Creating a Bill of Materials (BOM)

Note:  Looking for a way to sell a group of products at the same time?  Product bundles (or packages) is a feature that is in development.  Bills of Material are mainly for manufacturing operations.  Read about the plan for Product Bundles here.


A Bill of Materials (BOM) is a list of parts required to build an assembly of some kind.  The ingredient list in a  recipe is a good everyday example of a BOM.

To specify a bill of materials in OfficeBooks, you must first add an item within your OfficeBooks account.  See Creating an Item in OfficeBooks if you need help.

To build your bill of materials:

1. Select the item record of the product
2. Click on the "Bill of Materials and Revision Control" tab to expand that section.
3. Click on the View/Edit button
4. You can define a workflow in the workflow section.
5. Near the bottom of the screen, you will find the components list, click New Item
6. Select the part to add to the BOM from the selection window.  You can add a new item record from the selection window if required.
7. Define the quantity required to build one of the product
8. Click the checkmark to save that item
9. Repeat steps 6 and 7 until you have completed building the components list
10. You can add details to the Manufacturing Instructions or Notes fields before saving your work.

This bill of materials has a multiple step workflow and a simple, 2 item component list.