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Lesson 14-- Assemblies |
Assemblies are very similar to Cost Items. You'll also use them for items that you sell, track in inventory or use in projects, but instead of buying assemblies, you build them from one or more cost item components. HINT: Assemblies are extremely useful for construction companies, manufacturers, service businesses, and any other type of business that combines labor and materials into an end product or salable service. Assemblies are often used to create 'unit costs'. A unit cost is an item that is measured in feet, square feet, pounds, or some other unit of measure, and that has a consistent price per unit. The work can be a construction item, a service, or a manufactured item. Unit costs are often used when creating estimates or when billing for services. Use assemblies for any of the following:
You can also use assemblies for any of the following:
Creating a New Assembly To create a new assembly, follow these steps:
Each Assembly includes one or more cost items. You 'build' an assembly with a list of the labor and material components that go into it. To add cost components, follow these steps:
Special Components Besides the usual five expense types, assemblies can include Tools and Reminders. They will not affect the price of the assembly. HINT: To use tools and reminders, choose Projects from the Reports menu, and choose Reminder List or Tool Report from the submenu. To adjust some components by a dimension measurement, put a check mark in the LM or MM column, and enter a dimension into the Labor Modifier or Material Modifier fields. To include things like startup and cleanup time, enter a labor component and put a check mark in the Fixed column. Goldenseal will always include the same fixed amount of that component, no matter what quantity an estimate includes. Small quantities will cost more per unit. The Gross Price of an assembly is calculated automatically from its list of components. The selected Markup System then calculates the prices used for Sales transactions, project estimates, and when the assembly is included as a component in another assembly. Goldenseal keeps an internal list of dependent items. Whenever you change the cost of any cost item, it also updates the cost of all assemblies that include that item. You don't need to do anything special to keep your unit costs up-to-date. NOTE: If a cost item is included in a large number of assemblies, there may be a delay whenever its price changes, as all the prices are updated. Otherwise, the updating happens so quickly that you probably won't even notice it. Click the Contract Setup button to change the text that appears in contracts specifications for this item. Type the basic contract text into the Specs Text field. You can use substitution text (CTRNAME, ITEMCOST, QTY, UNITSIZE) which will be replaced with the contractor name, item cost, estimate quantity and unit size in the actual contract. You can also enter nouns such as foot##feet which Goldenseal will convert to singular or plural form in the contract. Goldenseal also lets you specify which subcontracts this item will appear in. You can also use the other contract fields to specify how quantity and cost are described, and whether this item appears in lists. To enter estimating and inventory details, click the Sales Setup button. You can enter the following setup info:
Using Assemblies To enter assemblies into transactions use an Item breakdown" (choose Items from the Breakdown popup menu at the left side of the window). You'll most often use assemblies in the following transactions:
If are a manufacturer or construction company, Assemblies will be a very important part of the Goldenseal inventory management software. In this lesson, you have learned how to make assemblies. In a way, assemblies are a way to store all the 'smarts' of your business. They keep track of just about anything you create or do repeatedly. You might want to take a break now and work on an actual assembly. For example, you could create a 'Reading a Lesson' assembly that includes an hour or two of skilled labor, a certain amount of caffeine or chocolate, and the raw materials for one chic hat. That way you can enter the job cost of reading this very sentence! WARNING: Do not data enter the cost of data entering job costs, or you will find yourself in an infinite loop (the deadly Zeno's Accountant's paradox). Speaking of infinite loops, can you create an assembly that has a circular reference? You could cheat, and round the corners of a dictionary. Or you might try adjusting an electric drill with a screwdriver, then use it to drill some holes in a piece of lumber, and then use that to neatly store your screwdrivers next to the workbench. How would you enter job costs for that? Start | Previous | Next | Directory | Index | Ref Manual | Website |