Manufactured Products

Overview

Manufactured Products keeps product management centralised under a single Master Data catalog for Manufacturing. Every product manufactured by the factory gets one record with a SKU, name, category, unit of measure, and standard cost, and both the Work Orders and Bill of Materials screens select from that catalog via a dropdown instead of typing a name each time — including a "+ New" quick-create shortcut reachable directly from those Create forms so you never have to leave them to register a missing product.

Quick Start

1. Open Manufactured Products in the Manufacturing sidebar.
2. Click Add Product. The form opens as a centred modal.
3. Enter a SKU (or leave it blank to get an auto-generated MP-XXX code) and a Product Name — the Save button stays disabled until the name is non-empty.
4. Pick a Category (Component, Subassembly, or Finished Good) and a Unit of measure.
5. Enter the Standard Cost and leave Status as Active.
6. Click Save.
7. The new product is immediately available in the product dropdown on the Create Work Order and Create Bill of Materials forms.

Toolbar Controls

The screen header follows the two-row layout standard used across TotalApp list screens:

Row 1 — Title + Primary Actions

Row 2 — Search + Filters + Refresh

When one or more rows are checked, a selected-count indicator appears in the toolbar with an ✕ button to clear the selection.

Category and Status

Every product is assigned exactly one category and one status. Neither is a free-text field — both are delivered through the translation layer so the labels are always consistent and localised.

Quick-Create from Work Order or BOM

If you're creating a Work Order or a Bill of Materials and the product you need isn't in the dropdown yet, you don't have to abandon the form to go add it manually.

Clicking the + button next to the product dropdown in either form does three things:

1. Everything you've already typed into the Work Order or BOM form is held onto.
2. You're taken straight to Manufactured Products, and its Add Product form opens automatically with a banner explaining which screen you'll return to.
3. Once you save the new product, you're returned to the Work Order or BOM form exactly as you left it — your other fields untouched — with the new product already selected in the dropdown.

Import & Export — CSV and Excel

Both CSV and Excel (.xlsx) are supported for import and export, in the same column order:

Click Export in the toolbar to open a small menu with two choices — CSV (downloads manufactured-products.csv) and Excel (downloads manufactured-products.xlsx) — both covering only the rows visible after applying the current search, category, and status filters.

Click Import to add or update products in bulk. The file picker accepts .csv, .xlsx, and .xls — the format is detected automatically from the file extension, so the same Import button handles either type. This lets you export, edit in a spreadsheet application of your choice, and re-import, or bring in a list from another system. Rows with an empty Name are skipped. Category and Status values must match the internal codes used by Export (component / subassembly / finished_good and active / discontinued) — a row with an unrecognised value falls back to component / active rather than being rejected.

Upsert Logic (Update + Insert)

The import process has an Upsert (Update + Insert) architecture, keyed on SKU:

• If the SKU already exists in the system: the existing product record is found and overwritten with the incoming data from the file (e.g. name, category, unit, standard cost, status) — Update / Override.
• If the SKU does not exist in the system: a new product record is created — Insert.

This makes re-importing an edited export safe by design: export the current list, adjust costs or statuses in a spreadsheet, and import it back — every row with an unchanged SKU simply refreshes (Updates) the matching product, and any brand-new rows are Inserted. If the same file is imported twice with no changes, the second import is a no-op (it re-applies the same values over the same products).

Deleting a Product

Before deleting, consider setting the product's status to Discontinued instead. Discontinued products are retained for historical reference in existing Work Orders and BOMs, while being visually distinguished from products still in active production.

Products referenced by active Work Orders or BOMs should not be deleted, since those records store the product name and ID at the time they were created — deleting the master record does not retroactively remove it from existing Work Orders or BOMs, but it does remove it from the dropdown for new ones.

Settings & Customisation

AI Assistant

A collapsible AI Assistant panel lives on the right edge of the Manufactured Products screen. Click the tab (marked with a sparkle icon) to open it, and click it again — or the collapse control inside the panel — to close it. The panel keeps chat history, and offers New Chat, Fullscreen, and Save as Report controls, the same pattern used by the AI Assistant panel on other TotalApp screens.

Ask it directly, or use one of the built-in suggested prompts:

• Analyze selected products / Summarize selected products — always listed first. Check one or more rows in the table first, then click either suggestion to have the assistant work specifically against that selection (the button label updates to show the count, e.g. "Analyze 3 selected products"). With no rows checked, both are shown greyed out and disabled — check at least one row in the table to enable them.
• Which products are missing a standard cost? — surface products where the cost field was left at zero.
• Are any SKUs or names duplicated or inconsistent? — spot near-duplicate entries that may need cleanup.
• Which discontinued products might still be referenced? — a sanity check before removing a product entirely.
• Are any products missing a category or unusual UOM? — catch data-entry mistakes early.

Any assistant reply can be saved directly to My Reports with one click, using the month-stamped title generated from your prompt.

Opening the panel does not cover the product table. The main content area shrinks to make room on the right, so the table stays visible at a narrower width while you chat. Closing the panel restores the table to full width.

The assistant answers using whichever AI provider is configured under Settings → Agentic, so it works whether your tenant is set up for the hosted API, a local CLI, or a fully client-side model.

Frequently Asked Questions