Subcontracting

When a step in your manufacturing process is performed by an external partner — plating, heat treatment, painting, machining, full assembly — Beelocity calls that subcontracting. The same Work Order document follows the production from start to finish, but one or more operations happen at the supplier’s site instead of yours. Components ship out, finished or processed parts come back, and a regular purchase order pays the supplier for their work.

The advantage of using a subcontract Work Order rather than a plain purchase order is traceability: the components you sent, the supplier’s processing time, the parts that came back, and the cost of the operation all stay tied to one production document.

How the pieces fit together

Subcontracting reuses three things you already use:

• A subcontract work center — A work center with the Is Subcontract flag turned on and a Default Partner selected. Routings and BOMs treat it like any other work center, but the Work Order release engine recognizes it and forks into the subcontract flow.
• A subcontract operation — A routing operation at a subcontract work center. Carries the supplier’s lead time (replacing setup/run time) and the per-unit price the supplier charges (e.g. 30 DA per piece for plating).
• A subcontract Work Order — A WO whose routing contains one or more subcontract operations. The header is flagged Is Subcontract and points at a partner. Releasing it triggers the subcontract automation.

That’s it. There is no separate “subcontract module” — every subcontract WO is a normal WO that happens to have the right flags set.

Setting up a subcontract relationship

Before you can release a subcontract WO, you need:

1. A partner record for the supplier. Create it under Business Partners > Partners with Supplier turned on. Capture their tax ID, address, and currency (most Algerian subcontractors invoice in DZD).
2. A subcontract work center for the operation. Under Manufacturing > Work Centers, click Create, give it a code like WC-PLATING-EXT and a name like “External plating service”, turn on Is Subcontract, and select the partner as the Default Partner. Cost rate per hour is optional — for subcontract work the per-unit fee on the routing operation is what matters.
3. A routing operation pointing at that work center. On any routing that needs the external step, add an operation, pick the subcontract work center, set Is Subcontract on the operation, fill in the Supplier Lead Time (e.g. 5 days) and the Subcontract Unit Cost (e.g. 30 DA).
4. (Optional) A service product line item. Most teams create one once: a non-stocked product like “Plating service — per piece” used as the line item on the subcontract purchase order. The procurement team can add it to the auto-generated PO at draft review time.

Once these exist, any BOM that references the routing will produce subcontract Work Orders.

Creating a subcontract Work Order

The flow is the same as any Work Order:

1. Go to Manufacturing > Work Orders > Create.
2. Pick the parent product, target quantity, and due date.
3. Pick the BOM and routing — the system shows the subcontract operations in the routing.
4. Turn on Is Subcontract and select the Subcontract Partner.
5. Save. The WO is in Draft.

When you’re ready, walk it to Approved and click Release.

What release does for a subcontract WO

When you release a subcontract WO, Beelocity does everything a normal WO release does (BOM explosion, routing copy, reservations, cost snapshot), plus these subcontract-specific steps:

• Generates a shipment manifest. For each material line on a subcontract operation, a manifest row is created in Pending status. The manifest is what you see in the Subcontract drawer on the WO detail page.

• Creates a draft purchase order. What gets pre-filled vs. what the procurement team has to add:

  Field	Pre-filled by release
  PO number	SUB-PO-<first 8 chars of WO id> — uniquely traceable back to the work order.
  Status	Draft — never auto-submitted.
  Partner	The WO header’s subcontract partner, falling back to the first subcontract operation’s partner.
  Order date	Today (the release date).
  Warehouse	The WO’s source warehouse (where the components will ship from).
  Currency	The WO’s currency.
  PO lines	Empty. The procurement team adds the service-product line (the supplier’s fee) at review time with the correct quantity and unit price.
  Delivery date, terms, notes	Not pre-filled; procurement fills them in.

  The PO ID is stamped on the WO header (subcontract_po_id) so the Subcontract drawer can deep-link to it. Once procurement has added the line and submitted the PO through the normal approval flow, it pays the supplier on receipt.

After release you’ll see the Subcontract action button on the WO. Click it to open the drawer with:

• The subcontract partner.
• A link to the subcontract PO (opens the PO detail page).
• The shipment manifest, with one row per material line on a subcontract operation.

Shipping components to the supplier

Shipping components is just a regular component issue, but with the destination warehouse set to a supplier-owned warehouse:

1. Open the WO and go to the Material Lines tab.
2. Click Post Issue on the relevant line.
3. Pick the source warehouse (where the components are now) and a quantity.
4. Set the destination warehouse to the supplier-owned warehouse. (If you don’t have one, ask your warehouse admin to create one with Warehouse Type = Supplier-owned and the partner attached.)
5. Submit.

Two things happen:

• A WORK_ORDER_ISSUE movement decrements stock at your warehouse and increments it at the supplier-owned warehouse.
• The matching shipment manifest row’s Shipped quantity goes up and the status advances to Shipped.

The components remain owned by your organization — the journal sees a transfer between warehouses, not a sale.

You can ship in batches if the supplier doesn’t need everything at once.

Receiving the processed parts back

When the supplier finishes the work and ships the parts back, your procurement team receives the subcontract PO the same way they receive any other PO: from Procurement > Goods Receipts, create a GR for the subcontract PO, post the received quantities, and Complete it.

Completing the goods receipt against the subcontract PO triggers two automatic side-effects on the linked WO:

• The matching subcontract operation auto-advances to Completed with the received quantity recorded as completed_quantity.
• A WORK_ORDER_RECEIPT movement is posted for the parent product into the WO’s destination warehouse.
• The shipment manifest is marked Reconciled. Any shortfall (shipped − returned − consumed at supplier) is treated as scrap on the manifest line.

If the routing has more operations after the subcontract one, the WO is now ready for those in-house steps. If the subcontract operation was the final step, you can move the WO to Completed and Closed as usual.

Three common patterns

All three follow the same WO lifecycle — only the routing structure differs.

Stock at the supplier

Components physically at the supplier are still owned by your organization. They show up:

• In the supplier-owned warehouse with a normal stock balance.
• On the WO’s Subcontract drawer under the At supplier column for the matching manifest row.

They are not counted in standard inventory views (the on-hand totals filter them out) because they are not at your physical site and are not available for sale. A dedicated “stock at supplier” view, if your organization needs one, can be built on top of the supplier-owned warehouses.

Common pitfalls

• Forgetting to add the service-product PO line. The auto-generated PO is header-only. Until the procurement team adds the service-product line and submits it, you can’t goods-receipt against it. Add this to your team’s daily PO review checklist.
• Setting the destination warehouse wrong on the issue. If you ship components to your own staging warehouse instead of the supplier-owned one, the manifest doesn’t update — the system has no way to know those parts left for the supplier. Always pick the supplier-owned warehouse as the destination.
• Not creating a supplier-owned warehouse. Some teams skip this and ship to the supplier from a “transit” warehouse. That works for the stock movement but leaves the manifest Pending, which clouds the “stock at supplier” view. Ask your warehouse admin to create one supplier-owned warehouse per active subcontract partner.
• Closing the WO before the GR completes. The subcontract operation auto-completes only when the GR completes. If you mark the WO Completed early, the operation will sit in Pending Start and the variance computation will be off.
• Mixing subcontract and non-subcontract lines on the same PO. The auto-generated subcontract PO is meant to be a service-only document. If the supplier also sells you raw materials, keep that on a separate “purchases” PO; the subcontract reconciliation engine looks at PO lines back-linked to the WO, and a mixed PO complicates the picture.