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Bulk Actions in Bill of Materials List

Export, update and re-import many Bills of Materials at once.

Written by Allan Harding

Purpose

On the Bill of Materials List page, Bulk Actions lets you export your Bills of Materials to a spreadsheet, edit them there, and import the whole set back in one pass — instead of opening and editing each BOM individually.

What can you do with it?

Bulk Actions is built for the moments when editing one BOM at a time isn't practical: initial facility setup, a quarterly recipe review, a supplier change that touches dozens of recipes, or correcting a unit across a whole product family.

You can create new BOMs, update existing ones, add or remove lines, rename them, and archive them — all from a single spreadsheet. Before anything is written, you get a preview showing exactly what will change, so you can back out if it isn't what you expected.

How is it done?

  1. Open Bulk Actions

  2. Go to the Bill of Materials page in the Processing section.

  3. Click Bulk Actions. A panel opens on the right with a How it works guide.

  4. Get your spreadsheet

  5. Bulk CSV Export downloads every BOM in your facility as bill_of_materials_export_<date>.xlsx — use this when you want to edit what already exists. (The button says CSV; the download is an .xlsx file.) BOMs containing plant lines are not included — see Important Considerations.

  6. Download the template gives you an empty bill_of_materials_template.xlsx — use this when you're building from scratch.

  7. Download the reference gives you bill_of_materials_reference.xlsx, listing the valid Products, Units, SKUs and Work Order Types for your facility. Keep it open while you work; it's the fastest way to avoid typos that fail validation.

  8. Fill in the spreadsheet

The BOMs sheet has one row per BOM line, not per BOM. The columns are:

bom_id, bom_name, work_order_type, released, archived, type, product, sku, quantity, unit, multipliable

  • Repeat bom_id and bom_name on every line belonging to the same BOM.

  • Leave bom_id blank to create a new BOM.

  • type must be either Input or Output.

  • released is shown for reference only — changing it in the spreadsheet has no effect on import. Releasing happens in the app, in step 5.

  • Upload and preview

  • Click Bulk CSV Update and upload your .xlsx or .csv file (up to 10 MB).

  • Enter a Reason for change. This is required and is recorded in the audit trail — for example, "Q3 recipe review — updated distillate quantities."

  • Review the preview. It is headed Preview — nothing has been imported yet, and it tells you how many released BOMs will get new draft versions, flags any BOMs that will lose lines, and lists renames. You can Download change report for the full detail.

  • Click Confirm import, or Cancel to walk away with nothing changed.

  • On confirm, the system re-checks everything against the current state of your facility and warns you if what it's about to commit differs from the preview you reviewed — so the result is never silently different from what you signed off on.

  • Release, or leave as drafts

  • Imported changes land as drafts. You'll be offered the option to Release imported BOMs.

  • Use Select all / Clear all to choose which ones, then Release {count} BOM(s) — or Skip — leave as drafts to review them in the app first.

  • Releasing also requires a Reason for release, again recorded in the audit trail.

Important Considerations

  • Changing a released BOM's lines creates a new draft version. The released version isn't altered in place, and version history stays intact. Renames, work order type changes and archiving apply to the BOM directly, with no new version.

  • released can't be set by import. It appears in the exported spreadsheet, but edits to it are silently ignored — use the release step or the BOM page instead.

  • 10,000-row limit per import, 10 MB per file. Larger files are rejected with a message asking you to split the file and import in batches.

  • BOMs containing plant lines are excluded from Bulk Actions entirely. They don't appear in the export and can't be edited by import. If a BOM you expected is missing from the export file, check for plant lines before assuming the export is broken.

  • A released BOM can't be archived through the import. Unrelease it first.

  • An unreleased draft attached to a work order can't take line edits through the import — those rows are rejected.

  • Leading zeros in SKU codes are safe in our files. The export and template already format SKU and the other text columns as Text. The risk is editing or re-saving as CSV, which strips that formatting. If a SKU that exists in your facility isn't found on import, check this first.

  • If validation fails, nothing is imported. The panel shows the first 50 errors; use Download error report for the complete list.

  • Bulk Actions requires the Bill of Materials — Edit permission.

Best Practices

  • Export first, even when creating new BOMs. Starting from real data means your product names, SKUs and units already match what the system expects.

  • Keep the reference file open while you edit. Most failed imports are a product or unit that doesn't exist in the facility.

  • Write a reason you'll understand in six months. It's the audit trail entry, and "update" tells a future auditor nothing.

  • Read the preview properly, especially the "will lose lines" warning. A missing row in the spreadsheet is a deleted line on import.

  • Import in stages for a big change — one product family at a time is easier to verify and easier to reverse than 4,000 rows at once.

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