Category: CCRQBOM

Invalid Serial Number

Sometimes a user will have difficulty when trying to register a CCRSoftware product. There are a number of different error messages or situations that you may run into. Let’s show you what might be going on.

Different Registration Systems

To start with, there are two different registration systems that are used to register CCRSoftware products, depending on what version of the program you are installing. The serial number for one system won’t work with the other system. Sometimes a user may install a version that doesn’t match the serial number that they have.

For CCRQInvoice versions 3.0.0.1 to 3.5.5 and CCRQBOM versions 3.0.4 to 3.6.0 the serial number will have the format “XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX”, 4 groups of 5 letters/numbers. For these versions you will see this kind of registration screen:

For CCRQInvoice versions 3.6.0 to 3.7.0 and CCRQBOM version 4.0.0 the serial number will have the format “STD-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXX-XXXX”, the letters “STD” followed by 2 groups of 5 letters/numbers, then 2 groups of 4 letters/numbers. For these versions you will see this kind of registration screen:

If you try to use a serial number that doesn’t match the version, you will either get a message along the line of “The serial number provided is invalid”, or you just won’t be able to enter the serial number.

TO RESOLVE THIS you want to download the proper version. Note that if you had a DIFFERENT version than what is listed below, you should contact our support department for compatibility (or upgrade) information.

I Already Have A License

This throws a lot of people off. Our documentation talks about this, briefly, but who reads documentation any more?

If you have a registration screen like this, and you are reinstalling the software, some people decide that they need to click the “I already have a license” link.

 

Please don’t – that link is misleading, it won’t do what you want. It will ask you for a license file (*.lic), and you won’t have one.

That link is used for a special situation when recovering a license on an existing computer, which won’t be your case (in fact, we’ve never had a user that needed to do this). Just go ahead and enter your name and the serial number in the regular field. If you don’t know your serial number, contact support.

The Serial Number Provided is Invalid

With the standard/public releases, when you enter the serial number, you may see this error:

There are a couple of reasons why you might see this.

Perhaps you have a typo in the serial number? 1968P-XXXXX-XXXXX-X04W3 is not the same as l968P-XXXXX-XXXXX-XO4W3. The numbers 1 and 0 are not the same as the letters l and O.

A common error is that you copy/paste the serial number from a document, or the original email you received, but you add a space to the end. “1968P-XXXXX-XXXXX-X04W3  ” is not the same as “1968P-XXXXX-XXXXX-X04W3” for example – there is an added space at the end of the first one, and the program doesn’t like that. Very common error.

Wrong Software Product

Last but not least, sometimes we have people who try to use a CCRQInvoice serial number with CCRQBOM, or vice-versa. Won’t work!

 

Exporting a QuickBooks Assembly to Excel

CCRQBOM was not designed for file exports, but you can export a BOM to Excel with a little work. This article discusses how to export ALL of your BOM’s from QuickBooks for a “one-time” export, such as when you want to get your data OUT of QuickBooks and import it to ANOTHER inventory system.

Note that this requires a special version of CCRQBOM (4.0.0), which is available for $150.00. This release is ONLY supported for a one-time export. If you want this version, use our contact form to make a request.

Exporting BOM’s with CCRQBOM 4.0.0

If you purchase this product you will be given a link to download an installer. See our installation summary (PDF) document for general information about installing the software. Note that there are some differences from what you see in the PDF, particularly for the registration information. We will provide you with information, and a serial number, once you purchase the program.

Next, download BOMBOM Export Multiple Assys.repx.zip. This is a “zip” file, unzip it and save it to your computer system in a location you can easily find (such as your desktop).

Run CCRQBOM and select Forms and then Bill of Material.

In the Edit Reports window that opens, click the Import button.

This will open a File Open dialog window. Use this to locate the downloaded “repx” file you saved earlier, select it, then click the Open button.

You will now see “BOM Export Multiple Assys” on the report list. Note that you won’t see all of the reports I shown in this example (this is from my test system).

Click Exit to close this window.

Next:

    1. Click the Assemblies menu selection
    2. Select the Print BOM tab
    3. Select the Single Level option (this is VERY important)
    4. Click Print All, unless you want to test this, in which case you can click on one assembly and click Print Selected

A Print Reports dialog opens. In the report list, select “BOM Export Multiple Assys”. This is a stripped down report that removes a lot of unnecessary information (footers, page numbers, lines). Then select Print Preview and click the Print button. The other options will NOT do what you want.

In the Preview window you will see the simplified export report, as shown here. Click the down arrow next to the green floppy disk icon to get the export dropdown menu. You can select “XLSX File”, or if you wish “XLS File” or “CSV File”, to export the report.

In the Export Options dialog (the appearance may vary depending on the options you chose) just click the OK button.

You will be asked for a location to save the exported file. You may also have an option to open the file immediately, if you have an appropriate version of Microsoft Excel installed.

Modifying Export

There are other fields in the BOM in addition to what this export includes. Note that some fields you may see in QuickBooks (particularly in the Enterprise version) may not be available to our product. You can modify the template to add other fields, but note that this is somewhat tricky and time consuming. You have to learn how to use our form editor. Information is in the program documentation. Feel free to ask for tips, and we can tell you if the field you want can be exported.

 

Printing a Costed Bill of Materials

The standard BOM (Bill of Material) report in CCRQBOM does not include any cost values, by design. Many businesses don’t want to show “cost” to employees on the shop floor. However, for management purposes, it can be beneficial to add “cost” to this report. This article will show you how.

Printing a Multiple-Level BOM

First, let’s show how to print a multiple-level BOM with CCRQBOM.

Select BOM from the CCRQBOM menu. This will open a window that lists all of the assembly items in your QuickBooks company file.

Set the Explosion Level to the desired level. Full Level will print all the details of any subassemblies.

Select the assembly that you want to work with from the list, then click Display to see the BOM. In this example, there is a subassembly, and we have chosen Full Level.

The Quick Print button will print the BOM as you see it on screen. Note that you can add columns to this display by right clicking on the column headers, selecting the column chooser from the menu to get a list of columns, and dragging those columns to drop on the header display. Details on modifying a “grid” like this can be found in the printed documentation.

Most people will use the Print button. This opens a Print Reports window that lists any report templates that you have available. Select the template that you want to use (there is only one in this example), then select Print Preview, and then click the Print button.

Here’s the standard multi-level BOM report from CCRQBOM, which includes the details of the subassembly.

Note that “Assembly RWS” is a subassembly, and that there are two of them used in the higher level assembly “Main Assembly”.

For reference, here are the two assemblies as you see them in QuickBooks.

 

Cost vs. Average Cost vs. Total Bill of Materials Cost

The problem with adding “cost” to a BOM is, which “cost” are you referring to? There are three “cost” values associated with an assembly item in QuickBooks, Cost, Average Cost and Total Bill of Materials Cost. For a detailed explanation of these, see the article Understanding QuickBooks Total Bill of Material Cost.

If you look at the “Assembly RWS” item in QuickBooks, as shown above, you can see that there are three different “cost” values shown:

  • Cost: This is an editable field, you can enter any value you wish here. Usually this is the last purchased cost, but that is not guaranteed. In this case it is $13.00
  • Average Cost: This is the value maintained by QuickBooks, based on the cost of components at the time the quantity on hand was built. In this case it is $10.00
  • Total Bill of Materials Cost: This is based on the Cost values from the subassemblies. As the article explains, this isn’t always accurate. You can use the Cost function in CCRQBOM to update this value. In this case, the value is $2.55

As you can see, there are three values that can all be different.

The Total Bill of Materials Cost is not a value that is actually stored in QuickBooks.

Most people will want to see the Average Cost for components in a printed BOM. However, there are times when you might want to see the Cost value. Each of these are available in CCRQBOM.

Adding Cost to a BOM Report in CCRQBOM

Details on how to work with the report editor in CCRQBOM can be found in the printed documentation. This article will describe the steps in a summary fashion.

To create a modified BOM report, select Forms in the CCRQBOM menu, then Bill of Material. This opens the Edit Reports window.

Select the report template you would like to modify (there will only be one the first time you edit a report in CCRQBOM), then click the Edit button. This will open the report editor. Note that the first time that you do this after starting CCRQBOM, there may be a delay while the editor gets ready.

The details of the components are entered in the Detail1 band. Headers for those detail columns are entered in the GroupHeader1 band. Adding a column in the detail section does not automatically add a column header.

We will add the column first. I’ll add it to the right of the Description column.

Click on the data field for the Description column in the Detail1 section, to select it. Right click on the selected field, and in the popup menu select Insert and then Column to Right.

This adds a blank column to the right.

Now, on the right side of the edit window, click on the Field List tab. This will list all of the available fields. Select the MasterDataAssyData item, which is where the fields for the detail lines will be found. This is found within the MasterData section. It is very important that you use fields in this section for detail lines. Click the + symbol to expand the list of fields.

Within MasterDataAssyData you will find two fields. Use the one that represents the cost that you want to use. AverageCost is the average cost of the item. ItemCost is the “cost” field of the item.

Click on the name of the field you want to use, and drag the name over to the report, dropping it on that blank column you added.

Next, insert a blank column in the GroupHeader1 band, to the right of the Description column heading. Double click on the field to select the default text that shows there, and type in the name you want to use for this column, such as “Cost”.

Select File from the main menu, then Save As, and give the report a unique name. Click OK to save the name. Then select File and Exit to close the editor. You will see your new report in the Edit Reports menu.

When you print a BOM you can choose your new report template.

A couple of notes:

  • If you have non-inventory items as components, they will always have an average cost of zero.
  • If you have non-inventory items as components, they will have a cost of zero unless you check the box “This item is used in assemblies or is purchased for a specific customer:job” in the Edit Item window in QuickBooks, and enter a “cost” there.

Formatting the Cost Field

In my example I did not “format” the cost field, so the numbers don’t have the same number of digits after the decimal, and so forth. This doesn’t look good.

Editing the report, select the new “cost” column, and then click the “>” symbol that shows at the upper right. This opens a “properties” window.

In the Format String property, click the ellipsis (…) to open the editor. There are a number of options you can choose here (more details in the printed documentation). I’ll pick “Currency” in this case.

Click OK to close the format editor.

Now, select the Cost column again, and select the Right Justify icon in the toolbar. You might also want to do that to the column header.

Save the report, and print it again.

Extended Cost

Calculating the extended, and total, cost of an assembly is trickier. In this case I’ll use “Cost”, not “Average Cost”, since I have non-inventory items in the BOM that don’t have an average cost value.

I won’t give you the step-by-step process, just some summaries.

In this report I have columns for the level, component item, description, quantity, extended quantity, unit cost and extended cost.

For Extended Cost I will create a “calculated field”. For details on how to add a “calculated field”, see this article, scroll to the section on “creating a calculated field”. Here is the expression that I’ve created:

I’ve named this field “ExItemCost”.

Next, we need to add another band to the report. Right click on a blank area in the report, not on any of the bands. In the popup menu select Insert Band, and then GroupFooter. The name usually defaults to GroupFooter1.

Next, I will add the “ExItemCost” field, found in the MasterDataAssyData section of fields, to the GroupFooter1 band.  Position it under the Ext Cost column, set the format to currency, and set it to align right. In the properties, select Summary and set it to be a “Group” summary.

Save this, then run the report.

Note that this is a full-level BOM. The “Extended Quantity” for a subassembly item itself, and therefore the “Extended Cost”, is going to be zero. That is because the cost is calculated from the component items.

If you would like a copy of this report:

  1. Download the “repx” file from this link (this is a zip file): Costed Full Level
  2. Unzip the file to extract the file BOMCosted Full Level.repx
  3. Run CCRQBOM
  4. Select Forms and then Bill of Material
  5. Click the Import button, and select the repx file from where you saved it.

This will add “Costed Full Level” to your Bill of Materials report menu.

How To Add a Filter to CCRQBOM Reports

There are times when you want to remove certain items from a report in CCRQBOM. To do this you would use a filter, which is easy to add to report definitions. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples.

To start with, I have a very simple assembly item. It consists of two inventory parts and one non-inventory part.

For my first example, I would like to list only the inventory part items in a requirements report that includes this assembly.

Here is a requirements report for a quantity 2 of this assembly.

To edit this report, I will select Forms and then Requirements.

Then I will select the Requirements List report template, and click the Edit button.

In the report editor select Report Explorer and select DetailReport,  since we want to filter the component items in the detail section of the report. Then select the Property Grid. Scroll down to find the Filter String property.

If you click on the right end of the Filter String field an ellipsis (…) will appear, and you will click that to open the FilterString Editor.

Click on the + symbol in the editor, which will add a filter line that you can edit. The filter line has three sections, each in a different color. The blue field is the data field, the green field is the operation, and the gray field is the value. Clicking on each field will allow you to change the filter details. There are several ways that you can manipulate a filter, in our example I want to include every field that is not a non-inventory part.

The data field that I will select from the dropdown list is Type. Note that if you don’t see this data field as an option, you probably haven’t selected the proper section of the report in the Report Explorer. 

The operation that I will select is Does not equal.

The value that I will enter is NonInventory.


Click OK to save the filter. Click File and then Save As to save the report, and give it a unique name. Then close the report editor.

Now when I run the Requirements report, I will select my modified report. As you can see, the Non-inventory part item is not included.

Another example would be to remove a particular part from the report. Let’s say that I want to remove the “Widget” item from the report as shown at the top of this article. I’ll go through all the same steps as above, and create the following filter:

This time I decided to exclude all items that match the condition by changing the red “And” to a “Not And”.

Here’s the report:

The most difficult issue with filters is selecting the proper section of the report. For some reports you will select the overall report, for any report that has a master/detail relation you often will want to select the detail section. If you can’t find the Filter String property then you have selected the wrong section of the report. Note also that not all fields are available in each section of the report.

Adding a Page Break to the BOM Listing

The Mult-Build function of CCRQBOM version 3.2.2 (Assemblies function in version 3.6.0 and later) has an option to print multiple assemblies in one report. The standard report is designed to print the BOM’s in a compressed format, to save paper, by not having page breaks between each assembly. Let’s look at how you can add a page break between assemblies. Note that we’ll be using version 3.2.2 as an example, the process is very similar for version 3.6.0 and later.

Here’s my sample MultiLevel BOM listing (with some very simple data).

 

To edit this report, select Forms then Bill of Material.

In the Edit Reports window select “Multi Level BOM” and then click the Edit button. Note that the editor may be slow to open, so be patient.

Select the “DetailReport” band by clicking on the band in the editing window, or in the Report Explorer.

 

In the Property Grid box, scroll down to find the Page Break property (make sure that “DetailReport” is the selected object at the top of the window. Change that property to After the Band.

Select File in the editor menu, then Save As to save this edited report. Give it a unique name. Then close the editor window.

Now when you print the report you should see the new report template that you created in the report list. Here’s the results with my sample data. Each of the BOM’s has a separate page.

Why Doesn’t My Report Show All The Info?

When you are working with a CCRQBOM or CCRQInvoice report that has a large amount of information, sometimes you may find that the report doesn’t show all of the detail lines that you expect. This most often occurs when you have created your own report definition in the form editor. Why does this happen, and what can be done about it?

Most people print reports with the “print preview” option, and if you create your own report template there is a preference setting in the report that will limit the number of detail lines that show in the preview. This is the most common reason for a large report not showing all of your information – it is limited to “100 lines” in the preview.

That is an easy issue to fix in your report definition. Edit the report, make sure that you have the “report” selected in the Report Explorer (not one of the subsections). Then in the Property Grid look for the Row Count for Preview property. If this is set to a number (typically 100), you want to change it to zero (which means unlimited), and then save the report. That should fix this problem.

Note that this also means that your print previews can take a long time to display if you have a large report.

Alternately, instead of editing the report, use the Print option instead of Print Preview. This bypasses the limit, and prints the report directly to the printer that you choose.

 

 

How To Get The Total Cost of Shortages On A Requirements List

CCRQBOM can generate a requirements list, a report that shows what items you need to purchase if you want to build a required quantity of an assembly. I’ll show you how to add some calculated fields to the report to provide total shortage cost calculation.Here is a requirement list to build a quantity 5 of assembly Bicycle. You can see that there are shortages for two inventory parts.

 

This uses the standard report template that comes with CCRQBOM.

To modify this template I will select the requirements template from the forms menu.

 

Select the requirements list option in the edit reports window and click the edit button.

 

This opens (sometimes after a bit of a delay) the report designer window. Please note that this window may look a bit different with some versions of CCRQBOM, but the elements should all be the same.

 

Creating a Calculated Field

The first step is to add a calculated field to hold the item cost X shortage value.

In the field list find the MasterDataRequiredData section of MasterData.

 

Right click on this section to select Add Calculated Field. This adds a calculated field to the field list. In the property grid lower on the screen you should see the properties for this field.

 

Change the name of the field to ShortCost, then select expression and click the “…” symbol to open the Expression Editor.

 

In the expression editor select the fields section. Locate ItemCost and double click it to add it to the expression. Double click the “X” symbol to add the multiply operator. Then double click the Shortage field to add that. Click OK to save this expression.

 

Note that in this case I’m using the ItemCost field, which is “Cost” in QuickBooks. You might want to use AverageCost instead.

Select this ShortCost field for the data binding for the last column, as we illustrated before with the ItemCost field.

Adding Columns

I’ll add two columns, one for ItemCost and one for the calculated shortage cost. I’m not going to make the report pretty, I’m just going to add the columns. You may want to rearrange things or delete unnecessary columns.

Right click on the rightmost column in the Detail1 section, select Insert, and then Column to right. Do this again to add a second column. Repeat this with the headers in GroupHeader1. Then resized the columns to fit what you want.

 

Double click on each heading column and enter the column names, “Cost” and “Short Cost”.

Change the column headings by double clicking on them and typing in the text you want.

Find ItemCost in the Field List, drag it and drop it on the cell for that column in Detail1. Do the same with ShortCost for the last column.

Select each of the cells and set them to be right justified.

 

Select each cell, click on the “>” symbol, and set the format string to show currency.

 

Add the Sum to the Footer

We have a column that shows the calculated cost of the shortage. Now we want to add the sum of this to the report.

First, we want to add a GroupFooter Band to the report, to have a place to hold the sum. This will put the sum at the end of the report for each assembly. (Note: you might add a “ReportFooter” instead of a GroupFooter – that is always at the end of the report. There isn’t much difference between them in most reports, unless you have multiple groups – then you should use a ReportFooter).

Right click on the Detail band, select Insert Band and then GroupFooter.

 

In the field list, find the ShortCost field and drag it to the GroupFooter.

Position the field to where you want it, resize the GroupFooter as appropriate.

Next, click on the < symbol again, click the ellipsis (…) by Summary.

 

Select the Group option in Summary Running. Also set the format string to the currency format.

 

Click OK to close this window, then save your report with the File/Save As menu option and give it a name. Close the editor.

Here is our modified report, showing the unit cost for each item, the shortage cost per item, and a sum of the shortage cost at the bottom.