Materials live on their own master file with their own item codes, colors, units of measure and cost. Track them by warehouse, bin location, lot and individual fabric roll, buy them on a materials purchase order, and consume them through the bill of materials on cut tickets and production purchase orders.
Finished goods are the easy half. The money goes out months earlier, on fabric, trim, componentry and packaging that sits in your building, at a contractor, or on a boat. AIMS360 holds all of it on its own master file, in the units you actually buy it in, tracked as deep as you need: by warehouse, by bin, by lot, and for fabric, by individual roll.
It is the stock of everything you buy in order to make a finished good, held separately from the finished goods themselves. In apparel that is fabric and trim. In the rest of consumer brands it is componentry and packaging. Either way it is money already spent on something you cannot sell yet.
AIMS360 keeps materials on their own master file, with their own item codes, colors, units of measure, width where that matters, vendor item codes and cost. Materials are bought on their own purchase orders, received into their own locations, and consumed against production through the bill of materials.
The reason to track it properly is not tidiness. It is that fabric is usually the longest lead time and the largest single cost in a garment, and a brand that cannot see what it has either buys twice or discovers the shortage the week the cut was meant to start.
AIMS360 runs across ten consumer categories, and a material is simply anything consumed to make the thing you sell.
| Category | Typical materials |
|---|---|
| Fashion and apparel | Woven and knit fabric, interlining and fusible, thread, zippers, buttons, snaps, elastic, drawcords, brand and care and size labels, hangtags, poly bags. |
| Footwear | Leather and synthetic upper material, outsole and midsole units, insoles, laces, eyelets, foam, adhesive, boxes and tissue. |
| Jewelry, bags and accessories | Hides, chain, clasps and findings, stones, plating, hardware, lining fabric, dust bags, gift boxes. |
| Outdoor and sporting goods | Technical laminates and shell fabric, webbing, buckles and hardware, cordage, insulation, grip tape, hangloops. |
| Cosmetics, beauty and personal care | Bulk formula, jars, bottles, pumps and applicators, caps, shrink sleeves, cartons, inserts. |
| Wellness and supplements | Actives and excipients, capsules, bottles, desiccants, induction seals, scoops, labels, cartons. |
| Home, furniture and lifestyle | Upholstery fabric, foam and batting, webbing, frames, fasteners, glass and ceramic blanks, wicks and wax, cord. |
| Household and home care | Concentrate, bottles, trigger sprayers, closures and liners, film, corrugate. |
| Baby and children's | Fabric, fill, snaps and safety hardware, elastic, care labels, tamper-evident packaging. |
| Pet products | Webbing and hardware, fabric and fill, rope, treats and food ingredients, pouches and cartons. |
The pattern holds across all of them: a material has an item code, one or more colors, a unit of measure, a cost and a vendor, and it gets consumed by something you sell. What changes is the depth. Roll tracking is fabric specific. Lot tracking is not, and it applies just as well to a batch of formula, a run of hardware or a print run of cartons.
Which building, contractor or reference location the material is physically at. Your own warehouse, a factory holding fabric you bought for them, or a third location entirely. See multi-warehouse.
Where inside that building. Materials use the same bins and locations as finished goods, with each bin flagged for one or the other so the two never mix.
Which batch it came from. A dye lot of fabric, a lot of formula, a run of hardware. Turned on as its own setting, and the general purpose one.
Which individual roll, and how much yardage is left on it. Switched on per material color, so the fabric that matters gets tracked and the rest does not carry the overhead.
The depth pays off in production. When the bill of materials is issued you choose which roll and which dye lot the yardage is coming from, and that detail prints on the cut ticket bill of materials alongside the location, so the person pulling fabric is looking for a specific roll on a specific shelf rather than the right color somewhere in the building.
Every bin carries a Used For setting that makes it either finished goods or material inventory. That is what stops a materials rack quietly becoming overflow for finished goods, and it is why materials and styles can share a building without sharing a count.
Brands code locations to match the physical rack. A common pattern is a letter for the materials area, then the shelving unit, then the level, then the bin or divider. Letters, numbers or a mix, with the separator between the parts set per warehouse.
On activation AIMS360 creates a material default bin and puts every material in it. If all you need is how much material is at each location, that is enough and no further setup is required. Named bins are for brands that want to walk to a shelf.
Fabric you bought and shipped to a contractor is still your inventory. Set the contractor up as a reference warehouse and you can see how much of your material is sitting there. No bins needed for a building you do not operate.
Materials are ordered on a vendor purchase order with the type set to Material rather than Style. Same module as your finished goods purchase orders, different type, and it draws from the material master rather than the style master.
Most brands run the time phased material requirements or material commitments reports before raising anything. That is the apparel version of MRP: it reads open production against material on hand and on order and shows where you go negative, and when. Vendor minimums are still yours to think about.
The purchase order carries the vendor, the in-warehouse date you need the goods available for production, the X-factory date, terms, country of origin and a free-form cross reference field, which is where most brands put the cut ticket or customer order that caused the buy.
The ship-to can be a warehouse, your own address or another vendor, so fabric bought for a contractor goes directly to that contractor. With a preferred warehouse on the vendor record, the address fills itself in.
Each line carries the material item, color, vendor item code, unit of measure, width where it applies, and price, all defaulting from the material master. Price can come in as landed or FOB. Prior prices for the same item are one click away.
Receiving happens on the same purchase order, and with the locations feature on you pick the warehouse and the bin as you receive. Where roll tracking is enabled you enter a roll number and that roll's yardage, save, and repeat for the next roll. See vendor purchase orders for how the same module handles finished goods.
There is no validation on overages. Receive 450 yards against a 400 yard line and it goes in. The original ordered quantity does not change, you have simply received more than you bought and the value follows through to what you owe. The receipts log is the control here, so review it.
Recording damages reduces the open quantity on the purchase order and reduces what you owe, but adds nothing to inventory, because damaged fabric was never usable. Order 400, record 100 damaged, and the purchase order shows 300 still open while your material on hand has not moved.
Entered 300 when only 200 arrived? Receive minus 100. It takes the yardage back out of stock and puts the balance back on the purchase order, so both numbers end up right without anyone deleting a record or working around the system.
When the vendor is done shipping and a balance remains that will never arrive, cancel the remainder to close the purchase order. Left open, it keeps telling your requirements reports that material is still coming.
Three places, and they all run through the bill of materials. The bill of materials on a style is where you define what one unit consumes. Issuing it against production is what takes the material out of stock.
The classic case. A cut ticket for domestic cut and sew carries a bill of materials, so the fabric and trim going into that cut are issued against it and come out of material inventory. See WIP and transfer tracking.
When a factory is making finished product for you on a production purchase order but you are supplying the fabric or the trim, the bill of materials is issued against that purchase order, so the material you bought is consumed by the goods it actually went into.
On the style's bill of materials you set each material, color and the quantity one unit consumes. That single number is what turns an order quantity into a yardage requirement, and what turns a material price into a material cost per garment.
Where rolls and lots are tracked, issuing the bill of materials is where you say which roll and which dye lot the yardage came off. That is what makes a shade complaint traceable back to a specific roll months later.
Because materials, production and finished goods sit on one system, the material cost that lands in a garment's cost is the cost you actually paid, not an estimate typed in once. Actualizing the cost on the purchase order against the vendor invoice is the step that keeps that true. See production and PLM and style, color and size.
Once the materials multi-warehouse and location option is enabled, it cannot be disabled. The same is true of lot tracking. This is not a setting to flip on to see what it does.
It also rides on top of bins and locations, which has to be active on every warehouse you want to hold materials in, even the ones where you will never name a single bin. And your default warehouse has to be activated first, because every material already in your system is assumed to be there.
If you receive by roll, only the yardage on that one roll goes in that one entry. Ten rolls means ten receiving entries. That is deliberate, because a roll number without its own yardage attached is just a note, but it is real work and it is worth knowing before you promise your warehouse this will be faster than what they do now.
Which is why the sensible order is a conversation first and activation second. Bring us the fabrics where a shade break or a shortage actually costs you money, and we will scope it to those rather than turning everything on at once.
It is the stock of everything you buy to make a finished good, held and valued separately from the finished goods themselves. In apparel that is fabric and trim: woven and knit yardage, interlining, thread, zippers, buttons, elastic, labels, hangtags and poly bags. In other consumer categories it is the componentry and packaging that goes into the product. AIMS360 tracks materials on their own master file with their own item codes, colors, units of measure and cost, then consumes them against production.
Anything consumed to make a finished good. Materials carry their own item code, color, unit of measure, width where relevant, vendor item code and price, so fabric bought by the yard, hardware bought by the piece, formula bought by weight and cartons bought by the thousand all sit on the same master file in the units you actually buy them in.
Yes. Roll tracking is switched on per material color, so you can track the fabrics that matter and leave basics alone. Once it is on, a roll number is entered at receiving and the roll stays visible in the warehouse view and in production, where you choose which roll and which dye lot the yardage came from when you issue the bill of materials.
Yes. Lot tracking is a separate switch from roll tracking and it is the more general one: a dye lot of fabric, a lot of formula, a batch of hardware. It is what you turn on when a shade or a batch difference has to stay traceable from receiving through to the goods it was consumed by.
One receiving entry per roll. You select the bin location, enter the roll number and the yardage on that roll, save, and repeat. It is slower than receiving a lump sum and that is deliberate, because a roll only means something if its own yardage is attached to it. If the roll number field does not appear it means roll tracking has not been enabled for that material color.
Yes. Materials use the same bins and locations feature as finished goods, and each bin is flagged for either style inventory or material inventory so the two never get mixed up. Brands typically code the location to match the physical rack, for example a letter for the materials area, then the shelving unit, then the level, then the bin. The separator between those parts is set per warehouse.
No, but the bins and locations feature has to be active on each warehouse you want to hold materials in, even if you never create a single named bin there. On activation AIMS360 creates a material default bin and puts everything in it, which is enough if all you need is how much material is at each location. Named bins are for brands that want to walk to a specific shelf.
Yes, and this is the reason a lot of brands turn the feature on. You set the outside location up as a reference warehouse so you can see how much of your material is physically there. Bins are not needed for a location you do not operate. Material appears there once you either transfer it in or receive a materials purchase order against it.
On a vendor purchase order with the type set to Material rather than Style. Before raising it, most brands run the time phased material requirements or material commitments reports to see where they are short. The purchase order carries the vendor, the in-warehouse date, the X-factory date, terms, country of origin and a free-form cross reference so you can tie it back to the cut ticket or customer order that caused it.
Yes. The ship-to on a materials purchase order can be a warehouse, your own company address or another vendor, so fabric bought for a contractor can go directly to that contractor. With multi-warehouse active and a preferred warehouse set on the vendor, the warehouse address fills in automatically.
It goes in. There is no validation stopping an overage, and receiving one does not raise the original ordered quantity, it simply records more received than ordered and reflects the value in what you owe. Because nothing blocks it, the receipts log is the control: review it rather than assuming the purchase order header tells the whole story.
Receive a negative quantity. If 300 yards were entered and only 200 arrived, a receipt of minus 100 reduces what went into stock and puts the balance back on the purchase order, leaving both the inventory and the open quantity correct without anyone deleting history.
No, and this catches people out. Receiving damages reduces the open quantity on the purchase order and reduces what you owe the vendor, but it does not add anything to inventory, because damaged goods were never usable stock. Order 400 yards and record 100 as damaged and the purchase order shows 300 still open while your material on hand is unchanged.
Three places. On a cut ticket, where the bill of materials is issued against the goods being cut and sewn. On a vendor purchase order for finished product, where the materials you supply are issued against what the factory is making for you. And through the bill of materials on the style itself, which is where the consumption per garment and the material cost per unit are defined in the first place.
The bill of materials on a style lists each material, the color, and how much of it one unit consumes, which is what turns an order quantity into a yardage requirement and a material cost. Issue that bill of materials against a cut ticket or a production purchase order and the consumption comes out of material stock, down to the specific roll and dye lot where you track that.
Yes. The material master carries an inventory tab showing quantities for every color across every configured warehouse and location, which you can sort or filter down to a single material, color, warehouse or roll. The warehouse view comes at it from the other direction and lists what is physically in that building.
Two settings, and one decision. Bins and locations has to be active first, then you enable the multi-warehouse and location option for materials, and optionally lot tracking on top of it. The decision is that once either option is enabled it cannot be turned off again, so it is worth walking through with us rather than switching on to see what happens.
Yes. Material price sits on the material master, as landed price by default or FOB where you prefer, and the bill of materials multiplies it by the consumption per unit. Actualizing the cost on the purchase order against the vendor invoice is what keeps the number honest rather than leaving it at whatever was estimated when the material was first set up.
The roll nobody could find, the dye lot that turned up two shades off, the fabric you bought twice because the first order was sitting at a contractor. Show us one of those and we will walk through what it looks like when the material, the purchase order, the bill of materials and the cut ticket are all on one record.
