ERPNext Manufacturing Guide: BOMs, Work Orders, Job Cards and Planning

ERPNext includes a complete manufacturing module in its open-source core: bills of materials, routings, production planning, work orders, shop-floor job cards, subcontracting and quality inspection. This guide explains how the pieces fit together and the modelling decisions that matter. For general principles, see our manufacturing ERP guide.

The building blocks

Item — raw materials, sub-assemblies and finished goods, each with UOMs, valuation method and, where needed, batch or serial tracking.

BOM (Bill of Materials) — the components and quantities to make an item, plus optional operations, scrap items and process loss. BOMs can be multi-level: a sub-assembly has its own BOM.

Operation and Workstation — operations are steps such as cutting or assembly; workstations are where they happen, with hourly operating costs and working hours.

Routing — a reusable sequence of operations that can be applied to many BOMs.

Work Order — an instruction to produce a quantity of an item using a BOM.

Job Card — created per operation in a work order, used to record time, operators and completed quantities on the shop floor.

The production flow

1. Demand arrives as sales orders, or as material requests for stock items.
2. A Production Plan pulls that demand, explodes BOMs, checks stock and creates work orders and material requests for shortfalls.
3. Materials are transferred to a work-in-progress warehouse against the work order.
4. Operators record progress on job cards.
5. A manufacture stock entry consumes raw materials and receives the finished goods into stock, with cost calculated from materials and operations.

Decisions to make early

How deep should BOMs go? Model sub-assemblies as separate BOMs only when you stock, plan or cost them separately. Otherwise keep them flat; every level adds work orders to manage.

Do you need job cards? Job cards give time tracking and operation-level progress, but they only help if operators actually record on them. For simple production, work orders without operations may be enough.

Transfer or backflush? ERPNext can consume raw materials based on the BOM or based on what was actually transferred to work in progress. Backflushing from the BOM is simpler; consuming what was transferred is more accurate when actual usage varies.

Valuation. FIFO or moving average for raw materials affects finished-goods cost. Decide per item group and keep it consistent.

Scrap and process loss. Record expected scrap on the BOM so costs and yields reflect reality.

Subcontracting

When you send materials to a job worker, a subcontracting order tracks what was supplied and what came back. Stock at the job worker sits in a supplier warehouse, so you always know what is out. The finished goods are received with a subcontracting receipt and the job worker's charges are added to their cost.

Quality and traceability

Quality Inspection can be required on purchase receipts, during manufacturing or before delivery, using templates with acceptance criteria. Batch and serial numbers link raw material lots through work orders to customer deliveries, so you can answer "which customers received product made from this lot?"

Planning limits

ERPNext plans materials well but does not do full finite-capacity scheduling across machines. For most SMB manufacturers, production plans, work orders and a daily review meeting are enough. Where they are not, a focused scheduling view built as a custom app usually serves better than an external planning system.

Costing

Finished-goods cost is built from:

• Raw materials consumed, at their valuation rate
• Operating cost from job card time and workstation hourly rates
• Additional costs added on the manufacture entry

Check monthly that work-in-progress and stock accounts reconcile with the stock ledger. Unclosed work orders are the most common cause of drift.

Getting started

Model a handful of representative products end to end on a test site before loading every BOM. That pilot will expose most of the design questions above. Our ERPNext manufacturing service covers the walkthrough, modelling and rollout, and our Odoo vs ERPNext comparison helps if you are still choosing a platform.