Why Enter Received Material?

Entering received material into SpoolFab is useful in the following ways:

1. It provides the inventory data used by WDTR (Which Drawings to Release), which helps you hold back spools containing a preponderance of currently rare items in order to increase the number of spools you can fabricate using your current stock. For more on WDTR, see document K0020 on spoolfab.com/pdfsh.php.
   
2. It gives you an opportunity to enter heat numbers. This then forms the basis either for preselecting heat numbers before you palletize the spool, or, if you choose to enter heat numbers via the drawings, to check that the numbers entered correspond to real heat numbers for the item in question, and that the fabricated quantity of each heat number does not exceed the received quantity of that same heat number. Automatic heat number assignment is described in K0015 at spoolfab.com/pdfsf.php.
   

How to Enter Received Material

First, get into Fabrication Material Control.
If your inventory has not been updated recently, select Tools/Inventory Update Only, as shown below.

Then select Tools/Job Inventory/Pricing, Items to get into the Inventory view.

Let’s focus for now on the columns headed Held, Received, and Drawn:

The Drawn column contains the total amount of each item contained in all drawings in the project, except for those drawings whose status is X-Canceled, Y-Canceled, or Z-Canceled.

In the screenshot above, we see that we have received 100 ft of 3”Sch40 A106-B SMLS pipe.  Double-click on that 100.00 ft value and you will see details of the pipe already received, including its Heat Number. You can now enter additional batches of the same pipe, along with their heat numbers. The accumulated total quantity will be reflected in the Received column of the Inventory table.

Entering heat numbers as described above allows you to assign heat numbers automatically, as described in document K0015 atspoolfab.com/pdfsf.php.

Heat Number Not Yet Available

If you do not yet know the heat number of the pipe, you can enter the word HOLD in place of the heat number. That amount of the pipe will contribute to the Held column rather than the Received column and will not contribute to the amount in stock. You can come back later and replace HOLD with the heat number. Entering HOLD as the MTR No. or PMI No. has the same effect.

Less Common Issues

Schedule Name

Sometimes material received differs in some non-critical way from how it is called out on the drawings. For example, suppose the spec calls for 8 inch XS pipe but you have received a mixture of 8 inch XS and Sch 80. This can affect SpoolFab’s reconciling of heat numbers and the operation of the WDTR (Which Drawings to Release) function.

While you could delete all the existing 8 inch Sch 80 receipts and re-enter them as XS, there is an easier way as follows:

Reassigning Materials and Walls

From Fabrication Material Control, select Edit/Receiving Reports. To take 8 inch pipe that was received as Sch 80 and reclassify it as XS, put the focus on the row for 8 inch XS. All you need to do is to copy the Item Code, Description and Material entries for this row and paste them to the row(s) showing identical pipe but designated as Sch 80.

Press Ctrl-C to copy the XS material description. The copied cells turn yellow as a reminder of what is about to be pasted. Now put the focus on the line below, the one for 8 inch Sch 80 pipe. Press Ctrl-V to paste the description. The first time you do this, you will be asked to confirm that you want to change the Wall.

You can continue to paste this Item Code, Description and Material as required, then repeat with a different item as required. When you have finished your edits, close the form. You get one final chance to save or cancel your edits.

Note that your edits will not be fully reflected in the Inventory table until the next Inventory Update.

The Qty.Used Field

The Qty.Used field in the Received window shows the amount of stock of each individual heat number that has been entered on any drawing. This is regardless of the drawing’s status, i.e. whether it has been released to fab, is on hold, etc.

Items for which no heat number has been entered are not reflected in the Qty.Used field at all. Similarly, if an item has been assigned a heat number that does not correspond to any received material, it will not be reflected in the Qty.Used column.

Suppose you have a spool that was so extensively revised that it was saved under a new control number, and the original spool marked as X-cancelled. If you were able to re-use some of the original spool, it is possible that the same material of a specific heat number might be doubly reflected in the Qty.Used field. This will not affect the heat number checking function, nor the WDTR function. But if you find the double counting in the Qty.Used column misleading, just delete the heat numbers from the original, cancelled spool.

If for a given heat number the total amount drawn exceeds the amount received, the Qty.Used field will be highlighted in yellow.

Receive Batch – added in April 2023

The receiving method described earlier in this article treats each item separately. You can also receive material as a batch as described below.  This method also allows for pasting this information from Excel.

From Inventory view, select File, Receive Batch. You can then simply enter the quantities of each item and their Heat Nos and MTR numbers in the form below. If an item comes in more than one heat number, select Edit, Insert Row or press Ctrl-I to create an additional row for the same item, as shown.

The PO Number is optional and will be applied to all items in the batch. When you have finished entering all the items, hit Receive these items now.

Batch Receiving via Excel

Some users have indicated they would prefer to batch receive by pasting from Excel. To do this the clipboard needs to contain each item’s Code and Aux Code along with the descriptions. You set up the framework for this by selecting Edit, Copy All and then pasting into Excel as shown below.

Use your preferred method to populate the Quantity, Heat No. and MTR number columns.

When ready, copy all the relevant data from Excel including all the columns from A through G. In the Receive Batch form, select Edit, Paste or use Ctrl-V. Then hit Receive these items now, just as if you had entered the values directly into the Receive Batch form.