Are you manufacturing your own products and not sure where to start in ABRA Flexi? This guide is a map of the entire setup – from setting up the company and warehouses, through pricing, bills of materials and the manufacturing process itself, to inventory accounting and order evaluation. The sections are arranged in the order you'll need them when getting started, so you can work through them from top to bottom.

Before you start configuring things, it's good to know how far ABRA Flexi's manufacturing capabilities go. This will save you from searching for features that don't exist in the system.

ABRA Flexi can handle manufacturing in the following ways:

For most small and medium-sized manufacturers, this is more than enough: they need to know what's in stock, how much a product cost, and whether they made a profit on the order. However, if you're running a workshop with dozens of operations and need to plan machine capacity, keep in mind that scheduling will remain outside of Flexi.

The answers to these questions will determine which sections of this guide are mandatory for you and which you can skip. Go through them before you start setting anything up – some choices are difficult to change later.

This part is common to all companies, regardless of industry. If you already have Flexi up and running, just review it as a check and move on to warehouses.

The foundation for everything else. In the company settings, you fill in the company identification, VAT payer status, default rates, document numbering, and accounting settings.

For a manufacturing company, two additional choices are important:

Also check that the range of the accounting period you'll be working in is correct.

In a manufacturing company, more people than just the accountant usually work in Flexi – the warehouse worker receives material, the foreman issues products, the salesperson invoices. Each person should have their own account so it's traceable who created which document.

Follow the guide on users within a company and manage the scope of permissions through user roles. It's typically useful to separate the role of a warehouse worker (only warehouse documents) from a role with access to accounting and prices.

If you're setting up another company with the same rules, you don't have to click through everything again – use the take over settings from another company feature. This transfers all user settings, such as filters or sorting.

A document type is a template that pre-fills recurring information for you – accounts, warehouse, VAT rate, payment method. A document series then determines the numbering. In manufacturing, this setting is extremely important because it's precisely through the inventory document type that the entire manufacturing mechanism is triggered.

Review the general guide on document types and on adding a document series. We'll cover the special types for manufacturing in the Inventory document types for manufacturing section.

You can't post payments without a bank account. Set one up following the guide on setting up a bank account, or follow the extended procedure for creating cash registers and bank accounts. Then set up importing bank statements and creating payment orders – for manufacturers with dozens of supplier invoices per month, this saves the most time out of all the settings.

Then you also have data migration and setting up opening balances ahead of you. This isn't just about accounts – for a manufacturing company, it mainly concerns the warehouse status as of the transition date, i.e., how much of what is in stock and at what value.

Recommended order:

The general procedure is described in the article on migrating data from another system. You can also bring in most registers and documents in bulk via import from Excel.

In Flexi, a warehouse is a place where inventory is kept. While a trading company often only needs one, a manufacturing company usually needs several – otherwise materials, work-in-progress, and finished products all merge into one pile that can't be properly evaluated.

If you're just getting started with inventory management, first go through the introduction to inventory management.

A proven default structure for a manufacturing company is three warehouses:

This structure isn't mandatory – you can start with a single warehouse and split it later. However, three warehouses will give you a clear answer right from the start to the question "how much money is tied up in materials and how much in finished products" – without them, these figures are much harder to determine.

You create and manage warehouses in the list of warehouses. For each warehouse, fill in a clear name and abbreviation – you'll be selecting these on every document, so it's worth choosing something unambiguous (MAT, POL, VYR).

In addition to the name, you'll likely also need to deal with the warehouse account (assuming you chose ABRA Flexi partly for its accounting capabilities) – different operations will likely be tied to different accounts.

If you have a larger facility and need to know not just that material is in stock, but exactly where it is located, use location within the warehouse – for each stock card, you can specify a room, rack, and shelf. This feature is available from the Premium tier and the relevant fields need to be enabled in the form field settings. If knowing the total quantity is enough for you, feel free to skip this.

You transfer inventory between warehouses using a transfer document, and you can check the current status at any time via warehouse status as of a date.

The price list is the central list of everything you work with. In a manufacturing company, it includes materials, semi-finished products, and finished products alike – each item entered separately. Without this, you can't set up a bill of materials or receive anything into stock.

One of the key fields on a price list item for a manufacturing company is the inventory type. It distinguishes what role an item plays in the process and is used for quick categorization. It's not tied to accounting or any other subsequent steps.

In practice, this means:

A goods group is a higher-level category you assign an item to. It carries a pre-set posting configuration that propagates into document items, and – crucially for manufacturing – the group is also the most common way to configure warehouse mapping.

So set up at least three groups matching your warehouses: Material, Semi-finished products, Products. Then you just need to map a group to a warehouse with a single record, instead of dozens of rows for individual items. You can create groups in bulk via import from Excel.

You create individual items following the guide on the price list. For each item, fill in the code, name, unit of measure, goods group, inventory type, and VAT rate. For items you want to track in stock, turn on inventory tracking – otherwise you won't be able to work with them on receipt and issue documents.

With a large number of items, it's worth organizing them into a price list tree – for example, folders for Material, Semi-finished products, Products, with subfolders by product type within them. Record additional properties (color, size, quality) using price list attributes.

Manually setting up hundreds of material items doesn't make sense. Prepare a table in Excel and use import price list from Excel, or import stock cards for receiving your opening stock. You can also import an entire bill of materials (currently only available in the desktop application).

Manufacturing lives and dies by units of measure. If you buy glue in canisters but consume it in grams, this needs to be recorded correctly both in the price list and in the bill of materials. You can define your own units in the units of measure register, and multiples of that unit are handled by the packaging feature – you can define up to five packaging types per price list item, each with its own EAN code, and use them on both purchase and sales documents.

While a price list item describes "what it is," a stock card describes "how much of it, and at what value, is in a specific warehouse." Cards are created automatically with the first movement, but you use them to view balances, average price, and history.

Receive your opening stock using a receipt document dated to the transition date – the procedure is described in the guide on receipts and issues.

You can enter a product's sales price manually or have it calculated. Pricing can derive the sales price from the purchase price using a margin or markdown, or calculate a discount from the sales price – either for an individual item or for an entire goods group. This advanced pricing feature is available from the Business tier. If you offer different prices to different customers, use price levels.

For materials, the update purchase prices in price list feature comes in handy – after a supplier price increase, you can have the prices rewritten in bulk instead of manually editing each item. You can also optionally have the purchase price automatically updated with the most recently created receipt.

The bill of materials is the heart of all manufacturing records in Flexi. It's a list of what and in what quantity goes into making one unit of a product. Based on it, the system knows what to write off from the warehouse during manufacturing and at what price to value the new product.

A bill of materials is a list of materials – items and quantities. A bill of materials is not a process routing: it doesn't include operations, times, workstations, or machines. If you need to factor in labor or machine overhead, you must reflect it in the product's price some other way – either by adding it to the bill of materials as a non-stock item, or by posting it separately using an internal document. The first approach assumes you have an exact calculated labor value for the given unit of measure of the product or semi-finished product.

You'll find a complete reference guide including an example in the article bill of materials in the web interface. Below is a summary of the essentials and a note on the places where mistakes are most commonly made.

This is the most common reason customers "can't find" the bill of materials in Flexi: the Bill of Materials tab isn't displayed by default. You enable it in the form field settings directly on the price list item detail – in the form editing menu, add the Bill of Materials tab to the displayed tabs.

A bill of materials is created on the price list item of the finished product (or semi-finished product), not on the warehouse. It's therefore not tied to a specific warehouse – that's determined later by warehouse mapping.

Procedure:

Once your bill of materials is complete, Flexi can manually recalculate the product's price from it. Open Other functions in the bill of materials header and run the recalculation. The product's purchase price is built from the purchase prices of the items in the bill of materials, and the sales price from their sales prices.

A semi-finished product's bill of materials is set up exactly the same way as a product's bill of materials – the semi-finished product simply has to be a separate price list item with its own Bill of Materials tab. You then insert the semi-finished product as a regular item into the final product's bill of materials.

In practice, this means that for a three-level product, you'll create three receipt documents: first semi-finished product A, then semi-finished product B, and only then the final product. So consider whether you really need to record semi-finished products separately – if a sub-assembly is never sold on its own or kept in stock, it's often simpler to describe the product with a single flat bill of materials straight from raw materials.

The bill of materials tells you what gets consumed. Warehouse mapping tells you from where. Without it, Flexi won't know which warehouse to issue material from for a company with multiple warehouses – and production will fail.

You'll find it in the agenda list under Records → Registers → Goods → Warehouse mapping, or you can search for it by name. Use the New button to create a record with four fields:

Typical setup for a manufacturing company with three warehouses: one record mapping the Material group to the material warehouse, and one mapping the Semi-finished products group to the semi-finished product warehouse. This covers all inputs to manufacturing, whatever you produce.

You don't click through dozens of bills of materials manually. Use import bills of materials from Excel, or, for connected systems, creating bills of materials via API.

For maintenance, the free add-on that shows which bills of materials a given price list item is used in comes in handy. When a supplier stops delivering a particular screw, you'll immediately see which products are affected.

Besides the bill of materials, ABRA Flexi also offers sets and kits. These are often confused, yet they address completely different situations: a set is a sales tool, a bill of materials is a manufacturing one.

Setting up a set is simple: create a price list item for the set, open its detail, and go to the Sets tab in the bottom bar. Use the New button to add individual components along with quantities. The set must be recorded as a stocked item, even though it won't have its own stock. The sets and kits feature is available from the Business license tier and above. You can create them in bulk via import from Excel.

When selling, you add the set to an issued invoice. If the invoice type has automatic generation of an inventory document set up, an issue document is created for the individual components – you can find it via Related documents information.

Things to watch out for with sets:

Now you have your warehouses, price list, and bills of materials set up. What remains is configuring the documents through which manufacturing physically takes place. In Flexi, manufacturing doesn't happen in a separate module – it runs on standard inventory documents, just with certain settings.

This is the most important setting in the entire section. In inventory document types, create two new types:

1. Type for material issue (for example, VÝROBA-VÝDEJ)

2. Type for product receipt (for example, VÝROBA-PŘÍJEM)

ABRA Flexi has no separate register for manufacturing orders. Their role is played by an issued order with a special type – an order "to yourself," which specifies what and how much should be manufactured.

So set up a separate type in issued order types – for example, Příkaz do výroby. You don't need to fill in a receipt type or warehouse in it; you select both later in the dialog when creating the receipt. You then create the actual orders in issued orders.

If you manufacture to order, you create the manufacturing order directly from the customer's received order. If you manufacture to stock, you enter the order manually according to your plan.

From the manufacturing order detail, you can run the Order for manufacturing function. This breaks down the products to be manufactured into their end-level materials – including materials needed for semi-finished products – and offers to create a supplier order.

If your bill of materials includes semi-finished products, you must manufacture them first. The procedure is the same as for the final product, just one level lower:

This step is where manufacturing physically takes place. You have two options:

From the manufacturing order – open the order, expand the services menu at the bottom of the document, choose to create a receipt document, select document type VÝROBA-PŘÍJEM and the target warehouse, and confirm.

Separately – in the receipts and issues agenda, create a new receipt document with type VÝROBA-PŘÍJEM and add the products being manufactured. So the manufacturing order isn't mandatory – it's only recommended for the sake of clarity.

In both cases, saving the document results in the same thing: the product is received into stock, the material from the bill of materials is automatically issued via an issue document, and the product's cost price is calculated from the actual warehouse price of the material consumed. You can find the link between the receipt and the generated issue document via Related documents information.

If you need to be able to trace a specific manufactured piece, enable serial number tracking on the product's price list item. If instead of individual pieces you want to track entire manufactured batches and their shelf life, use batches and expiration dates. Both are available from the Business tier and are enabled on the price list item detail's Warehouse tab.

Production doesn't go through because there's no material. Flexi won't allow you to manufacture a product without sufficient material in stock, and in this situation, not even the issue request can be generated. You must first receive the material via a receipt document.

Material wasn't deducted. Check the movement type detail on the receipt document – see inventory document types for manufacturing.

I need to receive a product into stock without deducting material. This is typical for a return from a customer. Use a regular receipt document without a movement type detail specified – for example, a "plain" receipt.

The value on the stock card doesn't match. Run a warehouse recalculation, ideally overnight – when no users are working in Flexi. This can take a long time.

Manufacturing starts with purchasing. In Flexi, this follows the standard purchasing cycle, which you can review in the sales cycle guide.

The minimal variant is simple: you issue an issued order to the supplier, after delivery you create a receipt document from it, and record a received invoice against it. If you receive multiple deliveries from one supplier on a single invoice, use bulk invoicing of receipts.

This is a point that manufacturing companies most often underestimate. If you post transportation and customs costs directly to expenses, the warehouse price of the material will be lower than what the material actually cost you – and the cost price of your products will be distorted in the same way as a result.

These amounts correctly belong in the acquisition cost of the inventory. This is handled by the Allocate incidental costs to inventory service, which you'll find among the services at the bottom of the receipt document. It can allocate the cost to items either by price or by quantity; for an individual item, the amount can also be entered directly into the Incidental costs field. The procedure is described in the article on allocating incidental costs to inventory.

To keep production from stalling due to a missing screw, set a minimum stock level on your stock cards. On an issued order, you'll then find an Order to minimum function among the services, which offers items below the minimum along with the quantity to reorder, and creates an order from them with a single confirmation.

Since ABRA Flexi doesn't plan material requirements in advance, this is in practice the main substitute for the missing MRP functionality. You can extend it via an order from a custom query – you write your own query against the data and have an order created from its results.

If you purchase materials within the EU, the reverse charge regime usually applies. For imports from third countries, you'll be working with a single administrative document. Once you exceed the threshold, you'll also need to report Intrastat.

The sales side for a manufacturer is the same as for a trading company – the only difference is that you're selling what you manufactured yourself.

Depending on how complex your sales process is, you can use the entire cycle, or just part of it: received inquiry → issued quote → received order → issued invoice and issue document. Each document can be created from the previous one, so you don't have to re-enter data.

If you manufacture to order, the received order is exactly the place where manufacturing begins – from it, you create the manufacturing order.

If you have products in stock and promise them to a customer, you can reserve them so no one else sells them in the meantime. The options are described in the article on variants for creating reservations.

If you deliver products to VAT-registered entities in the EU, reverse charge applies. For some domestic commodities – for example, scrap metal or construction work – reverse charge liability also applies, which affects manufacturing companies more often than they might expect.

For unpaid invoices, use reminders.

Inventory tells you how much of what you have. It doesn't tell you, however, whether you made a profit on a specific order. Three analytical dimensions, filled in on documents, serve this purpose.

Fill in the order consistently on all documents related to it – on the received order, on the manufacturing order, on the product receipt, and on the issued invoice. This is the only way to see in one place how much material went into the order and how much you invoiced for it. Orders can also be created in bulk via import from Excel.

You can view the result in the accounting analysis of orders.

For a manufacturing company, inventory is usually the largest item on the balance sheet. Discuss its accounting setup with your accountant before going into live operation. The article getting started with accounting provides basic orientation.

These are two different approaches to when acquired inventory becomes an expense. ABRA Flexi supports both – accounting for inventory using method A and method B.

The pre-set posting rules used for posting inventory documents are set up according to the guide on accounting within the warehouse. Most of the setup is based on goods groups – another reason it's worth having separate groups for materials, semi-finished products, and finished products.

At least once a year, you must compare the physical stock with your records. The stock-taking tool is used for this purpose. Add stock cards to it using the Insert items button (or scan them with a reader), record the actual quantity found in the Actual stock field for each one, and use the Generate documents button to have documents created from the differences – at most two can be generated, a receipt and an issue document.

Before closing, verify that the warehouse value matches the inventory account, or run a warehouse recalculation. Then lock completed periods so no one can modify them, and set up a new period following the guide on closing a period.

Two areas that aren't directly related to manufacturing, but without which the picture of your costs won't be complete.

Machines, molds, and tools belong in the asset register. Follow the guide for asset records and create individual cards following the guide on creating a depreciable asset card. Depreciation of machinery is a significant cost item for manufacturers – so make sure to assign it to the correct cost center.

The payroll agenda is only available in the desktop application; you won't find it in the web interface. For a manufacturing company, the most interesting option is allocating payroll costs to individual orders – only then will the order evaluation show you labor as well, not just materials.

If you're a VAT payer, the same routine awaits you every month or quarter. The guide for VAT returns and VAT control statements will walk you through it, checking documents, compiling the return, and generating a file for submission.

At the end of the year, you then prepare the financial statements – you have access to the balance sheet and the cash flow statement.

Set up the metrics you monitor most often on your dashboard so they greet you right after you log in. Print outputs and exporting them are covered in the article on printouts.

What you won't find in the standard reports. ABRA Flexi doesn't have ready-made manufacturing reports such as "work-in-progress value," "missing material for planned orders," or "product cost price development over time." However, you can build all these outputs yourself using custom queries, or format them in the configurable report editor or display them in a chart.

Once you have the basics set up, it makes sense to think about connecting other systems – barcode scanners in the warehouse, a product configurator, an e-shop, or a production planning tool. ABRA Flexi has an open REST API, through which you can create documents, bills of materials, and manufacturing orders.

No. There is no MRP module in ABRA Flexi, and the system doesn't work with operations, workstations, or time standards. You handle material requirements through a combination of the bill of materials, minimum stock levels, and issued orders; capacity planning stays outside Flexi, or is handled by connecting an external tool via the API.

Yes, a bill of materials can include semi-finished products that have their own bill of materials. However, manufacturing won't happen in a single step – each semi-finished product must be manufactured with a separate document in advance, because the system requires an item from the bill of materials to be physically in stock.

The bill of materials only works with quantities; it doesn't have a separate field for scrap. The solution is simple: enter the quantity including waste directly into the bill of materials. If you need 0.9 m of material and know that 10% is offcuts, enter 1 m. Verify actual consumption through stock-taking and refine the bill of materials accordingly.

No. Batches and expiration dates can only be tracked for final products, not for the material consumed – the batch cannot be determined on an issue document generated automatically from the bill of materials. So ABRA Flexi alone won't give you full traceability from material to product. If you need this for legislative or certification reasons, contact us and we'll discuss the options.

A bill of materials creates a new product with its own warehouse stock, and material is written off during manufacturing. A set is just a sales package for several existing items – it has no stock of its own, and the components are withdrawn from stock only at the time of sale. You'll find a detailed comparison in the Sets and kits section.

From the warehouse price of the material actually issued during manufacturing. This price follows the selected inventory valuation method. Wages, energy, and overhead are not automatically factored in. You can only add them to the bill of materials as a non-stock item if you have an exact calculated labor value for the given unit of measure – otherwise, account for them separately in your accounting.

Manufacturing cannot be carried out until you receive the material into stock. In this case, the issue request is not generated. You order the missing material using the Order for manufacturing function on the manufacturing order, which breaks the product down to its end-level items.

There is no standard report for work in progress in Flexi. A practical approach is to record semi-finished products as separate stock items – their value in the warehouse then gives a good approximation of work in progress. For a more precise overview, build a custom query.

No, manufacturing works even with a single warehouse. Even so, you still need to set up warehouse mapping, because without it Flexi won't know where to deduct material from. Separate warehouses for materials, semi-finished products, and products significantly clarify how much money you have tied up in what, and we recommend starting with them right away.

The Bill of Materials tab isn't displayed by default – it needs to be enabled in the form field settings on the price list item detail. Also check that the item has the inventory type product, semi-finished product, or work in progress.