Changelog

Cofactr now flags when you have duplicate lines to help you clean up your BOMs! The platform makes it easy to merge BOM lines with a built-in workflow.

When juggling multiple releases and multiple BOMs, we know you likely have multiple ongoing orders. To make tracking all the moving pieces easier, we’ve built an Order Status Dashboard. Now, you can find out everything you need to know from one central location. Cofactr makes it easy for you to spot whether a distributor has shipped parts or know when an order is running late.

Previously, once an order was placed, Cofactr would only alert customers if the shipping date changed. Our platform did not proactively confirm with the customer that no changes had been detected. You’ll notice that we’ve made some changes to our shipping interface. We’ve added a visual tracker showing when parts within an order will arrive. Cofactr updates the tracker if any issues arise, like if a shipment is at risk of delay.

When you upload a BOM to Cofactr, the platform highlights any gaps in information. With easy-to-use workflows, you can add any missing information, such as Mount Type. Cofactr makes this easy to do with a linked data sheet and one-click Google link, so you can get to the information you need as quickly as possible.

On the Build, Scale, and Custom Cofactr plans, you can now add your own custom parts in Cofactr. You'll be able to access these parts across your Parts Library and other Cofactr Apps.

You can now edit certain Parts fields, including Lifecycle, Package Type, and Mount Type. To do so, add the relevant columns to any datable and click the pencil icons.

To go quickly from a BOM to ordering parts, use Cofactr’s new batch production workflow. With just a couple of clicks, you can order BOM parts to the right locations and kick off production work.

When you order parts through Cofactr, you can now see when different parts will ship and arrive. Cofactr also highlights when your last part will arrive, so you can plan your operations efficiently.

You can now edit the stock lot label and notes for all orders being shipped as a kit. To order a kit directly to your facility, go to the Purchasing tab within a BOM, Batch, or Production Run. From there, you can set the manufacturing requirements, edit the stock lot label and notes, and set the shipment label and notes.

Using Cofactr’s new Risk columns within a BOM, Part List or Production Run, you can check REACH and RoHS compliance and supply chain risk in one centralized location. View lifecycle status, REACH/RoHS status and documents, and supply chain risk stats such as multisourcing and supply status in one convenient location to help you stay ahead of disruptions or compliance issues.

Cofactr's new workflows help you clean up your BOMs with little effort. If a part on a BOM doesn't match any other known parts in the system, Cofactr enables you to match this part to a known part or create a new part. If you have duplicate lines on a BOM, Cofactr helps you efficiently merge lines.

Notifications that stock needs to be baked are now only sent for stock lots that are currently in a location that is capable of baking them.

We're thrilled to launch the new All Parts view in the Part Library App. All Parts gives you a single view of every part used across your Cofactr account, from BOMs, to Stock, to Orders.

Filter, sort, and search to find the parts you're looking for, then click the + sign to drill down into all the details.

All Parts is handy for answering questions such like:

"Do I have stock of parts that aren't used in any of my BOMs?"
"Am I using multiple 10K 0603 resistors across my designs that could be consolidated into one part number?"

We're excited to announce the much-requested "Ship As A Kit" feature. Any time you are making a purchase, you will now have the option to select Ship To Me instead of Store At Cofactr.

With Ship As A Kit, the completed parts kit will be labeled, packed, and sent to your selected location with no additional clicks required.

Ship As A Kit will still respect all of your Stock Location handling preferences such as reeling and stock lots will still be labeled with handy info, such as reference designators, so your kit will come production-ready.

The Kitting & Shipping App now has a preferences view where you can select your account's default shipping method and ship-to location.

The Warehouse App requires a facility to be selected on each device to function properly. We have added a more prominent warning when using the Warehouse App if a facility hasn't been selected. Just click (or tap) the warning and select your current facility.

Create watchlist subscriptions with a click for any part without buyable stock. This prompt will appear in the part detail view and the New Sourcing Request dialog. Clicking the + button will create a watchlist subscription to alert you as soon as any buyable stock of the part becomes available

The Confirm Shipment dialog that is displayed when approving a shipment now includes a breakdown of all Cofactr fees and an estimate for the carrier shipping charges. Please note that the shipping estimate is based on Cofactr's shipping rates. If you use your own UPS or FedEx account, this estimate will not reflect your account's rates, but your account will still be used for the actual shipment.

The Warehouse App now features a TV-ready dashboard showing incoming orders and shipments, outgoing shipments, kits, and open handling tasks. Each section can be individually enabled per device, depending on where the dashboard is located in your facility.

You can now enable Unit Price and Landed Unit Price columns in the Stock Lot table and download a full export that includes that data. This is useful for calculating the current value of the inventory you have for accounting purposes.

When a supplier cancels an order line, the Cofactr platform will now automatically suggest alternative sourcing options. Navigating decommits and getting your production back on track is as simple as choosing your preferred option! Orders created from this workflow will be automatically linked to the original order and to any related records, such as BOMs or Production Runs, for complete visibility.

If you are generating a record of an incoming kit of parts, there is now the option to automatically generate expected stock lots for all parts that are not already in stock. This workflow is ideal for manufacturers who are receiving a full or partial kit of consigned parts from their customer or a 3rd party.

If a price/lead time option doesn't include all of the requested parts, the text indicating that info is now color-coded yellow to highlight that this is a partial option.

The Shipping functionality in Cofactr now supports multiple kinds of shipments for different kitting & shipping use cases:

Shipping from a Warehouse to Somewhere Else

This is the default shipment type that you are used to. It is used for scheduling shipments from a facility that uses Cofactr's Warehouse App, such as Cofactr's Warehouse or a Cofactr-enabled contract manufacturer.

Shipping from a Non-Warehouse Facility

This is used for recording a shipment or transfer between facilities that are not running the Cofactr Warehouse app, such as two of your offices. It is also used for informing us that you are shipping materials to the Cofactr Warehouse.

Kit Transfer

This is used by Warehouse-App enabled facilities to organize kitting within your facility for release to the production line. This option will not be visible for orgs or users without Warehouse App access.

For production facilities that have a workflow where excess parts are returned to inventory after each production run, we now offer a De-Kit mode that allows you to scan a stock lot, receive automatically calculated suggestions for the expected remaining quantity of stock, and save that adjustment in one easy step.

Having the same part in multiple lines of a production run can leed to incorrect calculations for supply chain and inventory availability. We now show a warning when this happens so you can fix the issue proactively.

Canceled lines are now ignored when calculating order subtotals and totals.

We discovered a bug in our recently launched feature that notifies you when you have stock that needs an MSL reset bake, where the alert would be triggered for stock lots that no longer exist (IE, they have a quantity of 0). This bug has been squashed.

We now offer a combined receive and kit workflow for CM Warehouse App users that allows you to receive and check incoming consigned materials and kit them into a production kit with a single scan.

Need by date and notes such as job number are now automatically populated for shipments that are generated from a production run.

Use Case

Contract manufacturer who is receiving an inbound kit from a customer. One or more parts arrive and aren't the same part number that was expected. This results in an expected stock lot that won't ever arrive and an on-hand stock lot that isn't correctly associated with reference designator information for that kit.

Feature

1. Navigate to a draft shipment/kit ("cancel" if needed)

2. Navigate to the Stock Lots tab

3. Select the Expected and On Hand stock lots using the check boxes

4. Click the merge button

This will:

1. Reassign the On Hand stock lot to the shipment line associated with the Expected stock lot, including any relevant printed notes such as job number or reference designators

2. Delete the Expected stock lot

Part Lifecycle Status is now an option when creating a watchlist subscription. Worried about a critical part being End-of-Lifed? Just add it to your watchlist, and you'll receive a notification as soon as there are any changes to its lifecycle status.

If you have a printer configured within the Warehouse App and you have access and permissions to the Warehouse App, there is now the option to print Stock Location, and Stock Lot labels from within the Kitting & Shipping and Stock Apps.

In certain circumstances, attempting to make a purchase of parts in a quote via the shopping cart icon within the quotes table would fail, and the dialog would just close before you had a chance to confirm the purchase. We have fixed this bug.

We have added the option to create your own parts within the Cofactr platform.

You can access this feature by:

• Searching for a part in the Part Search App

• Searching for a part in any dialog that includes a Part selector such as Create Stock Lot, Add BOM Line, etc

• Searching for a part in the Receive view of the Warehouse App

• Uploading a BOM with a part that does not match any parts in our database

What can custom parts be used for today?

• Customer parts can be added to BOMs and part lists

• Customer parts can be used to create Stock Lots

• Stock Lots of a customer part can be used the same way that all other Stock Lots can be used, including in Kitting & Shipping and Production Runs,

• Quote Requests can be created for a customer part. If the part is from a major manufacturer, we will be able to handle these Quote Requests. If the part is truly custom, like a specific bare board, we may not be able to process that Quote Request

What is on the roadmap for custom parts?

• Central library to manage your custom parts

• Edit and upload images and documents for custom parts

• Automatically generate custom parts from integrations with your PLM or ERP

• Add customer part numbers and other data to non-customer parts that are already in the Cofactr database

Do I have access to customer parts?

Customer parts are currently available with the following plans:

• Cofactr Supply Chain Platform - Enterprise

• Cofactr Supply Chain Platform - Team

We have added the ability to upload a CSV or Excel file of part data to a part list. This is an identical workflow to uploading a CSV or Excel file of a BOM.

We have updated the UI for statuses when viewing Parts in a Production Run.

These are now more detailed statuses for Procurement, Stock, Allocations, and Shipments.

Clicking the + icon for the row reveals additional information about each of these statuses.

Digi-Key recently changed how they encode the data in their barcodes. We have updated the barcode parsing logic in the Warehouse App Receive view to support these new barcodes. The system remains backward compatible with all older Digi-Key barcode labels as well.

We have added the ability to edit the price paid for a stock lot after it has been created in the Cofactr system. This is useful for ensuring that your inventory cost reports are correct

We now support the option to create discrete sub-organizations within your Cofactr organization.

What's the use of sub-orgs?

• For OEMs: keeping the data associated with separate teams or departments siloed from each other

• For CM/EMS: keeping the data (and inventory) associated with separate customers siloed from each other

• Allowing just certain data to be shared with certain users, such as outside contractors

What is the same about a normal org and a sub-org?

• Each sub-org is a fully separate org with no data shared between sub-orgs or the main org.

• You can add and remove users from a sub-org, just like you can for a normal org.

• You can seamlessly switch between sub-orgs via the Active Org dropdown at the top of the page.

• Each org or sub-org supports unlimited users.

What is different about a sub-org versus a normal org?

• When you create a sub-org, all users from the parent org will automatically be given permissions for the sub-org.

• You can view all related sub-orgs in the Sub Orgs tab of the Organization Settings app.

• By default, all charges related to a sub-org will be billed to the parent org. If you would prefer to have some or all of the sub-orgs configured with separate billing info, please get in touch with Cofactr support, and we can set that up for you.

What is on the roadmap for sub-orgs?

• More intuitive and convenient centralized management of user permissions across all your sub-orgs, including integrations with external directory services

• Centralized views and reporting across sub-orgs

• Features to transfer and share records such as BOMs and inventory between sub-orgs

Do I have access to sub-orgs?

Sub-orgs are currently available with the following plans:

• Cofactr Supply Chain Platform - Enterprise

We have added the option to edit any property of a stock lot from within the Stock Lots view.

If you have Warehouse App and/or Stock App edit permissions for the physical location that the stock lot is in, you will be able to edit all properties. If the stock lot is located somewhere that you don't have full permissions for, but you do have Stock App edit permissions in general, you will still be able to edit fields such as Notes, Manufacturer Lot ID, and Date Code.

These editing options are also all now available within the Stock Lot view of the Warehouse App on both desktop and mobile.

Under certain circumstances, we were receiving and displaying stale supply data that was sent to us by various distributor APIs. We have updated some of our ingestion logic to reduce the chances of this happening.

We've released a new and improved UI for adding parts from a BOM or Part List to one or more shipments.

New features include:

• If the Ship To destination has handling requirements configured in Cofactr, such as stock lot splicing or inspections, those will automatically be used in the Add to Shipment process and the associated handling tasks will automatically be generated

• There is now a detailed breakdown of the stock lot assignments and associated handling tasks that will be generated when you click Add to Shipment, so you know what the system will do before it does it.

• If the system is unable to find a suitable matching stock lot for one or more parts, there is a detailed breakdown explaining what's going on

The Spot Buy dialog now includes an interface to optionally split your purchase between currently available distributor stock and backorders or RFQs if you need a quantity of parts that is higher than currently buyable stock.

We have always included part lifecycle status info in the Specs tab for parts, but we have now improved part lifecycle status:

• Lifecycles statuses are now normalized into a consistent set of stages across all distributors and manufacturers (New, Production, Not Recommended for New Designs, End of Life, Obsolete)

• Lifecycle status is now prominently listed at the top of the info section for parts

• Lifecycle status is now available as a column in BOMs, Part Lists, and Production Runs so you can conveniently reference status for all of the parts you are using in one view

All of the search boxes for the myriad datagrids throughout the platform are now case insensitive to make it easier to find the information you're looking for.

When we discover incorrect data in the feeds we receive from distributors, we correct that data to ensure that we are showing you the most accurate possible information. Now, we show you those corrections in Supplier Listings so you can see the originally reported data, the corrected values, and, if you hover over the info, an explanation for the correction.

It is now possible to order parts that are currently on backorder or have extended lead times.

• By default, Supplier Listing datagrids will filter out suppliers with 0 stock. You have always been able to remove that filter to view supplier listings without any stock. Now, buyable suppliers with a listed Factory Lead will be available to make a back-ordered spot buy from.

• The Purchasing Optimizer in the Purchasing tab of BOMs, Part Lists, and Production Runs will now include extended lead time options in the results for parts that aren't available now or for parts that are only available now at a higher price.

• When placing orders with an extended lead time, the confirmation dialog will now include a warning that one or more parts in the orders have a long lead time and that the factory lead time is just a supplier-provided estimate.

We have renamed Shopping Lists to Part Lists, since they can be used for lots of part-organizing purposes that have nothing to do with shopping. This feature has also moved from the Purchasing section of the Cofactr platform to the new Part Library app.

The Cofactr platform does many things. Maybe you need all of those things, or maybe you don't. Probably you don't need all of them at once.

We have massively reorganized the Cofactr platform into a new app-based navigation scheme. This is intended to make the platform easier to navigate and more customizable for our users. If you have feedback or trouble finding anything, please don't hesitate to reach out!

Sometimes, our overage for assembly attrition calculator doesn't have enough technical data for a specific part to accurately calculate the correct overage requirements. Usually, this is because the package property is missing in the specification data that we receive from distributors. Rather than silently taking a guess, we now show a warning indicator next to the calculated overage to indicate that there is missing info. In Production Runs, you can click on the total to manually enter a new total quantity required. You can also always contact Cofactr support to request that we manually enter this package data for you to enable the correct automatic calculation.

You can now toggle on a Factory Lead column in any supplier listing datagrid to view the reported backorder lead time for parts, whether or not that supplier has any current stock.

Stock lot locations now show "In Transit → {name of facility}" for stock lots that are in transit and "{name of facility} ({name of specific location})" for lots that are in a facility. This replaces the ">" that used to indicate the specific location and was confusing.

Related Records columns are now searchable in all datagrids.

There was a bug where handling tasks would show an incorrect estimated completion date if they were created on an order that was subsequently delayed. This has been fixed so that their estimated completion date will automatically recalculate anytime the estimated delivery date for the associated order updated.

There was a bug where the estimated date for Parts On Hand for a Work-Forward Production Run would show as one day in the future, even if all of the parts are already on hand. This has been fixed.

A new Suggested Alternatives panel is now available on Part pages and within BOM and Shopping List lines. These suggestions will include parts that have been used as approved alternatives in your account's other BOMs and Shopping Lists, as well as suggestions based on other Cofactr users' BOMs and Shopping Lists.

Keep an eye out for more intelligent alternative part suggestions based on manufacturer recommendations and technical specs coming soon! They'll be included in this same Suggested Alternatives panel.

Sometimes the special characters (-, /, ., etc) used in the official manufacturer part number for a part don't perfectly match the punctuation that folks use in BOM uploads. We have tweaked our matching algorithm to be less picky about perfect matches in special characters so that these parts match without you having to search and match the correct part manually.

We have revamped the interface for BOM and Shopping List Parts views. The old Part, Supply, and Inventory tabs have been consolidated into a single, improved Datagrid with shortcuts to hide and show the relevant columns for each view.

Clicking the + button for each row now allows you to view inventory records and more detailed purchasing data including open Sourcing Requests, Quotes, and Order History by part.

Tracking Price Paid for a Stock Lot

When creating a stock lot that you purchased outside of Cofactr, the New Stock Lot dialog now has optional fields for you to track the unit price and landed unit price that you paid for those parts.

Viewing Price Paid for a Stock Lot

When you are viewing the detail view for a specific Stock Lot, the Lot Ledger tab now displays the unit price and landed unit price that you paid for those parts. If you create the Stock Lot manually, those fields will display the data you entered when creating the Stock Lot. If you purchase the Stock Lot using Cofactr, those fields will automatically display data calculated from the order record.

Landed Cost Reporting

Within a Production Run that has been Completed, you can view Related Records > Stock Lots to see the calculated costing for the parts that went into the run.

When uploading a BOM, manufacturer part numbers or alternative parts with few than 3 characters will be ignored. This is because there are no valid part numbers with only 1 or 2 characters, but we occasionally have seen BOMs that use "-" or "--" in empty cells. In those instances, the system will now ignore those invalid characters instead of attempting to parse them into a part match.

Unit prices now uniformly display 4 decimal places and total prices now uniformly display 2 decimal places. This is intended to increase the readability of large pricing grids. All prices are stored and calculated with up to 8 decimal points under the hood, so this change does not impact pricing precision, just how the numbers are displayed in Datagrids.

In most places where stock lots are displayed, there is now a Handling column that shows open handling tasks and shipments associated with that stock lot. These will be greyed out if the task/shipment is in draft status or blue if it is approved and in process.

We have redesigned the shipment lines view to group Stock Lots by related part, and show related Handling Tasks in line for each part. Hopefully this will make it a bit easier to understand what is going on with a shipment and if you prefer the old interface, you can still access it via the Stock Lots tab within the shipment.

Everywhere you might see datagrids in the platform, which is a lot of places, they are now a little bit nicer. New features include:

• Handy dandy reset button to restore all defaults for column visibility, order, sorting, and filtering

• Shortcut buttons in BOM, Shopping List, and Production Run Part views to recall preset column configurations such as default columns, supply related columns, and inventory related columns

• General performance improvements

The status chips for each line in a BOM are a button (pro tip: if you didn't know that, try clicking one!) and they become disabled when the BOM is locked. Previously, they would turn a grey color like other buttons do when they are disabled. This is annoying. Now their color becomes muted, but they are still color coded.

There used to be a toggle called "Consume Stock." This was a very confusing toggle. We have renamed it to "Split Stock Lots" and updated the explanation copy to clarify better what the heck this toggle actually means.

The purchasing optimizer in BOMs, Shopping Lists, and Production Runs now provides an additional dimension of availability.

Previous Behavior

The optimizer would determine the list of all possible buyable parts and then provide price and lead time options for that list of buyable parts. If a subset of the parts were available with a shorter lead time, that would not be displayed unless you manually set a Maximum Lead Time

New Behavior

All possible price and lead time options will be shown, even if only some of the parts are available at the faster lead times. The optimizer will indicate which parts are available at each of the lead times.

Under Account>Preferences, you can now configure a default shipping method. This default will automatically be applied to all new shipments and production runs.