Items, kits & dismantlingالأصناف والأطقم والتفكيك

Most businesses buy a thing and sell that same thing. Some do not:

• A breaker buys a wrecked car front and sells the headlight, the fenders, the radiator.
• A perfumer buys litres of liquid and blends bottles.
• A snack bar buys bread, meat and vegetables and sells sandwiches.
• A supermarket sells a shampoo-and-lotion pack for one price.

Libra has two different answers for these, and picking the wrong one is the mistake this guide exists to prevent.

Production: Something is really made

Production: consumes raw material and creates a product. The product gets its own cost, its own stock quantity, and exists in the warehouse as a thing you can count. Ask Libra how many you have and it gives you a number.

That runs in both directions:

• Forward: many materials in, one product out. Blending a perfume. Making a salad in bulk.
• In reverse: one material in, many products out. This is dismantling, and it is how a breaker turns a car front into saleable parts.

The reverse direction is the interesting one, because the parts never existed as purchases. You bought a car front; you never bought an alternator. Production is what creates the alternator as stock, and gives it a share of the front's cost. See How to dismantle a whole into parts.

Accumulation: A bundle that is never assembled

Accumulation: is a bundle several items sold together under one name and one price. A shampoo-and-lotion pack. A meal deal.

The bundle is a virtual item. It has:

• No stock quantity: ask how many bundles you have and the answer is always zero
• No cost of its own

When you sell one, its components appear on the invoice and they come out of stock. The bundle is a convenience at the till: one line instead of three, at a price you set independently of what the parts add up to.

Choosing between them

The question is not what you sell. It is Whether anything is physically made before the sale.

The last two are the pair worth studying. The same sandwich is production if you make it in advance and stock it, and accumulation if it is put together as the customer orders. The physical business decides, not the menu.

A business can use both. Answer it per product, not per company.

Turning them on

Accumulation is Switched off by default. It appears in Inventory parameters → Items, as Enter accumulated items; the item file then gains an Accumulation tab where the bundle's components are listed.

Production is a licence tier, not a setting. Libra ships in levels, and which you have decides what production can do:

• Basic Production: one product from many raw materials. Enough for a perfumer or a kitchen.
• Advanced Production: many products from many raw materials, with a Percentage column that splits the source's cost across the outputs. Dismantling needs this level, because dismantling is by definition many products from one material.

If the percentage column is not there, the tier is the reason. Ask Customer Support, it is not a switch inside the application, and no setting you can reach will change it.

The item model underneath

All of this rests on the item file. In brief:

• Families: group items and hand them their accounts Item families
• VAT: is one of three rates, not a yes/no The item definition screen
• Service: items skip the stock check, so labour and fitting never block an invoice
• Units: put litres, millilitres and gallons on one item How to set up units
• Properties: like brand and model year make items reportable Item properties & categories

Next steps

• Production formulas, invoices & orders the three documents
• How to dismantle a whole into parts
• How to create an item