Are you manufacturing your own products and not sure where to start in ABRA Flexi? This guide is a map of the entire setup process – from setting up the company and warehouses, through price lists, bills of materials, and the production 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 your way through from top to bottom.

Before you dive into the setup, it's good to know how far ABRA Flexi's manufacturing capabilities extend. This will save you time searching for features that don't exist in the system.

ABRA Flexi can handle the following in manufacturing:

For most small and medium-sized manufacturers, this is more than enough: they need to know what they have in stock, how much a product cost, and whether they made money on an order. However, if you're running a workshop with dozens of operations and planning machine capacities, keep in mind that capacity planning 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 settings are difficult to change later.

This part applies 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 company settings, you'll fill in company identification, VAT payer status, default rates, document numbering, and accounting settings.

For a manufacturing company, two additional choices are especially important:

Also check that the accounting period you'll be working in is set correctly.

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

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

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

A document type is a template that pre-fills recurring data for you – accounts, warehouse, VAT rate, payment method. A document series then determines the numbering. This setting is especially important in manufacturing, because the entire production mechanism is triggered precisely through the warehouse document type.

Go through the general guides on document types and adding a document series. We'll cover the special manufacturing types in the Warehouse document types for manufacturing section.

Without a bank account, you can't post payments. 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 more time than any other setting.

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's mainly about the stock levels as of the switchover 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 bulk-import most codebooks and documents via Excel import.

In Flexi, a warehouse is a place where stock 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 blend into one pile that can't be evaluated at all.

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

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

This division 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" – and without them, these figures can only be determined with great effort.

You create and manage warehouses in the warehouse list. 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 probably also want to set the warehouse account (assuming you chose ABRA Flexi for its accounting features too) – a different account will likely be tied to each operation.

If you have a larger facility and need to know not just that material is in stock, but exactly where it's located, use warehouse locations – each stock card can specify a room, rack, and shelf. This feature is available from the Premium plan 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 move stock between warehouses using a transfer document, and you can check the current status at any time via stock status as of a date.

The price list is the central list of everything you work with. In a manufacturing company, it should include both materials, semi-finished goods, and finished products – each item separately. Without it, 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 inventory type. It distinguishes what role the item plays in the process and is used for quick categorization. It has no bearing on accounting or any other steps.

In practice, this means:

A product group is a parent category you assign an item to. It carries a pre-set accounting configuration that gets copied into document lines, and – crucially for manufacturing – it's most commonly through a group that warehouse mapping is set up.

Therefore, set up at least three groups corresponding to your warehouses: Materials, Semi-finished goods, Products. Then you only need to map a group to a warehouse with a single entry instead of dozens of lines for individual items. You can set up groups in bulk via Excel import.

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

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

Manually creating hundreds of material items doesn't make sense. Prepare a table in Excel and use the price list import from Excel, or the stock card import to receive opening stock. You can also import an entire bill of materials (currently only in the desktop application).

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

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

Receive opening stock via a goods receipt dated as of the switchover date – you'll find the procedure in the guide on goods receipts and issue slips.

You can enter a product's sales price manually or have it calculated. Pricing can derive a sales price from the purchase price using margin or markup, or calculate a discount from the sales price – either for an individual item or for an entire product group. This advanced pricing feature is available from the Business plan. 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 raises prices, you can have prices rewritten in bulk instead of editing items manually. You can also optionally have the purchase price updated automatically with the latest goods receipt.

The bill of materials is the heart of the entire manufacturing record-keeping in Flexi. It's a list of what and in what quantity is needed to make one unit of a product. Based on it, the system knows during production what to write off from stock and at what price to value the new product.

A bill of materials is a materials list – a list of items and quantities. A bill of materials is not a production procedure: it doesn't contain operations, times, workstations, or machines. If you need to factor in labor or machine overhead, you must reflect it in the product's price by another means – either by adding it to the bill of materials as a non-stock item, or by posting it separately with an internal document. The first approach assumes you have precisely calculated the labor value for the given unit of the product or semi-finished good.

You'll find a complete reference guide including an example in the article on the bill of materials in the web interface. Below is a summary of the essentials and a note on 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 shown 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 ones.

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

Procedure:

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

A bill of materials for a semi-finished good is created exactly the same way as one for a product – the semi-finished good just has to be a separate price list item with its own Bill of Materials tab. You then add the semi-finished good to the final product's bill of materials as a regular item.

In practice, this means that for a three-level product, you create three goods receipts: first semi-finished good A, then semi-finished good B, and only then the final product. So consider whether you really need to track semi-finished goods separately – if a sub-assembly is never sold separately or kept in stock, it's usually simpler to describe the product with a single flat bill of materials directly from raw materials.

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

You'll find it in the agenda overview under Records → Codebooks → Goods → Warehouse Mapping, or you can search for it by name. Click New to create a record with four fields:

Typical setup for a manufacturing company with three warehouses: one entry mapping the Materials group to the materials warehouse, and one mapping the Semi-finished goods group to the semi-finished goods warehouse. This covers all production inputs, no matter what you're manufacturing.

You wouldn't click through dozens of bills of materials manually. Use the bill of materials import from Excel, or for connected systems, creating bills of materials via the 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 supplying a particular screw, you'll immediately see which products are affected.

Alongside 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. Click New to add the individual components along with quantities. The set must be recorded as a stock item, even though it won't have its own inventory. The sets and kits feature is available from the Business license and above. You can create them in bulk via Excel import.

When selling, you add the set to an issued invoice. If the invoice type has automatic warehouse document generation enabled, an issue slip is created for the individual components – you can look it up via Link Information.

Things to watch out for with sets:

Now you have warehouses, a price list, and bills of materials. What remains is setting up the documents through which production physically happens. In Flexi, production doesn't take place in a separate module – it runs on ordinary warehouse documents, just with specific settings.

This is the most important setting in this entire section. In warehouse document types, set up two new types:

1. Type for issuing materials (for example VÝROBA-VÝDEJ)

2. Type for receiving products (for example VÝROBA-PŘÍJEM)

ABRA Flexi doesn't have a separate record of manufacturing orders. Their role is played by an issued order with a special type – an order "to yourself" that specifies what and in what quantity should be manufactured.

Therefore, set up a separate type in issued order types – for example, Příkaz do výroby. You don't need to fill in the receipt type or warehouse here, as you'll 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 received order from the customer. If you manufacture for stock, you enter the order manually according to your plan.

From the manufacturing order's detail, you can run the Order for manufacturing function. It breaks down the products being manufactured into raw materials – including material needed for semi-finished goods – and offers to create an order to the supplier.

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

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

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

Separately – in the goods receipts and issue slips agenda, create a new receipt with the VÝROBA-PŘÍJEM type and add the products being manufactured. So the manufacturing order isn't mandatory, just recommended for clarity.

In both cases, saving the document triggers the same thing: the product is received into stock, the material from the bill of materials is automatically issued via an issue slip, and the product's cost price is calculated from the actual warehouse price of the material consumed. You'll find the link between the receipt and the generated issue slip via Link Information.

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

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

Material wasn't written off. Check the movement type specification on the receipt – see warehouse document types for manufacturing.

I need to receive a product into stock without writing off material. This typically happens with a customer return. Use a regular receipt without a movement type specification – i.e., for example a "plain" receipt.

The value on the stock card doesn't add up. Run a warehouse recalculation, ideally overnight – when no users are working in Flexi. It may take a while.

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

The minimal version is simple: you issue an issued order to the supplier, create a receipt from it once delivered, and record a received invoice for it. If you have multiple deliveries from a single supplier on one invoice, use bulk invoicing of receipts.

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

Correctly, these amounts belong in the acquisition price of the inventory. The Allocate additional costs to warehouse service, found among the services at the bottom of the receipt, is used for this. It can spread the cost across items by price or by number of units; for an individual item, the amount can also be entered directly in the Additional costs field. The procedure is described in the article on allocating additional costs to a warehouse.

To keep production from stalling due to a missing screw, set a minimum stock level on stock cards. On an issued order, you'll then find the Order to minimum function among the services, which shows 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 needs ahead of time, this is in practice the main substitute for a missing MRP module. You can extend it via an order from a user query – you write your own query over the data and create an order from its results.

If you purchase material within the EU, the reverse charge regime typically 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 is the same for a manufacturer 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 slip. 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 production starts – you create a manufacturing order from it.

If you have products in stock and promise them to a customer, you can reserve them so they don't get sold to someone else in the meantime. Your options are described in the article on reservation creation variants.

If you deliver products to VAT payers in the EU, reverse charge applies. For some domestic commodities – such as scrap metal or construction work – domestic reverse charge also applies, which affects manufacturing companies more often than they might expect.

For unpaid invoices, use reminders.

The warehouse tells you how much of what you have. It doesn't tell you whether you made money on a specific order. Three analytical dimensions, filled in on documents, are used for that.

Fill in the order consistently on all documents related to it – on the received order, the manufacturing order, the product receipt, and the issued invoice. Only this way will you be able 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 Excel import.

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

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

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

You set up the default account assignments used to post warehouse documents following the guide on accounting within the warehouse. Most of the setup sits on product groups – another reason it's worth having separate groups for materials, semi-finished goods, and products.

At least once a year, you must compare physical stock with your records. The stocktaking tool is used for this. Add stock cards to it with the Insert Items button (or scan them with a reader), record the counted quantity in the Actual Status field for each one, and use the Generate Documents button to create documents from the differences – at most two can be created, a receipt and an issue slip.

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

Two records that aren't directly related to manufacturing but are still needed for a complete picture of your costs.

Machines, molds, and tools belong in asset records. Follow the asset records guide and create individual cards following the guide on creating a depreciable asset card. Machine depreciation is a significant cost item for manufacturers – be 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 wage costs to individual orders – only then will order evaluations show you labor as well as materials.

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

At the end of the year, you'll prepare the financial statements – the balance sheet and cash flow statement are both available.

Set up the most commonly tracked metrics on your dashboard so they greet you right after login. The article on printouts covers print outputs and their export.

What you won't find in standard reports. ABRA Flexi doesn't have ready-made manufacturing reports like "work-in-progress value," "missing material for planned orders," or "product cost price trend over time." However, you can build all these outputs yourself using user queries, and 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 address material needs through a combination of the bill of materials, minimum stock levels, and issued orders; capacity planning stays outside of Flexi, or can be handled by connecting an external tool via the API.

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

A bill of materials only works with quantities; there's no 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 cutoff waste, enter 1 m. Verify actual consumption through stocktaking and refine the bill of materials accordingly.

No. Batches and expiration dates can only be tracked for finished products, not for consumed materials – the batch cannot be determined on an issue slip 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 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 only removed from stock 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 your chosen 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 precisely calculated the labor value for that unit of measure – otherwise, account for them separately in accounting.

Manufacturing can't be carried out until you receive the material into stock. No issue request is generated in this case. You can order the missing material using the Order for manufacturing function on the manufacturing order, which breaks the product down into its raw material components.

There's no standard work-in-progress report in Flexi. The practical approach is to record semi-finished goods as separate stock items – their stock value then gives a good approximation of work in progress. You can build a more precise overview using a user query.

No, manufacturing works fine with a single warehouse – and in that case, you don't even need to worry about warehouse mapping. However, separate warehouses for materials, semi-finished goods, and products significantly clarify how much money is tied up where, and we recommend starting with them right away.

The Bill of Materials tab isn't shown by default – you need to enable it in the form field settings on the price list item's detail. Also check that the item has the inventory type product, semi-finished good, or work in progress.