Build your first BOM

This walkthrough builds a single 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 → end-to-end: a finished-good variant, two raw-material components, and a test order to confirm the inventory math works. It takes about ten minutes on a development or low-traffic store.

Before you start: the app is installed and you’ve completed the initial setup wizard (at minimum, the default location is set).

1. Pick the finished-good variant.

   Open Finished Goods and create a new BOM. The picker lists your Shopify catalog — choose the product variant customers actually buy (the “finished good”). Give the BOM a recognizable name.

2. Add the component materials.

   Add two components to the recipe, each with a quantity per finished unit:

   • A Shopify-linked material — any variant in your catalog you treat as a component. Adding it registers it as a raw materialRaw materialThe atomic component of a BOM or sub-assembly. Two flavors: a Shopify-linked variant (inventory tracked in Shopify) or a virtual material (DO-side inventory only). Both kinds appear in the same component picker and are consumed identically when a BOM fires — except virtual materials never trigger a Shopify call. Read more → automatically.
   • A virtual material — something that isn’t a Shopify product (packaging, a label, a consumable). Create it inline with a name, a unit of measurement, and an opening stock quantity; Assemblified tracks its stock itself.

   The full set of options per component (waste percentage, locations, notes) is covered in Creating a BOM.

3. Activate the BOM.

   A new BOM starts inactive — orders for the variant are ignored until you flip it. When your components and quantities look right, set the status to Active. (What each toggle does is in the Settings reference; for your first BOM the status alone is enough.)

4. Place a test order.

   In your store (a draft order marked as paid works too), order 1 unit of the finished-good variant. Within moments the order webhook arrives and the BOM executes: each component’s inventory drops by its recipe quantity — the Shopify-linked material in Shopify, the virtual material in Assemblified.

5. Verify in the execution log.

   Open the BOM’s execution log. You should see one entry for your order listing exactly what was consumed, where, and why. This log is your ground truth whenever a number looks off — reading it is a skill worth building early (see Execution model).

Cancel the test order — and watch it reverse

Cancel the test order and check the log again: with the default settings, the consumed components come straight back. The rules behind that reversal (and the Keep Assembled on Return option) are in Refunds & cancellations.

Where to next

• BOM execution end-to-end — the same journey again, but tracing every internal step, including pre-assembled drawdown and a refund.
• Dynamic adjustment — let Assemblified keep the finished good’s sellable quantity in sync with what you can actually build.
• Migrate your catalog to BOMs — take what you just did to 50 or 5,000 SKUs.