Mastering Empress: Leveraging the Customer Provided Items Feature

Guides & Tutorials
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Introduction

Welcome to our easy-to-understand guide on how to manage Customer Provided Items in Empress. As business users, you may often find that customers provide specific components used in your Bill of Materials (BOM). This feature in Empress is designed to make the process of receiving and tracking these items as smooth and efficient as possible.

An Introduction to the Customer Provided Items Feature

In the world of contract manufacturing, the Customer Provided Items feature plays a crucial role in streamlining your operations. It lets you receive and track the components provided by your customers, without treating the customer as a supplier. This feature is especially useful if your role involves managing raw materials provided by customers or subcontracting the manufacturing process.

Setting Up a Customer Provided Item

Let’s start by setting up a customer provided item in Empress:

  1. From the Empress home screen, navigate to Item Doctype. Follow this path: Home > Stock > Items and Pricing > Item.
  2. Create a new item and label it as ‘Customer Provided’.
  3. Under the ‘Purchase, Replenishment Details’ section, check the ‘Is Customer Provided’ box and set a default customer. Remember to uncheck the ‘Is Purchase Item’ box to activate this feature.

Receiving a Customer Provided Item

Now let’s look at how to receive a customer provided item:

  1. If you’re using a ‘Production Plan’, the system can auto-create a ‘Material Request’ for the item. This means the item to be manufactured is retrieved first via Sales Order or Material Request. Items are then fetched for the Work Order using the ‘Get Items for Work Order’ button. Lastly, click on the ‘Get Raw Materials for Production’ button.
  2. When a component in a BOM is designated as ‘Customer Provided’ and a ‘Material Request’ is created from a ‘Production Plan’, the system will generate both a ‘Material Request’ with type ‘Purchase’ and ‘Customer Provided’. From this point, you can create a ‘Stock Entry’ with the purpose ‘Material Receipt’.
  3. Remember, a ‘Material Request’ can have multiple ‘Stock Entry’ - Material Receipts. The status will reflect this accordingly.
  4. Customers can track their ‘Material Requests’ via a Web Portal titled ‘Material Requests’. This portal only shows the ‘Material Request’ of the specific customer.

By following these steps, you can seamlessly manage the receipt and use of ‘Customer Provided’ items, ensuring a more streamlined and efficient manufacturing process. This feature is designed to simplify your work processes, improve customer satisfaction, and ultimately, boost your business performance. For further assistance, refer to additional Empress resources or contact our support team.