Parts, labor & material

Three sections of the work order record carry the physical and financial substance of the job: Lines (the charges), Labor (technician time), and Units · assembly (the hardware). The Material Readiness screen watches part demand across every open WO.

The Lines grid

Lines are the itemized charges on the job — what you will bill (or absorb). Each line has a type and a billing treatment:

Line type	Use it for
`LABOR`	A labor charge priced as a line (as opposed to logged hours — see below).
`MATERIAL`	Parts and consumables issued to the job. Material lines are what Material Readiness tracks.
`OUTSIDE_PROCESSING`	Work sent to an outside vendor — plating, NDT, machining.
`MISC_CHARGE`	Everything else: fees, freight, handling.

Billing	Effect
Billable	Charged to the customer. Counts toward the billable subtotal.
Non-billable	Internal cost — warranty, rework, goodwill. Never invoiced.
No charge	Shown to the customer at zero — “we did it, you don’t pay.”

Adding and editing lines

In the Lines section header, fill the inline form: line type, description, quantity (Qty), unit cost (Cost), and unit price (Price), then click Add.
To edit, click into any cell of the grid — type, description, billing, quantity, unit cost, unit price — adjust, and click Save changes. All edits save together in one batch.
The × at the end of a row deletes a line. APEX refuses to delete a line that already drove inventory, labor, or cost history.
The Billable subtotal under the grid updates live as you type — it only counts lines set to Billable.

An edited line needs a description and a quantity above zero to save. If none of your edited rows qualify, nothing saves and a notice tells you what is missing; in a mixed batch, the complete rows save and the incomplete ones are dropped without saving.

Once the work order ships, the grid becomes read-only.

Logging labor

Technician time is logged in the Labor section:

Enter the technician’s name, the hours, and the hourly rate in the inline form.
Click Log.
The entry appears in the table below — technician, type, hours, rate, and the date logged — and the work order’s cost and billable totals recompute immediately.

Labor is entered as elapsed hours per entry — log it as the work happens or at the end of the shift, at whatever granularity your shop uses.

Units · assembly

The Units · assembly table is the hardware side of the job: every physical unit received against the work order, with its role, part number, serial, inbound condition, and disposition.

Role	Meaning
`END_ITEM`	The unit that ships out — the job’s deliverable.
`PIECE_PART`	A component that will be installed into the end item.
`CONSUMABLE`	Material consumed by the job.
`EXCHANGE_CORE`	The core received on an exchange deal.
`HARVESTED`	A part recovered from a teardown.

The Disposition column tracks where each unit ended up: OPEN (still in play), installed into the parent, returned as-is, harvested, scrapped, shipped out, or exchanged out.

Installing a piece part into the end item

When a work order has an end item, every open piece part shows an Install button:

Click Install on the piece part’s row.
APEX records the installation in the end item’s as-built configuration, marks the part’s stock unit as installed, and consolidates the part’s cost into the work order.

The as-built configuration is frozen onto the shipment when the job ships — that is what gives the delivered assembly its trace.

Material Readiness

Work Orders → Material Readiness (also the second tab on the list screen) is the stores controller’s worklist: for every open work order, its material demand against what is on the shelf.

Screen: The Material Readiness screen. A KPI strip reads OPEN WORK ORDERS, MATERIAL READY, TO RESERVE, and SHORT. Below, a table of work orders with customer, priority, stage, and a Material status pill — “Ready”, “2 to reserve”, or “1 short” — plus a Reserve button per row and a Reserve available stock button at the top. A clicked row expands into a per-part breakdown with Need / On hand / Res. / To res. / Short columns, shortages in red.

Each expanded part row shows:

Column	Meaning
Need	Quantity the WO’s material lines call for.
On hand	What inventory holds right now.
Res.	Already reserved to this WO.
To res.	Coverable from free stock the moment you click Reserve.
Short	The true gap after using all free stock — this must be purchased.

Reserve one, reserve all

Reserve (on a row) books available stock to that one work order.
Reserve available stock (top right) sweeps every open work order in priority order — AOG, then EXPEDITE, then ROUTINE, oldest first within each.

Reserving creates stock reservations that Material Readiness and Inventory both respect. A confirmation toast summarizes lines reserved, work orders covered, and holds placed.

A work order still short after reserving is automatically placed on an AWAITING PARTS hold, annotated “Auto-placed by material readiness” with the number of parts short. It appears on the Hold Board immediately — and APEX won’t stack a second one if the WO is already held for parts.

Stock levels, conditions, and locations live in the Inventory module.

Roles: Lines, labor, installs, and reserving are open to staff with Work Orders access. Stores typically owns Material Readiness; technicians own their own labor entries.