Overview
Products in Finale can have an associated bill of materials to define the components required for manufacturing or kit assembly. Each line on the bill of materials refers to other products - Finale does not have the notion of a part separate from a product. The bill of materials is managed in the context of the product produced by the bill of materials, and a specific product can only have a single bill of materials (although the bill of materials can be edited without affecting completed or in progress transactions that use the information in the bill of materials).
Finale's integration with ShipStation and build transactions use the information on the bill of materials.
Enabling Bill of Materials
By default the user interface to manage the bill of materials is disabled. The user interface can be enable or disabled at any point from Application Settings screen on the Product tab. The checkbox "Use bill of materials" enables or disables the user interface.
Editing
Edit the bill of materials from the product detail screen:
The screen show the contents of the bill of materials as a table, with button below to add new blank lines or clear all lines. The table is editable like other Finale tables: click on any cell to select and then just start typing a new value for the cell.
The product column selects the constituent product. The constituent products have to be created first before they can be added. Constituent products are selected using full text search:
The quantity column specifies the amount of the constituent product consumed to produce each finished product. The quantity may be specified as fractional or even negative (for example to produce a second product as a side-effect).
The item note column is any additional information text on the line.
Bulk Import of Bill of Materials
If you have many Bill of Materials or kits, it may be quicker bulk import them from Excel into Finale. The functionality can be found in the Import / Export section.
The format of the each row of the Excel file is Product ID (parent), Item Index, Child Product ID (item product id), Qty, Notes.
The product id, child product id, qty are mandatory fields. Notes and item index are an optional fields.
Video
The first few minutes of the following video demonstrates creating a bill of materials in Finale:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIX0cItGofc