "Combine Child Items into Group".

Click on one of the edit buttons to change how the cost of the parent will be allocated to the Child items (by default the cost are divided equally).

The cost of the Parent item must be allocated 100% to the children, click the "Use Remainder" to automatically calculate the cost of the last item. Click "Save".