Introduction to Materials

What are Materials?

Materials are the raw ingredients that you use in order to create your products (i.e. beads, fabric, clasps, wood, flour).

Adding Materials

There are quite a few ways around Craftybase where you can add to your materials list. Generally, the fastest ways to add new materials is either via the Material Expense page as you can add both the material and its purchase data at the same time, or via the Recipes workflow where you can add your material whilst building your recipes. For this tutorial we will be starting on the Add Material page as although it isn't the most optimal flow, it is the simplest way to add a material.

Adding Materials Manually

Materials can be added individually via the Add Material page.

To find your material page:

1a. Click on your Material tab to get to your Material List

1b. From here click on the Add Material button that appears in the top right hand corner of the page.

Let's take a closer look at the form:

2a. Your Material Name is the title of the material that will be displayed in all lists and searches. It is best that this is unique and specific to the material to make searching and locating materials easier.

2b. The field next to this is for your SKU. If you use codes to identify your materials, this is where they should go. SKU Codes are fully searchable in the system, so they can be a nice shortcut way of quickly finding your materials without needing to type the full material name.

Inventory

The next section called INVENTORY contains some of the most powerful fields: these allow you to set your quantity of measurements and low stock limits.

3a. The first field in this section is the Inventoriable checkbox. If marked as Inventoriable, this tells the system that this is a material that is consumed in the production of your products and should thus be included in your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) calculations.

3b. The Tracking Unit field is for determining the unit of measurement you wish to use for this material. This will be the quantity displayed as your in stock amount, and is also the unit used in recipes and manufactures. For many materials you may just wish to leave this as the default item but for others you may wish to be more descriptive (e.g. ml, ounce, bead).

As the quantity unit is completely configurable, it can be tricky to begin with to figure out what unit you should track each of your materials in. Typically, it is best to use the unit you manufacture in, rather than the unit you purchase in.

3c. The Purchase Unit field is an optional field for determining the unit of you typically purchase this material in. Examples of common purchase units are: Litre, Pound, Kilogram, Jar, Bag. This can be the same as your Material Purchase Unit, or can be a different unit completely. If you do select a different unit, then you'll need to set a Conversion below if one needs to be made (this is explained in the next section).

This unit will be available when entering new Expenses for this Material so that a quick conversion to tracking units can be made, but will not be able to be used when Manufacturing or creating Recipes.

3d. The Purchase to Tracking Unit Conversion field allows you to nominate the number of tracking units are in a single purchase unit. This information allows Craftybase to be able to calculate the correct tracking amount to increase your stock by when you add a new expense and enter the purchase quantity.

You'll find that some common conversions are supported by Craftybase (e.g. ounces to pounds) and in these cases the box will automatically populate for you. For non convertable units (such as the bead-to-bag example above) you will need to define this manually.

3e. The last field in this section is your material's Quantity low stock limit and allows you to define the minimum quantity of this material that should be available in stock before it is marked with a stock status of "low stock". You don't need to use this feature if this isn't important to you, but it can be a good tool for being aware of materials you are running low on so you can reorder before you run out completely.

Starting Adjustment

4a.The next two fields Starting Quantity and Average Actual Unit Cost are for setting your starting adjustment. This is useful for situations where you're moving from your old tracking system into Craftybase as it allows you to choose a date to start your tracking from. If you choose to set the starting quantity and unit price here, this will be set as your starting adjustment and current stock on hand and you will add inventory increases and decreases to this quantity after this point. For more information on backdating and starting adjustments, please refer to our Inventory Bootcamp eBook.

4b. Your Average Unit Price is the cost of the material per unit - this should take into account shipping, tax and discounts. This should be information that you have directly calculated from your previous system.

Additional Details

This section of the form is hidden away by default to speed up data entry in cases where you may not wish to add these details right now. To open the section, click anywhere on the heading and fields will appear below it.

5a. There are three textboxes available under the Bin Location heading: this is to create a code using location based system for your material. You can use one or all of the available fields, depending on the naming system you use. How to label your material inventory locations

5b. Category is for your use to classify your materials so that they can be grouped together. It is optional and you can set this later via the edit material form if you wish. You can either select from your list of existing categories by typing a couple of letters in the search box (if this is a new category, just add it to the textbox and it will be saved as a new one for you).

5c. The Preferred Vendor field can be used to set a vendor you most often purchase this product from. This appears on your restock reports as a quick way of grouping together all materials that need reordering from a specific vendor. You can also add the preferred vendor's code for the material into the field immediately below called Vendor code and this will also appear on the same report.

5d. The next field is Description and is a field you can use to note anything about the material that isn't covered in the code, name or category. The final field on the form is your Photo field allows you to upload an image that represents your material. This is optional, but it can be a good way of quickly identifying your material in your lists and expense records.

Once happy with the information you have added on the form, click the Save Material button to submit the details. Once saved, you'll be taken to your newly saved material.

Have some questions?

If you have any additional questions, please get in touch and we'll be happy to give you a hand. Alternatively, feel free to join and post your question in our official Craftybase Facebook group.