Prep Modified Composites

PLEASE READ THIS ARTICLE TO UNDERSTAND THE CONSEQUENCES OF USING THIS FUNCTIONALITY.
 

This new facility allows warehouse staff to change the quantities of components in a composite as it's being prepped. Maybe no chain hooks are needed on this job or perhaps some extra are.

Alternatively you may not have enough colour frames for three profiles - but you know only need two for the show - so you can split the line and send one of the profile composites out without a colour frame.

This problem is solved for the warehouse staff by this feature.

To turn this feature on you have two options in the In the Configuration Book, Rules page

• Globally turn it on for all users
  
  
• Make the option user specific so only qualified personnel can have access to this feature
  
  
  
  Then in User Groups (Features & Security) assign the option to a Feature Collection
  
  
   

To understand this feature please continue to read on...

A. In the Prep Note

If this option has been turned on then in the Prep Note, clicking on a composite master row will reveal an editor icon:

Clicking this invokes the component editor. In the screenshot below we have decided not to include a Remote unit. The Default Qty column shows you how many of each component are going on the job for a single composite as each composite edit is for one package. - In other words you must edit each composite individually when there are more than one composite on a line.

As well as editing quantities you can assign a master barcode to the edit and adjust the component barcodes to match these quantities. 

Master barcodes can be picked or scanned. Once selected the composite barcode editor that in used in the Inventory Book is displayed

Editing the barcodes assigned to the master barcode can have an impact of the New Qty value: if you have a New Qty of 2 and assign 3 barcodes then closing the barcode editor will update the New Qty to 3

NOTE: if a Master Barcode is selected it is automatically Prepped when the Composite Prep Definition editor is closed with "Continue..."

B. Changes to the underlying Equipment List

The editing done in the Prep Note results in the Equipment List Editor being modified. If the original composite master line had a booked Quantity > 1 then and new composite line of Qty 1 is split off to handle the modified components. The original line is re-symboled 'CM' from 'C' and the new split off line is symboled 'MC'. 

The original record has it's Quantity reduced by 1 but it's Charge Quantity remains the same so that the overall billing status of the equipment list stays the same.

The new "MC" record has no charges associated with it and it's Quantity is not editable ( Hence it being MC - you can't touch this) as it's no long possible to synchronise the component quantities with the Inventory definition of the composite in a meaningful way. As this list is already at the Prep stage there should no longer be need to do this anyway. And if further changes to component quantities are needed then the Composite Prep Definition editor can be re-invoked in the Prep Note anyway.
If the original Composite line had a booking Quantity of 1 then it is simply converted to a 'MC' line.

IMPORTANT: For an unmodified composite, the Unit Weight & Unit Value are taken from the Inventory book entries against the Composite Master, HOWEVER for a modified composite the Unit Weight & Unit Value is calculated from the sum of the Composite components. 
In order to keep these in sync, you may wish to install the database triggers detailed in this article (opens in a new tab).

C. Back to the Prep Note.

When the Composite Prep Definition is closed with a continue and equipment list changes made the Prep Note is automatically refreshed to reflect the changes:

So in the Modified Composite (MC) you notice that the Remote is not included.

D. Availability display conundrum

The availability of composites is necessarily calculated using their Inventory Book definition. As such, while reducing the Qty of a component booked does indeed contribute stock back to the availability pool for all other competing bookings, nonetheless if the availability of a component part, in general is short for the period, your modified composite, along with all other composites of the same type will show as short, even though it no longer contains any of the short component! This may feel counter-intuitive but give that this will only happen at the time of Prepping, when checking availability is no longer so crucial that it is not anticipated as being a significant problem: