Raw Materials

A raw materialRaw materialThe atomic component of a bill of materials or an assembly bill. Two flavours: a Shopify-linked variant, whose inventory Shopify tracks, or a virtual material, which Assemblified tracks on its own and Shopify never sees. Both sit in the same component picker and are consumed the same way. Read more → is the component a finished good’s bill of materialsBill of MaterialsA bill of materials tells Assemblified how to build one unit of a finished good. When a customer orders the finished-good variant, Assemblified deducts the right component quantities from inventory automatically. Read more → or an assembly bill (also called a sub-assemblySub-assemblyA reusable assembly block that composes into bigger bills: define it once, include it in any bill of materials, and Assemblified expands it into its own components at execution time. The app now calls it an assembly bill. Read more → ) consumes. There are two kinds:

• Shopify-linked materials. A real Shopify variant. Shopify owns the stock; Assemblified writes its consumption back through the Shopify Admin API.
• Virtual materials. Assemblified owns the stock. No Shopify product, no Shopify variant. For consumables and components you never sell on their own.

Both kinds appear in the same component picker on the Finished goods and Assembly bills detail pages, and both are consumed identically when an order executes — except a virtual material never causes a Shopify call. Both can carry a unit cost and an optional physical weight that rolls up into a calculated weight on finished goods and assembly bills.

On this page

• When to use Shopify-linked vs virtual
• Where stock lives
• What the badges on a material mean
• Capability snapshot — every page in this section

When to use which

Use case	Use
You sell the material standalone in Shopify.	Shopify-linked. The same SKU does double duty as a standalone product and a component.
You don’t sell the material; it’s pure component.	Virtual. Skip the Shopify product setup; Assemblified tracks the stock.
Multi-location with Shopify-managed stock.	Shopify-linked — Shopify’s own location model does the work.
Tiny per-assembly quantities (one screw per unit).	Virtual. Setting up a Shopify product just to track stock is overkill.
Material from a non-Shopify supplier.	Virtual. There is no Shopify variant to link to.
Cost accounting — the material has a unit cost you track.	Either. Both carry a unit cost.

You can mix freely in a single bill. A candle might pull its wax from Shopify (it is also sold standalone) and its wick from a virtual material (a low-value consumable that is not in the catalogue).

Where stock lives

• Shopify-linked materials. Shopify holds the stock and Assemblified reads it live, per location. Consumption is written back through the Shopify Admin API.
• Virtual materials. Assemblified holds the stock itself, per location. No Shopify call.

Both are always per-location. When you change a Shopify-linked material’s stock in Shopify itself, Assemblified picks the new figure up on Shopify’s product update — and only recalculates the finished goods that use the material when Settings → General → Auto-update on inventory change is switched on.

See Inventory tracking for the full picture, including what Reconcile inventory compares.

What the badges mean

A material’s row and its page carry a few badges that change how it behaves:

• Virtual material or Shopify managed — which of the two kinds it is.
• Bill of materials — this material is also something you build, so it has a bill of its own. That is the bill-as-component pattern: one finished good used as a component of another.
• Essential or Non-essential — whether a shortage of this material caps how many of its parents Assemblified believes it can build. See Non-essential materials.
• Binding refused — Shopify is permanently rejecting stock updates for this material. See Binding refused.

What you can do

The materials list Searching, filtering, saved views, the columns you choose, and everything you can do to one material or a whole selection.

The material page One material in full — its details, its stock at each location, what consumes it, where it sits in your structure, its metafields and its settings.

Restocking and stock counts The grid for changing stock across many materials and locations at once, from a bill or from a filled template.

Shopify-linked materials Registering a Shopify variant as a material, and how stock moves between the two systems.

Virtual materials Creating and managing materials that aren't in Shopify, and setting their opening stock.

Importing materials Upload a CSV or XLSX, map its columns, review what would change, then create or update in one go.

Material groups Your own labels for organising materials, and the filter that uses them.

Units of Measurement The unit field on a material. Built-in units plus how to define your own (boxes, rolls, hours, …).

Unit conversions Conversion factors between units, and how changing a referenced material's unit converts recipe quantities and cost instead of relabelling them.

Weight The optional physical weight on a material — mirrored from Shopify or editable for virtual — that rolls up into a calculated weight.

Inventory tracking Multi-location stock, the kinds of stock Assemblified keeps, and how an external Shopify change is picked up.

Non-essential materials The flag that stops a material capping how many of its parents you can build — without removing it from the recipe.

Binding refused What the red banner means when Shopify stops accepting stock updates for a material, and the two ways to fix it.

Where to next

• Shopify-linked materials — start here for typical materials.
• Virtual materials — for consumables and non-Shopify items.
• BOM Composition — how materials fit into a bill of materials.