📦 Raw Materials: Materials Stock & Batch Purchases
The "Materials" tab is the logistical heart of your craft business. Here, you store all materials physically used in production: leather, thread, glue, hardware, fabric, wood, and packaging.
OmniCraft ERP utilizes a professional cost-accounting method: MAC (Moving Average Cost), saving you from manually calculating how much a square foot of leather costs after factoring in shipping.
📋 Material Profile
Before purchasing a material, you need to add it to your inventory database. Click the "+" (New Material) button on the top toolbar.
In the material profile, you specify:
- Name: For example, “Cambrian Clay (Dry Powder)” or “Oat Straw (2-4 cm)”.
- Category: Grouping for organization (e.g., “Clay”, “Straw & Fibers”, “Binders”). Categories can be edited on the fly by clicking the pencil icon.
- Units of Measurement: What unit you will use to measure the material in your recipes (kg, pcs, ml, liters). Important: Choose the unit that is most convenient for calculating consumption per single item.
- Min. Stock (Safety Threshold): The value at which the balance in the table will be highlighted in yellow (deficit warning). 💡 Smart Auto-Calculation: If you leave this field as
0, the program will dynamically calculate the threshold itself (by default, 20% of the average volume of your last 20 purchases of this raw material). Discrete items are smartly rounded to whole numbers. You can change the percentage or completely disable auto-calculation in the Tab Settings (⚙️ icon in the top menu).
🔗 Managing Suppliers and Links
If you click the "Edit" (✏️) icon next to a material, its detailed profile will open. There, you can attach multiple links to the same or different suppliers (for example, adding both retail and wholesale purchase links for a specific type of clay or straw).
To keep the main stock table clean and organized, link management uses an adaptive interface:
- ⭐ "Show in Table": Default status. All active suppliers will be neatly collapsed into a
(+N)badge in the main table. Clicking the badge opens a list for quick navigation. If you unstar a link, it moves to the reserve list (turns gray) and is hidden from the main table, while remaining available during batch purchases. - 📌 "Pin": Elevates a selected link to the top of the active list.
- ✅ "Set as Primary": This radio button appears if you have pinned multiple links. It allows you to select the single primary link displayed directly in the main stock table cell. Clicking its name in the table immediately opens the supplier's website.
🛒 Batch Purchases & Logistics
The primary "magic" of OmniCraft ERP lies within the "Batch Purchase" button (the shopping cart icon in the top menu). Never enter purchased materials via inventory adjustments—always use batch purchases!
How smart shipping allocation works:
Suppose you ordered from a supplier:
- A bag of Cambrian clay for
$100 - A bale of oat straw for
$20 - And paid a shipping fee of
$12.
If you simply split the $12 shipping fee in half ($6 per item), the cost price of the cheap straw would skyrocket, heavily distorting the cost price of your finished products.
OmniCraft ERP allocates shipping proportionally to the value of the items:
- The clay (
$100) absorbs$10of the shipping cost. - The straw (
$20) absorbs only$2of the shipping cost. The software performs this calculation in a fraction of a second, logging a fair and balanced cost price for each item in your warehouse.
What happens when you process a purchase:
- The physical quantity of materials is added to your stock.
- The program recalculates the MAC price. If you had remaining clay at an older price and purchased a new batch at a higher price, the software automatically averages their cost.
- In your Cash Flow ledger, two expense entries are automatically created: “Purchase of Raw Materials” (for
$120) and “Logistics” (for$12).
🖨️ Warehouse Labeling and Printing
The program features a built-in, 100% offline label generator supporting both thermal printers (rolls) and standard office printers (A4 sticker sheets). You can print labels individually from the material card (the "Print label" button) or in batches for the entire rack by clicking "Batch print labels" in the top warehouse panel.
Coding Modes (What's on the label)
Depending on the label size, you can place one or several useful codes:
| Mode | How it works | Practical Example |
|---|---|---|
| SKU | Linear barcode (Code128). | You point the scanner at a jar of straw ➔ the program instantly finds it in the warehouse. |
| Order from supplier | QR code with a direct link to the store. | Point your phone camera at the separating oil shelf ➔ the reorder website opens. If there are multiple suppliers, a handy list opens. |
| Material passport | QR code with text characteristics. | Point your phone at a box of clay on the top shelf ➔ the balance and location are shown in large text without internet. |
| SKU + Order | Combo mode (barcode at the bottom, QR on the side). | Ideal for medium stickers (from 58×40 mm). |
| SKU + Order + Passport | Trio-Maxi: barcode and two QR codes. | For large boxes and pallets (from 100×75 mm). |
| Text only | Large readable font without codes. | For the smallest jars (30×20 mm). |
🎛️ Print Settings (Borders & Calibration)
When printing, you can select the Border / Outline type:
- No border: Ideal for pre-cut factory self-adhesive label sheets (e.g., Lomond/Avery). Leaving borders off ensures that minor printer paper skew will not cause black border lines to bleed onto adjacent stickers.
- Dashed (Cutting guide): Used when printing on regular A4 sheets for easy trimming with scissors or a rotary cutter.
- Solid border: A clean decorative outline, perfect for printing hang tags on heavy kraft cardstock for your crafted goods.
🛠️ Printer Calibration (Offset Compensation)
When printing on A4 sheets, feed rollers can shift printouts down by 3–5 mm, while thermal roll printers may experience 1–2 mm drift due to gap sensor calibration or tape play.
To achieve 100% accurate alignment on any printer model, use the Printer Calibration (mm) controls:
- Shift Y (mm): Adjusts vertical alignment (e.g.,
-3.0shifts content up by 3 mm). - Shift X (mm): Adjusts horizontal alignment (left/right).
Set your hardware offset once—the software automatically saves it for all future print jobs.
📱 Smartphone instead of a scanner
You don't have to buy an expensive USB scanner. You can install a free app on your phone (e.g., Barcode to PC or any Bluetooth keyboard emulator). Your phone will read barcodes and instantly "type" SKUs into the OmniCraft ERP search bar on your computer.
⚖️ Inventory Adjustment (Stock Correction)
The "Inventory Adjustment" button (the scale icon) is used only to correct physical discrepancies in your warehouse.
For example, if the software shows you have 15 kg of clay left, but physically it has dried out and cannot be crafted into anything, you perform an inventory adjustment and write off the deficit.
- Financial Safety: Inventory adjustments do not touch your Cash Flow ledger or Balance Sheet. They only adjust physical quantities, preventing the program from letting you schedule production with non-existent materials.
🗄️ Archiving & Deletion
If you stop working with a specific material (for example, a supplier discontinues a certain edge paint), you can send it to the Archive (the red box icon).
- The material will disappear from your active list, keeping search results clean.
- When moving an item to the archive, the program will suggest zeroing out remaining stock if there is any left.
- An archived material can be restored at any time by switching to the "Archived" tab.
Archiving Blocked
You cannot send a material to the archive if it is currently used in at least one active product template (in the Calculator) or if there is an uncompleted workbench job that requires it. The software will display a window listing the exact items blocking the archive operation. You will need to update those recipes first.
⚙️ Raw Materials Tab Settings
To customize the interface to your workflow, click the Raw Materials Settings (sliders) icon in the top toolbar.
- Column Visibility: Hide unused columns (such as SKU or Location) to free up screen real estate.
- Table Action Buttons Visibility: Flexibly toggle the quick action icons in each table row (Purchase Raw Materials, Inventory Adjustment, Print Label, Edit, Archive / Delete). Leave only the actions you use daily to prevent accidental clicks.
- Automatic Minimum Stock Calculation: Configure the percentage for dynamic deficit thresholds (detailed in the "Material Profile" section).
↩️ Cancelling Operations (Storno)
If you made a mistake during a purchase or inventory adjustment, you can cancel the operation directly from the Operations Log or the material passport.
- Click the Undo (↩️) icon next to the erroneous operation.
- The program will automatically create a corrective entry (Storno), returning the physical stock to its previous state.
- If a purchase with a specified price or shipping cost is cancelled, the spent funds are automatically returned to the Cash Flow (DDS).
Cancellation Limits
- MAC Method Protection (Historical Purchases): You cannot cancel a purchase if other operations changing the balance of this raw material have been performed after it. This is necessary to protect the weighted average price. To cancel an old purchase, you must first cancel all newer operations with this material.
- Workbench Write-offs: Write-offs made during the production of finished goods cannot be cancelled through the raw materials warehouse. To cancel them, go to the 'Production' tab and cancel the corresponding order.