Advanced Bill of Materials – Implementation & Considerations

With Netsuite’s 2023.1 Release right around the corner, Netsuite is ending support for its Legacy Bill of Materials module. While business critical issues will continue to be addressed and resolved, new feature developments will no longer include Legacy Bill of Materials. As a result, Netsuite recommends migrating to Netsuite’s Advanced Bill of Materials. To be clear, immediate migration to Advanced Bill of Materials is not necessary, but you may be thinking of making the change in the near future. You may also be wondering how Advanced Bill of Materials compares to Legacy Bill of Materials, and what impacts to data you should be aware of.

In this blog, we’ll seek to answer some of the common questions we’ve seen from clients as well as provide considerations for you to think about. While this blog won’t be comprehensive of everything you’ll want to consider, we hope we can provide you with some guidelines as you prepare to make the switch. 

Enabling Advanced Bill of Materials

Enabling Advanced Bill of Materials is fairly straightforward.  

1. 1. 1. Navigate to Setup > Company > Enable Features 
      2. Click the Inventory & Items subtab
      3. Check the Advanced Bill of Materials box
      4. You will receive a warning. Review it and click OK
      5. Click Save

** Advanced Bill of Materials introduces significant changes to your Netsuite environment. In short, it changes how data is structured in relation to assemblies and bill of materials. It is HIGHLY recommended that you first enable and test the feature in a Sandbox environment before making the change in Production.  

The Advanced Bill of Materials Structure

Once you enable the feature, Netsuite introduces the following two records.   

1. 1. 1. Bill of Materials
      2. Bill of Materials Revision

The introduction of these records allows Assembly Item records to exist independently of their Bill of Materials. In other words, you can create assembly items in Netsuite without having to define a bill of materials.  

Why Advanced Bill of Materials?

Compared to Netsuite’s Legacy Bill of Materials, Advanced Bill of Materials offers the following functions which support your manufacturing processes:  

1. 1. 1. You can have multiple Bill of Materials per assembly item.  
         1. 1. For example, you may have different Bill of Materials per Location.  
            2. You may also have a different Bill of Materials for in house manufacturing and a different Bill of Materials for outsource manufacturing.  
            3. Useful for locations with different manufacturing processes.  
      2. Use a single Bill of Materials across multiple assembly items.  
      3. You can have a zero quantity component on the Bill of Materials.  
         1. 1. Useful for listing substitute/alternate components.  
            2. Useful for listing tools or fixtures used on the BOM.  
      4. Advanced Bill of Materials is required to use other manufacturing modules such as Material Requirements Planning, which you may be considering for supply planning purposes.  

Advanced Bill of Materials Considerations

The Advanced Bill of Materials will no doubt have implications for companies switching from Legacy BOM. As mentioned previously, we highly recommend and encourage you to test the feature in Sandbox first. Questions to keep in mind are:  

1. 1. 1. How will existing data be impacted?  
         1. 1. Advanced BOM will impact the data structure. Make sure to walk through the different record types introduced.  
      2. How will saved searches be impacted?  
         1. 1. Advanced BOM will likely require saved searches pulling component data to be rebuilt.  
      3. How will scripts/integrations be impacted?  
         1. 1. Advanced BOM will likely impact any scripts or integrations impacting the assembly item and its components. Make sure to have your developer review and assess the impact.  
      4. How will the manufacturing process be impacted?  
         1. 1. Advanced BOM will impact work orders. We recommend having your manufacturing team test business critical processes in Sandbox to understand the impact of the change.  

In summary, Advanced Bill of Materials introduces significant changes to how BOM data is structured in the Netsuite database. Immediate migration to this feature is not required, but starting the conversation internally can help you begin to plan for an eventual migration. We hope the considerations outlined here help provide some clarity and direction on how to approach implementation for this module. By testing in a Sandbox environment, you can prepare your organization for the change and ensure a holistic understanding of the feature is understood before making the change in your Production environment.  

About Us

Concentrus is a leading provider of innovative cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions, including NetSuite. Our team of NetSuite experts offers a range of services, including NetSuite price analysis, NetSuite training, and NetSuite integration services.  

Our goal is to help businesses of all sizes maximize their investment in NetSuite by providing expert NetSuite cost optimization and implementation strategies. With years of experience as a NetSuite partner, our NetSuite administrators and NetSuite consultants are well equipped to help businesses of all sizes with their NetSuite consulting needs.  

Whether you're looking for a NetSuite consultant to help with your NetSuite implementation or you need ongoing NetSuite support, Concentrus is here to help. 

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