Manufacturing Reports

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Use Reports After Work Orders Start Moving

Open Manufacturing, then Reports. The page has four tabs: WIP Aging, Cost Variance, Build History, and Component Usage. Reports become useful after work orders are released, started, completed, or closed. Draft work is planning work, so it usually does not appear in the same operational summaries.

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Review WIP Aging

Use WIP Aging to find released and in-progress work that has been open too long, has too much work-in-progress value, or is past its planned end date.

• Total open WOs: Released and In Progress work order count.
• Total WIP value: accumulated material, labor, and overhead cost on open work.
• Age buckets: 0 to 7 days, 8 to 14 days, 15 to 30 days, and 30 plus days.
• Due: highlights work that is past the planned end date.
• WIP Cost: current accumulated cost on the row.

Recommended review:

1. Start with the oldest bucket.
2. Open overdue work orders.
3. Confirm whether the physical work is still running, complete but not recorded, waiting on parts, or cancelled in real life.
4. Complete, cancel, or update the work order rather than leaving stale WIP open.
5. Review stale WIP before period close.

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Review Cost Variance

Use Cost Variance to compare estimated cost with actual cost on completed or closed work orders. Use the From and To date filters when you need a period view.

• Completed WOs: work orders in Completed or Closed status for the selected date range.
• Estimated: cost expected from the BOM and planning assumptions.
• Actual: cost captured from FIFO material issue, backflush, labor, overhead, and completion.
• Variance: estimated cost minus actual cost.
• Favorable: actual cost was less than or equal to estimated cost.
• Unfavorable: actual cost exceeded estimated cost.

Variance is a review signal, not an automatic correction. A variance may mean the BOM estimate is stale, component costs changed, material was substituted, labor was higher than planned, overhead assumptions are wrong, or completion happened in multiple quantities.

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Review Build History

Use Build History to compare completed builds over time. This report helps manufacturing, sales, and finance understand whether cost per unit is stable, improving, or getting worse. It includes summary totals, a cost-per-unit trend by product when history exists, and a build table linked back to each work order. Review build history when:

• A product’s price or margin is being reviewed.
• A vendor cost change may have moved component cost.
• A BOM revision was activated and you want to compare before and after results.
• A product repeatedly finishes with higher actual cost than estimated cost.
• A manager asks when a product was last built and at what unit cost.

Open the work order when a row looks unusual. Build History explains the pattern, but the detail page explains the actual materials, labor, serials, timeline, and completion record.

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Review Component Usage

Use Component Usage to see how much of a component was planned, issued, returned, scrapped, and costed across completed or closed work orders. Use this tab to find high-scrap components and unusually expensive consumed components.

• Total required: expected component quantity from the work order lines.
• Total issued: quantity actually issued or backflushed.
• Total returned: quantity returned to stock.
• Total scrapped: quantity recorded as scrap.
• Scrap percent: scrap compared with issued quantity.
• High-scrap components: components with at least 5 percent scrap.

Use this report to spot parts with frequent scrap, substitutes, or unexpected use. Then review the BOM line, work order materials tab, receiving cost, and inventory transactions before changing a recipe or product cost.

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Match Reports To Work Order Status

• WIP Aging uses Released and In Progress work.
• Cost Variance uses Completed and Closed work.
• Build History uses completed production history.
• Component Usage uses completed and closed work order lines.

If a work order is missing from a report, check its status first. If the status is right, check date filters, product filters, and whether the work order belongs to the current entity and location context.

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Understand Empty States

Empty report tabs usually mean there is no work order activity in the status or date range that feeds that tab.

• No WIP: all work orders are Draft, Completed, Closed, or Cancelled. There are no Released or In Progress work orders aging in the shop.
• No completed work orders: Cost Variance found no Completed or Closed work orders in the selected date range.
• No build history: Build History found no completed work orders in the selected date range.
• No component usage: Component Usage found no consumed components on completed work orders in the selected date range.

When a tab is empty but you expected rows, open the work order first. Confirm the status, actual end date, completed quantity, component lines, and entity context before changing the report filters.

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Common Questions

• Why is WIP empty? There are no Released or In Progress work orders.
• Why is Cost Variance empty? There are no Completed or Closed work orders in the selected date range.
• Why is Build History empty? There are no Completed or Closed work orders with completed quantity in the selected date range.
• Why is Component Usage empty? There are no completed or closed work orders with consume or add component lines in the selected date range.
• Why does WIP value look low? Confirm materials, labor, overhead, and completion activity were recorded on the work order.
• Why is a component not shown? Component Usage reports completed or closed work order lines with manufacturing component activity.
• Why is variance unfavorable? Review actual FIFO material cost, substitutions, labor entries, overhead, completion quantity, and the BOM revision used.
• What should accounting use? Use Manufacturing Reports for operational review, then accounting reports and journal entries for financial review.

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