Manual / Start / Introduction

Materials

A Material is anything you buy or hold to make product — the raw ingredients, the packaging, the additives. Materials are what MRP plans against: when a manufacturing order needs 200 kg of cane sugar, MRP checks what’s on hand, what’s already on order, and tells you what to purchase and when. The numbers you set on a material decide how that plan turns out.

What’s a Material?

Every Material belongs to one of two owners:

Vendor material — supplied by an outside vendor. Its SKU is VENDOR-RM-NNNN.
House material — made or held by Brella itself (a sub-assembly, a blended base). Its SKU is HOUSE-RM-NNNN.

Set up the vendor first. A vendor material’s SKU prefix is minted from the vendor’s code, so the vendor must exist before you can create a material that belongs to it — create the vendor under Companies, then add the material. House materials need no vendor.

A material carries identity (name, kind, vendor), an optional density for unit conversions, and a set of MRP planning fields that tell the planner how to replenish it. SKUs are generated server-side — you never type one.

CSV export and re-import

The Export action on the Materials page uses the same operator-owned fields and labels as New material. The file includes material name and classification, base and purchase units, owner, density, date policy, planning quantities, standard cost, and description. You can upload that CSV through Imports > Products / SKUs without translating vestl’s headings; the normal mapping, validation, and duplicate review still run before commit.

Internal SKU, on-hand and reserved quantities, reorder status, and current average cost are not included. vestl generates or calculates those values, and accepting them as material-creation inputs would create a second source of truth. The exported reorder point is the material’s planning value, not a location-specific reorder-rule override.

Materials created by import start as drafts and require the same two-person approval as materials created interactively.

New-material approval

A newly created material starts as a draft. Before it can be used in a published formula or BOM, two different approvers (any two people with the admin, finance, or production-manager role) must sign off on it from the material’s page. This is the governance step that keeps names, kinds, and units consistent — see the conventions below for what an approver checks.

You can reference a draft material while authoring a formula or BOM; only publishing is blocked until the material is approved. The publish error names the materials still waiting.
Each new draft material also appears in the Inbox as an approval request, for production managers and finance — the roles that can sign off. It clears automatically once approved, for everyone who could see it. Reopening a material raises a fresh request the same way.
The same person can’t approve twice, and approval can’t be skipped by editing the material — completing a material only happens through sign-off.
Approval history belongs to the same organization as the material. A material or approval from another organization is treated as nonexistent and cannot count toward the two-person gate.
Reopening an approved material for edits revokes its approvals; it needs two fresh sign-offs afterward.
Editing an attested field reopens the material automatically. The name, base or purchase unit, kind, and density are what approvers sign off on — changing any of them on an approved material flips it back to draft and revokes the approvals. Planning-field edits (lead time, reorder point, safety stock, and similar) do not.

Naming and unit conventions

What an approver checks before signing off:

Name = what it is, spec, pack format — for example Citric Acid, anhydrous, 25 kg bag or 12 oz sleek can, brite, 204 end. No vendor names in the material name (sourcing lives on the vendor and supplier terms), no house shorthand, no dates.
Kind is the narrowest fit — raw_liquid for bulk liquids dosed by volume; ingredient for anything dosed into the liquid by weight; the packaging kinds for containers and case components. other needs a note.
Base unit = how formulas dose it (weight for ingredients, volume for bulk liquids, ea for packaging). Purchase unit = how the vendor sells it, with the conversion set at creation.
Density is required for liquids that are dosed by weight or bought by volume — without it, unit conversion fails safe and MRP flags the line instead of guessing.
No duplicates — search before creating; the same physical material from a second vendor is a new supplier term on the existing material, not a new material.

Package conversions

A package conversion defines how much base inventory one product-specific pack contains. Use it for cases, totes, drums, bags, and supplier packs whose contents vary by material. Examples: 1 case = 24 ea and 1 tote = 1,000 L.

Create the package unit under Settings > Units of measure without a universal factor, then add the factor to the material. Choose the Package unit and enter the Quantity in base unit contained in one package. vestl uses the material’s base unit as the hub for purchasing, stock, projected availability, MRP, reservations, and picking.

Package factors belong to one material. A “case” for one SKU never changes the meaning of a case for another SKU. If vestl cannot find a physical, density, or product-package conversion path, it stops the operation and reports the missing conversion instead of guessing.

Changing a factor affects future normalization. Removing a conversion requires an impact review and an audit reason; posted movement quantities keep their original entered and normalized values.

MRP planning fields

These four fields are optional, but they are what makes MRP’s purchasing proposals accurate. Leave them blank and MRP still plans demand against on-hand stock; fill them in and the plan respects vendor minimums, order lead times, and the buffer you want to keep on the shelf.

Lead time days

How many days to allow between placing an order and receiving it. MRP uses this to work backwards from when the material is needed: if a batch consumes a material on the 20th and the lead time is 7 days, MRP wants the order placed by the 13th. Set it to the vendor’s quoted lead time, padded for receiving and inspection if your floor needs it. Blank means MRP assumes the material is available immediately — only correct for house materials you make on demand.

Minimum order quantity

The smallest quantity the vendor will sell, or the smallest quantity you want purchasing to place. When MRP proposes a purchase, it rounds the proposed quantity up to at least this number. If you need 18 units but the minimum is 25, the proposal is 25. Set it to the vendor’s case or pallet minimum. Blank means MRP proposes exactly the quantity needed.

Safety stock

A buffer quantity MRP keeps available above expected demand, to absorb late deliveries or demand spikes. MRP treats safety stock as untouchable: it plans replenishment so on-hand never drops below this level. Set it higher for materials with unreliable supply or long lead times, lower for cheap, fast-moving stock. Blank means no buffer — MRP plans to zero.

Reorder point

The on-hand level at which MRP flags the material for replenishment. When projected on-hand falls to or below the reorder point, MRP surfaces it as needing an order. A common rule of thumb is to set the reorder point to cover expected usage across the lead time, plus the safety stock. Blank means MRP relies purely on batch-driven demand to trigger orders rather than a standing threshold.

How the fields work together

A worked example. A vendor material with lead time 7 days, minimum order 25, safety stock 10, reorder point 40:

On-hand drops to 38. That’s at or below the reorder point (40), so MRP flags it.
MRP works back 7 days from when the stock is needed to set the order date.
The proposed order quantity is rounded up to the minimum (25), even if less is technically needed.
After the order lands, MRP keeps planning so on-hand never falls under the safety stock (10).

Set what you know. Even just a lead time and a minimum makes the difference between a purchasing proposal you can act on and one you have to second-guess.

Sourcing — vendor terms

A material’s Sourcing section (on the material detail page) is where you record the commercial terms for buying it: MOQ, lead time, unit cost, and whether this is the preferred vendor MRP plans from. A material is sourced from its owning vendor — the vendor it belongs to — so there’s no vendor to pick; the terms apply to that vendor.

House or client-owned materials show no sourcing terms — there’s no external vendor to buy them from.
Marking a vendor preferred is what lets MRP use these terms: when a shortage is found, MRP rounds the order up to the MOQ and works the order date back by the lead time, then drafts a purchase order to that vendor.
The unit cost feeds the estimated value of the drafted purchase order.

To change which vendor a material is bought from, change the material’s owning vendor; the sourcing terms follow the owner.

The same material from more than one vendor

When you buy the same physical material from two vendors, set each up as its own material record — one per vendor — rather than trying to attach two vendors to one record. Each record carries its own sourcing terms (MOQ, lead time, unit cost), and each can be marked preferred independently, so MRP can choose the vendor whose terms best fit the shortage it’s covering. In a BOM you pick the specific vendor’s material you want to consume; swapping to the other vendor is an either/or choice at the BOM line. Keeping the records separate is what keeps costs, lead times, and receipts traceable to the vendor they actually came from.