ERPNext3 min read
ERPNext Manufacturing Guide: BOMs, Work Orders, Job Cards and Planning
How ERPNext manufacturing works: BOMs, workstations, production plans, work orders, job cards, backflushing, subcontracting, quality and costing.
ERP platform · ERPNext
ERPNext Manufacturing, modelled on your shop floor
ERPNext's manufacturing module covers bills of materials, operations and workstations, production planning, work orders, job cards for shop-floor tracking, subcontracting, quality inspection and batch or serial traceability — all without an extra licence.
Overview
The short version
Getting value from it depends on modelling production correctly: how deep the BOMs go, whether you need job cards or only work orders, how raw materials are consumed, and how costs roll up into finished goods. That modelling is where we spend most of the early design time.
ERP Builders is an independent ERPNext services company and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Frappe Technologies. “ERPNext” and “Frappe” are trademarks of Frappe Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
01
Modelling decisions
These choices decide whether planning, costing and the shop-floor screens make sense to the people using them.
BOM structure
Multi-level BOMs for sub-assemblies, scrap and process loss, and alternative items — detailed enough for accurate costing, simple enough to maintain.
Operations and workstations
Routings with operation times and hourly costs per workstation, used for capacity planning and job cards only where you will actually record them.
Material transfer and backflush
Whether raw materials are transferred to work-in-progress before production or backflushed from the BOM on completion.
Subcontracting
Supplying materials to a job worker, receiving finished goods and tracking stock held at the subcontractor.
02
Planning production
Production Plans pull demand from sales orders or material requests, explode BOMs, and raise work orders for finished goods and sub-assemblies along with material requests for what must be bought. Reorder levels on items handle steady-state replenishment.
ERPNext does not include finite-capacity scheduling. For most SMB manufacturers, planned work orders, job cards and a daily review are enough. Where they are not, we add a focused scheduling view in a custom app rather than force the standard screens to do something they were not designed for.
03
Costing and traceability
Finished-goods cost is built from material consumed, operating cost from workstations and any additional costs entered on the stock entry. We configure this so it reconciles with the stock and work-in-progress accounts every month.
Batch and serial numbers trace raw materials through work orders to the customer delivery, and quality inspections can be required at receipt, in process or before dispatch.
Process
How we deliver it
- 01
Production walkthrough
We walk the shop floor with your production lead and capture how work actually moves, not just how the process document says it does.
- 02
BOM and routing design
Sample products modelled end to end and costed, then the approach agreed before bulk BOM data is prepared.
- 03
Pilot
A pilot product line run through planning, work orders, job cards and costing on staging with real data.
- 04
Rollout
Remaining BOMs loaded, shop-floor users trained on their screens, and first month-end costs reviewed together.
Related
Related Odoo services and topics
Integrations
Insights
Related reading
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ERPNext Upgrade Guide: Moving Between Major Versions Safely
How to upgrade ERPNext between major versions: inventory apps, handle features moved to separate apps, test on staging and run the production upgrade.
Manufacturing1 min read
Free Manufacturing ERP Software: Is Odoo Community Enough?
Free, open-source manufacturing ERP and MRP: what Odoo Community covers, what's Enterprise-only, and how to tell whether free is enough for your factory.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Is ERPNext suitable for discrete or process manufacturing?
It suits discrete and light process manufacturing well — assembly, fabrication, packaging, food and similar. Formula-heavy process industries with potency or complex yield calculations need extension, which we scope during discovery.
Can operators record production on a tablet?
Yes. Job cards work on tablets and phones, and we often simplify the screen to the few fields operators need to start, pause and complete work.
Does ERPNext support subcontracting?
Yes. Subcontracting orders track materials sent to the job worker and finished goods received back, with stock held at the subcontractor's warehouse.
Comparisons
Weighing Odoo against alternatives?
Odoo vs SAPIntegrated, extensible suite for SMB and mid-market versus the deepest enterprise ERP ecosystem on the market.Odoo vs Dynamics 365An all-in-one suite versus Microsoft's ERP ecosystem with deep Office, Teams and Power Platform integration.Odoo vs NetSuiteFlexible, lower-cost suite versus a mature cloud-only ERP with strong financials and multi-entity support.
Next step
Running production on spreadsheets?
Walk us through your shop floor and we will show how it would look in ERPNext.