Part Class versus Product Group

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1
Jared,
Part Class is for inventory transactions. You need a part class for every part you want to stock in inventory. It also helps sort Purchasing and AP transactions so could use Part Classes for other items as well such requisitions, utilities, MRO, or other expenses.

You need a Product Group for any part that you are going to manufacture using a job. Product Group is not mutually exclusive with Part Class. For example, if you have a manufactured part that will go into inventory, it will need a Product Group and a Part Class.

Product Groups are typically established by product line set by marketing/sales. Product Group is a way to collect similar type products so you can track WIP, COS, and variances by product line.

Resources are typically similar groups of machines and in some cases operators if you constrain your scheduling to that level. So you could group your resources based on the products they produce but again, that is typically done with Product Group.

We don't use the job auto completion feature I'm not sure how that works. Hopefully someone else will be able to fill in the details for that.

Regards,
Chris
2
Can someone give me an overview of what the differences are between the two at the part level?

From the available G/L account settings it seems that Part Class is more on the purchasing/expense side and Product Group is on selling side.

So say I wanted to track sales by production line, and we have 1 thru 7. These are already defined as Resources, but to track COS per line, would I also have to create a separate Product Group per line (i.e. Line 1 - Finished Goods) or is it still possilbe to track using a catchall Finished Goods product group without doing a lot of custom report writing?

We are also looking to implement Job Autocompletion once shipped, and from my understanding, this must be done through Product Groups. Just trying to understand other implications and define only the groups I really want.
Thanks,
Jared