Do you manufacture your own products and don't know where to start in ABRA Flexi? This guide is a map of the whole setup – from creating your company and warehouses, through the price list, bills of materials and the production process itself, to inventory accounting and job evaluation. The sections are ordered the way you will need them when getting started, so you can work through them from top to bottom.

Before you start setting things up, it's good to know how far ABRA Flexi goes in manufacturing. It will save you from searching for features that aren't 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 them and whether they made a profit on a job. But if you run a workshop with dozens of operations and plan machine capacity, bear in mind that planning will stay outside Flexi.

Your answers to these questions determine which sections of this guide are mandatory for you and which you can skip. Go through them before you start creating anything – some choices are hard to change later.

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

The foundation of 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 further options are important:

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

In a manufacturing company, more people than just the accountant usually work in Flexi – a warehouse clerk receives materials, a foreman issues products, a salesperson invoices. Everyone should have their own account so that it is traceable who created a document.

Follow the guide on users in the company and handle the scope of permissions through user roles. It is typically useful to separate the warehouse clerk role (stock documents only) from a role with access to accounting and prices.

If you are creating another company with the same rules, you don't have to click everything through again – use the import settings from another company function. It carries over all user settings, such as filters or 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. In manufacturing this setup is exceptionally important, because the whole production mechanism is triggered through the stock document type.

Go through the general guides on document types and on adding a document series. We'll get to the special types for production in the Stock document types for production section.

Without a bank account you can't post payments. Set one up following the guide on creating a bank account, or following the extended procedure for creating cash desks and bank accounts. Then set up loading bank statements and creating payment orders – for manufacturers with dozens of supplier invoices a month, this saves more time than any other setting.

Then you also have data migration and opening balances to deal with. It's not just about accounts – for a manufacturing company it is mainly about the stock status as of the switchover date, that is, how much of what is in the warehouse 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 code lists and documents in bulk via Excel import.

In Flexi, a warehouse is a place where inventory is stored. While a trading company often needs just one, a manufacturing company usually needs several – otherwise materials, work in progress and finished products merge into one pile in which nothing can be evaluated.

If you are only starting with warehouse management, go through the introduction to warehouse management first.

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

This breakdown is not mandatory – you can start with one warehouse and split it later. But three warehouses give you, right from the start, a clear answer to the question "how much money do I have tied up in materials and how much in finished products", and without them these figures are hard to obtain.

You create and manage warehouses in the list of warehouses. For each warehouse, enter a clear name and abbreviation – you will select them on every document, so it pays off to choose something unambiguous (MAT, POL, VYR).

Besides the name, you will probably also need to deal with the warehouse account (assuming you chose ABRA Flexi also for keeping your books) - a different account will probably apply to each operation.

If you have a larger hall and need to know not only that the material is in stock, but also exactly where it is located, use warehouse locations – for each stock card you can specify a room, rack and shelf. The feature is available from the Premium plan, and the relevant fields must be enabled in the form field settings. If knowing the total quantity is enough for you, feel free to skip it.

You move inventory between warehouses with a transfer note, and you can find the current status at any time through stock status as of a date.

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

One of the key fields on a manufacturing company's price list item is the inventory type. It distinguishes what the item is in the process and serves for quick categorization. Accounting and other further steps are not tied to it.

In practice, this means:

A product group is a parent category into which you place an item. It carries preset posting that is carried over to document items, and – which is essential for production – warehouse mapping is most often set up precisely through the group (see warehouse mapping).

So create at least three groups corresponding to your warehouses: Materials, Semi-finished products, Products. Then it is enough to map a group to a warehouse with one record instead of dozens of rows for individual items. You can create groups in bulk via Excel import.

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

With a larger number of items, it pays off to organize them into a price list tree – for example folders Materials, Semi-finished products, Products and subfolders within them by product type. Track additional properties (color, dimension, quality) using price list attributes.

Creating hundreds of material items manually makes no sense. Prepare a spreadsheet in Excel and use the price list import from Excel, or the stock card import for receiving the opening balance. You can even import an entire bill of materials (currently only in the desktop application).

Manufacturing stands and falls with units. If you buy glue in canisters and 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 code list, and multiples of this unit are then handled by the packaging function – you can define up to five on a price list item, each with its own EAN code, and use them in both purchase and sales documents.

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

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

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

For materials, the update purchase prices in the price list function is useful – after a supplier price increase, you can have prices overwritten in bulk instead of editing items manually. Optionally, you can also update the purchase price automatically with the most recently created goods receipt.

The bill of materials is the heart of all production records in Flexi. It is a list of what one unit of a product is made from and in what quantities. Based on it, the system knows during production what to write off from the warehouse 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 routing: it contains no operations, times, workstations or machines. If you need to account for labor or machine overhead, you must reflect it in the product price in another way – either by adding it to the bill of materials as a non-stock item, or by posting it with an internal document. The first approach, however, assumes that you have an exactly calculated labor value for the given unit of measure of the product or semi-finished product.

You'll find the 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 warning about the places where mistakes are most often made.

This is the most common reason why customers can't "find" the bill of materials in Flexi: the Bill of materials tab is not displayed by default. You enable it in the form field settings directly in 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 product), not on a warehouse. It is therefore not tied to a specific warehouse – the warehouse is determined only by warehouse mapping.

Procedure:

Once your bill of materials is complete, Flexi can manually recalculate the product price from it. In the bill of materials header, 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 the selling price from their selling prices.

A semi-finished product's bill of materials is created exactly the same way as a product's bill of materials – the semi-finished product simply must be a separate price list item and have its own Bill of materials tab. You then add the semi-finished product to the finished 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 product A, then semi-finished product B, and only then the finished product. So consider whether you really need to track semi-finished products – if a subassembly is never sold separately or kept in stock, it is often simpler to describe the product with a single flat bill of materials directly from materials.

The bill of materials says what is consumed. Warehouse mapping says where from. Without it, Flexi doesn't know which warehouse to issue materials from in a company with multiple warehouses – and production fails.

You'll find it in the overview of modules under Records → Code lists → Goods → Warehouse mapping, or you can search for it by name. With the New button you create a record with four fields:

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

You don't click through dozens of bills of materials by hand. Use the bill of materials import from Excel, and for connected systems, creating bills of materials via API.

For maintenance, a free add-on that shows which bills of materials a given price list item is used in is useful. When a supplier stops supplying a particular screw, you will immediately see which products are affected.

Besides the bill of materials, ABRA Flexi also offers sets and bundles. They are often confused, yet they address a completely different situation: a set is a sales tool, a bill of materials is a production tool.

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. With the New button, you add the individual components along with their quantities. The set must be recorded as stock goods, even though it won't have stock of its own. The sets and bundles feature is available from the Business license upward. 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 generation of a stock document enabled, an issue note for the individual components is created – you can find it through Relationship information.

What to watch out for with sets:

Now you have warehouses, a price list and bills of materials. What remains is to set up the documents through which production physically takes place. In Flexi, production doesn't happen in a special module – it runs on regular stock documents, just with a certain setup.

This is the most important setting of the whole section. In stock document types, create two new types:

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

2. Type for receiving a product (for example VÝROBA-PŘÍJEM)

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

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

If you produce to order, you create a production order directly from the customer's received order. If you produce for stock, you enter the order manually according to your plan.

From the production order detail, you can run the Order for production function. It breaks the products being produced down into end materials – including the material needed for semi-finished products – and offers to create an order to a supplier.

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

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

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

Independently – in the goods receipts and issue notes module, create a new goods receipt with the type VÝROBA-PŘÍJEM and add the products being produced. A production order is therefore not mandatory, 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 materials from the bill of materials are automatically issued with an issue note, and the product's cost price is calculated from the actual stock price of the consumed materials. You can find the link between the goods receipt and the generated issue note through Relationship information.

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

Production doesn't go through because there is no material. Flexi won't allow you to produce a product without sufficient material in stock, and in this situation it can't even generate an issue request. You must first receive the material into stock with a goods receipt.

Material wasn't deducted. Check the movement type specification on the goods receipt – see stock document types for production.

I need to receive a product into stock without deducting materials. Typically for a customer return. Use a regular goods receipt without a movement type specification – for example as a "bare" receipt.

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

Production starts with purchasing. In Flexi it runs on the standard purchasing cycle, which you can walk through in the business cycle guide.

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

This is the point that manufacturing companies most often underestimate. If you post transport and customs duty straight to costs, the stock price of the material will be lower than what the material actually cost you – and the cost price of your products will be just as distorted.

These amounts properly belong in the acquisition cost of inventory. The Allocate incidental costs to stock service, which you'll find among the services at the bottom of the goods receipt, is used for this. It can distribute the cost across items by price as well as by quantity; for an individual item, you can also enter the amount directly into the Incidental costs field. The procedure is described in the article on allocating incidental costs to stock.

So that production doesn't stand still because of a missing screw, set a minimum stock on the stock cards. In an issued order, you'll then find the Order up to minimum function among the services, which offers the items below the minimum along with quantities to reorder and creates the order from them with a single confirmation.

Because ABRA Flexi doesn't plan material requirements ahead, this is in practice the main substitute for the missing MRP. You can extend it with the order from a user query – you write your own query over the data and have an order created from its result.

If you buy materials in the EU, the reverse charge regime usually applies. For imports from third countries, you will work with the single administrative document. Once you exceed the limit, you'll also have to file Intrastat reports.

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

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

If you produce to order, the received order is precisely the place where production starts – you create a production order from it.

If you have products in stock and promise them to a customer, you can reserve them so that nobody else sells them in the meantime. The options are described in the article on variants of creating reservations.

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

For unpaid invoices, then, deploy payment reminders.

The warehouse tells you how much of what you have. But it doesn't tell you whether you made a profit on a specific job. Three analytical dimensions, filled in on documents, serve this purpose.

Fill in the job consistently on all documents that relate to it – on the received order, on the production order, on the product goods receipt and on the issued invoice. Only then will you see in one place how much material went into the job and how much you invoiced for it. Jobs can also be created in bulk via Excel import.

You can view the result in the accounting analysis of a job.

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

These are two different approaches to when acquired inventory is recognized as costs. ABRA Flexi supports both – inventory accounting using method A as well as method B.

You set up the posting templates according to which stock documents are posted by following the guide on accounting within the warehouse. Most settings are based on product groups – another reason why it pays off to have separate groups for materials, semi-finished products and products.

At least once a year you must compare the physical stock with your records. The stocktaking tool is used for this. You add stock cards to it with the Insert items button (or load them with a scanner), for each one enter the counted quantity in the Actual quantity field, and with the Generate documents button you have documents created from the differences – at most two can be created, a goods receipt and an issue note.

Before the closing, verify that the warehouse value matches the stock account, or run the warehouse recalculation. Then lock completed periods so that nobody interferes with them anymore, and create a new period following the guide on closing a period.

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

Machines, molds and tools belong in the asset register. Follow the asset management guide and create individual cards following the guide on creating a depreciable asset card. Machine depreciation is a significant cost item for manufacturers – so assign it to the correct cost center.

The payroll module is available only in the desktop application; you won't find it in the web interface. For a manufacturing company, the most interesting option is to allocate payroll costs to individual jobs – only then will the job evaluation show you labor too, not just materials.

If you are a VAT payer, the same routine awaits you every month or quarter. The VAT return and control statement wizard will guide you through it – it checks your documents, compiles the return and generates a file for submission.

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

Arrange the indicators you monitor most often on the dashboard, so that they greet you right after you log in. Print outputs and their export are covered by the article prints.

What you won't find in the standard reports. ABRA Flexi has no ready-made production reports such as "value of work in progress", "missing material for planned jobs" or "development of a product's cost price over time". But you can build all of these outputs yourself using user queries, and optionally format them in the configurable reports editor or display them in a chart.

Once you have the foundation set up, it makes sense to think about connecting other systems – a barcode scanner 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 production orders.

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

Yes, a bill of materials can contain semi-finished products that have their own bill of materials. However, production doesn't happen in a single step – each semi-finished product must be produced beforehand with a separate document, because the system requires that an item from the bill of materials be physically in stock.

A bill of materials works only with quantity; it has no separate field for scrap. The solution is simple: enter the quantity including waste directly in the bill of materials. If you need 0.9 m of material and you know that 10% is offcut, enter 1 m. Then verify the actual consumption through stocktaking and refine the bill of materials accordingly.

No. Batches and expiration can be tracked only for finished products, not for consumed materials – the batch can't be specified on the issue note generated automatically from the bill of materials. ABRA Flexi therefore doesn't provide full traceability from material to product on its own. If you need it for legislation or certification reasons, write to us and we'll discuss the options.

A bill of materials creates a new product with its own stock, and materials are written off during production. A set is just a sales wrapper for several existing items – it has no stock of its own and the components are issued from stock only upon sale. You'll find a detailed comparison in the Sets and bundles section.

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

Production can't be carried out until you receive the material into stock. In this case, an issue request is not generated. You order the missing material with the Order for production function on the production order, which breaks the product down into end items.

Flexi has no standard report for work in progress. A practical approach is to keep semi-finished products as separate stock items – their value in stock then approximates work in progress well. You can build a more precise overview with a user query.

You don't have to; production works with one warehouse as well. Even so, you must set up warehouse mapping, because without it Flexi doesn't know where to write the material off from. Separate warehouses for materials, semi-finished products and products make it much clearer how much money you have tied up in what, and we recommend starting with them right away.

The Bill of materials tab is not displayed by default – you need to enable it 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.