About components

Master sub-assemblies to streamline recipes and speed up your production.


Components are your product building blocks—they are intermediate sub-assemblies you create once and then reuse across multiple products and bundles.

While they are not compulsory, converting your raw materials into components optimizes your workflow, keeps your bill of materials neat and tidy, and guarantees every finished product rolls up accurate costs and stock levels automatically.

They represent an intermediary stage in your manufacturing process, generating stock that can then be used alongside materials or additional components to manufacture finished products.

Components are available in our Studio+ plans.


Inside this article:

Introduction to Components

A Component (sometimes called a sub-assembly) is an intermediate item you manufacture from raw materials or from other components.

Think buttercream icing for a baker or pre-soldered circuit boards for an electronics maker. Once a component’s batch is completed, its stock is ready to be consumed—alongside materials or additional components—when you manufacture a finished product.

Components can be added manually, or imported in bulk from a CSV file.


For a detailed walkthrough tutorial on how to create a component manually, please see our Introduction to Components →

Why use Components?

Lean, reusable BoMs (Bill of Materials)

Define your recipe once, drop the component into any product recipe, and wave goodbye to duplicate data entry.

Batch-level cost accuracy

Each component’s cost (including labor and overheads) automatically rolls into every product that consumes it, so margins and pricing guidance stays accurate.

Streamlined and efficient production

Structuring your workflow as components will allow you to prepare your stages in bulk, keep them on the shelf, and slash the time it takes to build your final products.

Traceability

Track which lot of raw materials flowed into each component and, ultimately, into each sale for effortless recalls or compliance checks.


Finding your Components page

To find a component detail page:

1. Click on the Component tab in the top menu bar

2. Click on the name of the component you wish to view.


Multi-level components

Need a component that itself contains another component? No problem. Multi-level components let you nest sub-assemblies several layers deep—perfect for makers with stepped processes (e.g., roast cocoa → make chocolate → use chocolate in truffles). It can also be used for product bundling situations, giving you endless freedom to structure your production flows.

This feature is available in our Indie+ plans.


If necessary, you can automate the manufacture of components via the Auto Manufacture Components feature (Automanufacturing components).


Some examples of multi-level components using bundling are:

  1. You make buttercream used in a cupcake product, which can then be combined into different cupcake bundles.
  2. You make felt, which is then used to create a pincushion, combined into different product bundles.

Some examples of multi-level components that do not use bundling are:

  1. You make your butter, which is then included in buttercream and used to create a cake.
  2. You make chocolate. Your raw cocoa beans are processed into roasted cocoa beans, crushed into nibs, and combined with milk and sugar. These sub-processes can be tracked via multi-level components.

Automanufacturing components

Tick the magic-wand icon on a recipe or manufacture form and Craftybase will automatically create the required quantity of a component whenever a product that uses it is made. It even cleans up those auto manufactures if an order is later cancelled (when the “Remove Auto Manufacture” setting is enabled).

Automanufacturing is particularly useful for bundling and kitting situations.

On the Manufacture form, for each component in the material list, a similar icon will appear:

Removing Automanufactured Components

This feature is available on INDIE+ plans.

If you'd like to have automanufactured Components removed automatically for canceled orders, the removing automanufactured components setting for canceled orders should be enabled. If an order is imported with a "canceled" status, Craftybase will not create an auto manufacture for that order. Also, if an existing order is updated to "canceled," Craftybase will automatically remove any associated auto manufactures. This maintains accurate manufacturing records and prevents unnecessary manufactures, keeping inventory accurate and up-to-date.

Note: If the Remove Auto Manufacture setting is not enabled, you will need to manually remove the manufactures associated with canceled orders.

Componentizing a product

This feature is available on INDIE+ plans.

Using the Componentize feature, you can create a component directly from a product. This is useful if you need to restructure your existing products to be used in product bundles.

To componentize a product:

  1. Navigate to the product you wish to componentize (How do I find my product details page?)
  2. Hover your mouse over the vertical ellipsis ⋮ to the left of the product name.
  3. Select the Componentize option that appears in the menu.

This will instantly create a component with the same name as your product. It will also move the existing recipe (if one exists) to the component and then replace your product's recipe with a reference to the component.


Productize a component

Due to the complexities of how components and products differ, it is not currently possible to convert a component into a product.

Want to learn more?


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