Glossary

This glossary defines the terms that appear throughout the Assemblified docs. You can also hover over any underlined term in the docs to see a quick definition without leaving the page.

All terms

Actual Cost

Also known as: actual cost

What the work order really cost, derived from materials that have been consumed by completed build runs. Stamped into the audit ledger at the moment of consumption, so it doesn’t drift if prices change later.

Adjusted cost

Also known as: adjusted cost, adjusted

A work order’s current cost target after your edits — quantities, unit costs, substitutions and hand-entered labour. It updates live as you edit, and the summary prints the difference from the frozen figure as “Δ vs planned”. What the build runs consumed is Actual cost.

Alertified

Also known as: Alertified

A Shopify-native inventory alerting app. Alertified watches stock levels and fires multi-channel notifications (email always, plus optional webhook, SMS, or Slack) whenever a threshold is crossed. When connected to Assemblified, alerts cover not only Shopify variants but also virtual materials, BOM pre-assembled pools, and sub-assembly pre-assembled pools — entities Shopify itself has no visibility into.

Allow negative inventory

Also known as: negative inventory, allow negative, clamp to zero

A shop-level setting that decides whether Assemblified-managed quantities — virtual raw materials, pre-assembled stock, dynamic capacity — can stay below zero, or get clamped at 0.

Assemble flow

Also known as: assemble flows, flow, flows

A saved list of things to build together — finished goods, assembly bills and raw materials with a quantity each. A flow no longer runs a build; open its preview to see what it adds up to, then turn it into a work order.

Assemble task

Also known as: assemble tasks, task, tasks

An item on your production to-do list: a title, a status, a priority, an optional due date and an optional link to an order or a flow. Tasks are notes for people — nothing about one touches inventory.

Assembly bill

Also known as: assembly bills

The recipe for an intermediate component you build and then use inside other bills — a lid, a wick assembly, a pre-wired harness. It keeps its own pre-assembled stock and can be a work order item in its own right.

Auto-generate material list

Also known as: auto-generate-material-list, autoGenerateMaterialList

A per-bill toggle (Enhanced plan) that creates an assemble flow plus a linked assemble task whenever the bill executes on an order, both named after that order. Operators get a checklist they can pick from or download — useful for shop floors that pull a printed material list per order before building.

Baseline cost

Also known as: baseline

The older name for what the app now calls Planned cost: a work order’s original target, frozen from its bills. “Baseline” no longer appears in the app; the figure that moves with your edits is Adjusted cost. Read an old “baseline cost” as Planned.

Bill of Materials

Also known as: BOM, BOMs, bill of materials

A 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.

Bill version

Also known as: bill versions, version, versions, bill snapshot

A frozen copy of a bill’s recipe — its settings, components, sub-assemblies, cost factors and per-location rules — kept so you can see what the bill looked like on a given day and put it back.

BOM execution

Also known as: bom-execution, BOM execution

Everything Assemblified does when a Shopify order containing a bill-bound variant is created, edited, cancelled or refunded: draw down pre-assembled stock, deduct or restore components, push the changes to Shopify, and cascade dynamic adjustment. It runs in the background, writing one execution log row.

BOM execution log

Also known as: bom-execution-log, execution log

The record of one run Assemblified made — usually an order, sometimes a stock adjustment or a flow. It carries the run’s outcome (Succeeded, Pending, Failed or Skipped), what triggered it, which bills it processed and skipped, the exact component changes it calculated and whether those reached Shopify, any pre-assembled stock it used, and any errors. Every run is listed on the Logs page and opens to its own detail page.

Bottleneck resource

Also known as: bottleneck, bottleneck-resource, bottleneck component

The component with the lowest available-to-required ratio in a BOM. Determines the BOM’s displayed Shopify quantity under dynamic adjustment: the BOM can build at most as many units as the bottleneck allows. Non-essential materials are excluded from this calculation.

Build Run

Also known as: build runs, BR

One cycle of assembly inside a work order: pick the materials, build the units, then complete (or cancel, or reverse). A work order can have many build runs over its life — each one moves a defined quantity of inventory and writes a row to the audit ledger.

Cost factor

Also known as: cost factors, additional costs, additional cost

A non-material per-unit cost attached to a bill — labour, electricity, machine time, an overhead allocation. Each factor is one entry in a shared catalogue, with a name, a kind (labour or overhead), a unit and a rate, and is reusable across every bill.

Decouple

Also known as: decoupled, decoupling

Detaching one work-order item’s material list from that item’s planned quantity, so the list stops resizing when the quantity changes. You decouple by answering “Keep current materials” at the re-spread prompt; a decoupled item wears a badge until you reset it.

Default location

Also known as: default location, fallback location

The Shopify location Assemblified falls back to when an order or fulfillment webhook doesn’t carry a more specific location. Inventory adjustments, dynamic recalculations, and per-location records all use this as their anchor.

Disposition

Also known as: dispositions, QC disposition

A QC reviewer’s verdict on a built unit: how many were approved, how many were failed, and an optional reason and category for the failure. One row per item per QC review, written when the operator finalises the review.

Dynamic adjustment

Also known as: dynamic-adjustment

A per-bill toggle that recalculates the bill’s Shopify-displayed quantity after every order: the bottleneck-resource count plus pre-assembled stock. One of three mutually exclusive toggles — switching it on switches only-sell-pre-assembled and maintain inventory level off.

Finished good

Also known as: finished goods

The sellable product a bill of materials builds — the Shopify variant a customer orders, together with the recipe behind it. “Finished goods” is also the name of the page that lists them.

Fulfillment Order

Also known as: fulfillment orders, fulfillment-orders

Shopify’s unit of fulfillment work: when a customer order is routed, Shopify splits it into one fulfillment order per fulfilling location, each carrying the line items that location will ship. Assemblified listens to the fulfillment-order lifecycle events (routing complete, hold, release, move, cancel) to drive per-location features like order reservations.

Keep Assembled on Return

Also known as: keep assembled, keep-assembled, onReturnKeepAssembled

A toggle on BOMs and sub-assemblies that controls cancel/refund behavior. When on, returned units restore the entity’s pre-assembled shelf instead of breaking back into raws. Cascades through nested sub-assemblies — traversal halts at any node with the flag set.

Labour cost

Also known as: labor cost, labour, labor

The cost of human work, modelled as a cost factor of kind “labour” — a rate per unit of time you attach to a bill with a quantity per output unit. A work order prefills labour from its bills; an operator can override it.

Location slot

Also known as: slot, slots, location slot

One of the main store’s inventory locations, used as the reference point a partner store’s location is mapped onto. Mapping is one-to-one in both directions, and stock changes route between partners through the slot they share. An unmapped location never syncs.

Logistified

Also known as: Logistified

A Shopify-native warehouse and demand-planning app. Logistified forecasts what you’ll need to restock, tracks stock across locations, and manages purchase orders. When connected to Assemblified, every BOM execution becomes a demand signal tied to the components consumed — not just the finished-good variant — so forecasts reflect real component usage.

Main store

Also known as: main store, main-store

In a multi-store group, the one store that holds the bills of materials, defines the inventory location slots, and wins every disagreement about stock. Every other store in the group is a partner store.

Maintain inventory level

Also known as: maintain-same-inventory-level, maintainSameInventoryLevel, stable inventory display

A per-bill toggle that keeps the Shopify-displayed quantity flat after orders: Assemblified pushes a positive delta back to the bill’s variant equal to what was consumed. Components decrement underneath. One of three mutually exclusive toggles: switching it on switches dynamic adjustment and only-sell-pre-assembled off.

Metafield

Also known as: metafields, material metafield, custom field

A custom key-value field attached to a material — examples include lot numbers, expiry dates, supplier IDs, and inspection flags. Metafields live as definitions in Settings, hold per-material defaults on raw materials, and capture per-production-batch values inside work orders. They optionally link to a Shopify metafield so values can be pulled in from Shopify.

Multi-location mode

Also known as: multi-location, location-sensitive adjustments

A shop-level setting that lets Assemblified prefer the location carried by the incoming order or fulfillment event. When off, every adjustment targets the default location regardless of payload.

Multi-store group

Also known as: group, multi-store group, store group

One main store plus its partner stores, kept in step so a sale at any of them adjusts stock at all the others. A store belongs to at most one group.

Non-essential material

Also known as: non-essential-material, isNonEssentialMaterial

A flag on a raw material that excludes it from the dynamic-adjustment bottleneck calculation. The material is still consumed normally during BOM execution — it just doesn’t gate the Shopify-displayed quantity. Use for plentiful components (labels, generic packaging) you don’t want to be the bottleneck.

Only sell pre-assembled

Also known as: only-sell-preassembled, onlySellPreassembled

A per-bill toggle (Enhanced plan) that caps Shopify-displayed availability at the pre-assembled stock count. Buildable capacity is hidden — customers can only buy what’s on the shelf. One of three mutually exclusive toggles: switching it on switches dynamic adjustment and maintain inventory level off.

Partner store

Also known as: partner store, partner-store, partner, partners

Any store in a multi-store group other than the main store. A partner sells, restocks and fulfils normally, but does not hold the group’s shared recipes and cannot locally restock, adjust pre-assembled stock, flow-run or work-order a product the group manages.

Pick

Also known as: picking, pick phase

The first half of a build run: reserving the materials needed off the shelf and committing them to that run. After picking, the materials are no longer “available” inventory — they’re earmarked for the build until you complete or cancel it.

Planned cost

Also known as: planned cost

A work order’s original cost target, frozen from its bills when the work order was created. Your edits — quantities, unit-cost overrides, substitutions, splits — do not move it; they land on Adjusted cost instead. Actual cost is what the build runs consumed.

Planned quantity

Also known as: effective quantity, effective qty, planned qty

How much of a material a work order intends to consume: the bill’s quantity, editable per material in the Planned column but never below what has already been consumed. Pick lists and Adjusted cost read it. “Effective quantity” is the older name.

Pre-Assembled Inventory

Also known as: preassembled, preassembled inventory, pre-assembled

Stock of finished goods and assembly bills already built and on the shelf, counted per location. A work order draws assembly bills from the shelf first, building fresh only if it runs short; an order consumes a finished good’s shelf before its components.

Raw material

Also known as: raw materials, raw-material

The 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.

Reconcile pre-assembled stock

Also known as: reconcile, reconcile inventory, reconcile pre-assembled, fix inventory

The action that settles a disagreement between the pre-assembled stock Assemblified holds for a bill at a location and the quantity Shopify is selling there. It previews every location that differs and asks which number wins — Shopify’s, or the pre-assembled shelf’s.

Residual Rounding

Also known as: residual rounding, residual inventory

How Assemblified handles fractional pick quantities when pushing to Shopify, which only supports whole-number inventory. The integer part is sent to Shopify; the leftover decimal is kept in a local “residual” balance and consumed by future picks before another whole unit gets pushed.

Retrospective demand sync

Also known as: retrospective sync, historical sync, demand backfill

A one-shot push of historical BOM executions to Logistified, used to seed demand forecasting with prior activity. You pick a date range (or “all orders”) and Assemblified queues one synthetic order per BOM per past order so Logistified can see what was consumed before the integration was connected. The dialog records every sync so you can undo it later by deleting the corresponding period.

Rework

Also known as: rework run, reworked

Re-running failed units through a fresh build cycle to fix them. Rework runs don’t consume new materials — the materials were already consumed in the original run. Once a rework run passes QC, the units land in finished stock.

Safety-Stock Reservation

Also known as: safety stock reservation, safety-stock, reservation, buildable buffer

A per-location hold against a BOM or sub-assembly: “at this location, keep enough raw materials to build N units.” Assemblified deducts the resolved components from available stock and tracks them as a single editable row. Release in one of two ways: restore the raw materials to available, or convert them into pre-assembled finished stock.

Saved view

Also known as: saved views, view, views

A named setup for a list page — its columns, filters, search, sort and page size, shown in the view switcher. Every list ships with built-in views you can start from; anything you save yourself sits beside them, shared with the whole shop.

Scrap

Also known as: scrapped, scrapping

Marking a failed unit as a terminal loss — it won’t be reworked. Scrapping a unit from a non-deferred run also reverses the produced output, so the unit count in finished stock drops by one.

Settle

Also known as: settle, settle run, settling

A multi-store run that brings every store to one chosen quantity per product per location — the main store’s value, the lowest across the group, or the targets from a worksheet you edit. It is how you choose the numbers, as opposed to the hourly check, which always chooses the main store’s.

Spread

Also known as: material spread, spread algorithm, re-spread

The step that walks each work-order item’s bill, assembly bills included, and turns the result into the flat list of materials the work order needs. It runs immediately when you add an item and cannot be skipped; a later quantity edit offers to re-spread.

Structure

Also known as: structure page, structure canvas, structure graph

The canvas that draws bills as a graph — finished goods, assembly bills and raw materials as nodes, what contains what as edges — and lets you edit them in place. It can hold more than one bill at once, showing where two products share a component.

Sub-assembly

Also known as: sub-assemblies, subassembly, subassemblies, SA

A 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.

Virtual Material

Also known as: virtual materials, VMAT, virtual

A material tracked entirely inside Assemblified — not a Shopify variant. Useful for shop-floor consumables (glue, packaging, labour units) where you need quantity tracking but don’t want a Shopify product on your storefront.

Work Order

Also known as: work orders, WO, WOs

A planned production run: pick materials, build the items, do QC, and complete — all tracked together. Use work orders when you’re building stock ahead of demand or running a multi-day project.