Inventory Assemblies (BOM)

Manufacture finished goods from component inventory. Define a bill of materials once, build whenever stock runs low, and Kantivo handles every stock and cost posting automatically.

Overview

An assembly is an inventory item that's manufactured from other inventory items rather than purchased. Each assembly carries a bill of materials (BOM) — the list of components and the quantity of each needed to make one finished unit.

When you build, Kantivo:

• Decreases each component's on-hand quantity
• Increases the assembly's on-hand quantity
• Calculates total component cost and stamps it on the assembly
• Posts the cost transfer between sub-accounts of inventory

Define a Bill of Materials

1. Open Lists → Items and create a new item of type Inventory Assembly
2. Fill in name, SKU, sales price, income account, COGS account
3. Scroll to the Bill of Materials section
4. Click + Add Component
5. Pick a component item (must be an existing Inventory Part or another assembly) and the quantity per finished unit
6. Repeat for every component
7. Save

Import BOMs from CSV

Bringing a catalog over from QuickBooks Desktop or a spreadsheet? Load every recipe in one pass from Products & Services → 🧩 Import BOMs, or from Import from CSV on any assembly's Bill of Materials section.

1. Prepare a CSV with one row per component line: Assembly, Component, Quantity per finished unit, and optionally Yield %. An export of QuickBooks' ItemInventoryAssemblyLine table (QODBC or the Enterprise ODBC driver) loads without editing.
2. Choose the file and confirm the column mapping
3. Click Preview to review every recipe and any unmatched item
4. Click Import

Kantivo matches items by full name, then SKU, then the name without its parent prefix; both assemblies and components must already be in your item list. Each assembly in the file has its recipe replaced and the rest are untouched. If any line for an assembly has a problem, that assembly is skipped entirely, so a recipe is never saved half-built.

Build an Assembly

1. Open Inventory → Build Assemblies
2. Pick the assembly item
3. Enter the quantity to build
4. Kantivo shows the component requirement and checks stock availability
5. If any component is short, the build is blocked with a list of what's missing
6. Click Build

The build is atomic — every component decrement and the assembly increment happen in a single transaction. If anything fails, nothing is saved.

Unbuild

Need to reverse a build? Use the Unbuild action:

• Decreases the assembly's on-hand quantity
• Returns each component to its on-hand quantity at the original cost
• Posts the reverse cost transfer

Cost Roll-Up

Kantivo calculates assembly cost as the sum of (component cost × component quantity) at build time. Two things to know:

• The roll-up cost is stamped on the assembly stock layer at build time — later component price changes don't retroactively re-cost existing assemblies.
• The assembly's standard cost field auto-recalculates whenever the BOM is edited so price-list quotes use current numbers.

Accounting Impact

Building doesn't change total inventory dollars — it just moves value from component sub-accounts to the assembly sub-account:

When you later sell the assembly, the standard COGS entry posts: Cost of Goods Sold debit / Inventory — Finished Goods credit, at the stamped cost.

Tracking & Reports

Three places to monitor assemblies:

• Inventory Valuation Summary — shows finished goods alongside raw materials
• Build History — every build/unbuild event with quantity, cost, and user
• Low Stock Alerts — fires for both components and finished goods