Items
The master record for everything you make, buy, or stock — parts, materials, tools, and more.
An item is the master record for anything Carbon tracks: a finished part, a raw material, a tool, a consumable. Orders, methods, jobs, and inventory all point back to it. Its human-facing part number is the readable id — the underlying id is an internal key you rarely see.
Why it matters
An item's type, how it's replenished, and how it's tracked decide how it behaves everywhere downstream — whether it can be made or only bought, whether stock is counted, whether each unit needs a serial. Get the item right and the rest of the system follows.
Fields
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Part number | text | The readable id; with a non-zero revision it reads as id.rev. |
| Type | enum | Part, Material, Tool, Consumable, Service, or Fixture. |
| Replenishment system | enum | How it's sourced overall — Buy, Make, or Buy and Make. |
| Default method type | enum | The default per-line fulfillment — Purchase to Order, Pull from Inventory, or Make to Order. |
| Tracking type | enum | Inventory, Non-Inventory, Serial, or Batch. |
| Unit of measure | reference | The stock unit. |
| Active | boolean | Whether it can be used on new documents. |
Replenishment system is the high-level strategy; default method type is the line-level default it allows. A Buy item defaults to purchasing; a Make item can be built to order or pulled from stock. The two are related but distinct.
Tracking
The tracking type sets how units are counted. Inventory items are quantity-tracked stock; Non-Inventory items aren't counted; Serial items carry one record per unit; Batch items are lot-tracked with their own batch numbers and dates.
Revisions
Each revision of a part is its own item record, sharing the same part number but a different revision. A design change creates a new revision rather than rewriting the old one, so jobs built against an earlier revision keep their history.
An item's costing method — Standard, Average, FIFO, or LIFO — lives on its cost record, not the item itself, and decides how consumption is valued.