Use the parts catalogue¶
The catalogue is one list of parts for the whole workspace — what a part is called, what it costs, who supplies it, how long it takes to arrive. It is shared across every project, so correcting a price once corrects it everywhere, and nobody has to re-derive the same supplier information the next time a job needs quoting.
Find it at Parts Catalogue in the sidebar, or go straight to /catalogue. The
page is linkable: paste the address into a chat and whoever opens it lands on
the same view.
Who can see it¶
Catalogue access is granted per person, separately from your projects, because the catalogue holds pricing for the whole company. One switch covers both viewing and editing — there is no read-only level.
Anyone who has access can grant it. Open Catalogue access from the catalogue page, find the person, and tick the box. It takes effect immediately; there is no separate administrator to wait for.
Unticking your own box asks you to confirm first, because you lose the catalogue straight away and only someone else with access can give it back. If you are the only person with access, your box is locked: give access to someone else first, so the catalogue is never left with nobody who can grant it.
Access to the catalogue and access to a project's BOM tab are independent in both directions, on purpose:
- Someone who buys parts can maintain supplier data without being in a single project.
- Someone working on a project's BOM can add parts they cannot yet put in the catalogue. Those show up as "not in catalogue" for whoever can add them.
Which columns a BOM shows is also set here, for the whole workspace, at Catalogue → BOM columns.
Adding and editing a part¶
Type a name into New part name and press Add part. The part opens in the panel on the right, where you can fill in the rest.
To open an existing part, click it — or Tab to its name and press Enter.
Changes save when you click away, press Ctrl+Enter (⌘+Enter) or Esc.
If a save is refused (a part needs a name, say) the panel stays open with
your edits and says why. Only the fields you changed are saved, so fixing
a supplier never overwrites a price somebody else has just corrected.
Qty on hand is not a field you type. It is worked out from the part's stock record. To change it, use the Stock section below.
Unit, MOQ and pack size¶
Under Buying, every part has:
- Unit: what the part is counted or measured in: each, m (metres), g (grams) or mL (millilitres). New parts are each. TaskTree never converts between units; a part is bought, stocked and used in one.
- MOQ: the supplier's minimum order quantity, in the part's unit. Blank means there is no minimum.
- Pack size: what the part is sold in multiples of, in the part's unit (a reel of 25, a 0.5 m length). Blank means it is sold singly.
A part counted in each takes whole numbers only: its BOM quantities, its quantity inside an assembly, its MOQ and its pack size. A part in m, g or mL takes decimals. You cannot switch a part to each while any BOM line or assembly still uses a fraction of it; the message says how many, so you can make them whole first.
Quantities of a part in m, g or mL show their unit on the BOM and in the Stock section (2.5 m). A part in each shows just the number.
Prices¶
A price can be entered to six decimal places, for parts bought by the thousand. It is shown to two (A$0.01) unless that would show a price that is not zero as A$0.00, and then with as many places as it needs, up to six (A$0.0012). Totals are always shown to two places.
A part number is optional, and leaving it blank is normal. Part numbers come from Onshape; most parts in a real export do not have one yet. TaskTree does not invent them, because two systems issuing numbers into the same namespace is how two different parts end up sharing one.
Two parts can have the same name. That is deliberate — three rows called
Magnet in an export might be one part used three times or three different
parts, and only a person can say which.
What "missing" means¶
The Missing column counts the information this part still needs. What counts as needed depends on its category: a Fastener needs a supplier and a unit price, an Assembly needs neither, a PCB needs a supplier, a price, a lead time and a datasheet.
That is set per category rather than globally so the list stays a worklist rather than a wall. You can change it under Attributes.
N/A means missing
Typing N/A, -, TBD or leaving a field blank all record the same
thing: no value. They are not stored as text.
This matters more than it sounds. CAD exports write the literal string
N/A into columns nobody filled in — in the three real exports, the
Manufacturing Process column says N/A on every single row. If TaskTree
stored that as an answer, every one of those parts would report as
complete forever, and the fields you still needed would quietly vanish
from the list.
The cost is that a part whose manufacturing process genuinely is "not applicable" cannot say so in that field. Put it in Notes.
Costs, and why some show "1 part has no price"¶
An assembly's cost is added up from its parts every time it is shown, so it is never out of date.
Where something underneath has no price yet, you get a bound and a count
rather than a total — ≥ A$41.40 · 1 part has no price. That is not a
limitation, it is the point: a partial sum shown as a plain number looks
exactly like a complete one, is always lower than the real figure, and is
the number somebody would quote a customer from. If you see a bound, the
total is not knowable yet, and the count tells you how much is left to find
out.
Where nothing underneath has a price at all, you just get the count.
Parts you buy complete¶
Some things arrive already made: a motor, or a cable harness. Mark these Bought complete on the part. You set it once, on the part, and every project's BOM follows it.
- On an assembly with contents in the catalogue, choose between Built from its components (the cost is the sum of its parts) and Bought complete (the cost is the price you pay for it). Both figures stay on screen with the unused one greyed, because comparing "what it costs to buy" against "what the pieces cost" is usually the reason you wanted the number.
- On any other part, tick Bought complete. This matters for parts that have lines below them in a project's BOM. A harness imported from Onshape usually has its wires listed beneath it there, even though the catalogue lists nothing inside it.
A part that is bought complete is bought whole. The parts inside it are kept for reference but not bought: its screws or wires are the supplier's problem. A catalogue assembly that is not bought complete is built, so when a BOM uses it, its components go on the buy list instead. See Still to buy.
Stock¶
Every part has a Stock section in its panel, below Save. It is the record of the part's stock in the shared store room, kept by the people who receive, use and count it.
On hand¶
The large number is how many are on the shelf. Nobody types it in. It is the sum of everything that has come in and gone out, and it changes when you do one of these:
- Receive stock for stock that has arrived without an order, such as samples or leftovers from a build.
- Count when you doubt the figure. Enter what is actually on the shelf. TaskTree records the difference, so the record reads "counted 12, was 15".
Under the number it says when the part was last counted, and by whom. Stock that was typed in before the stock record existed shows as an opening balance, carried over from the old Qty on hand.
On hand can go below zero, and is then shown in red. That means the record has missed something, for example a build that used more than was received. Count the shelf to put it right.
The part's Qty on hand column, in the catalogue and on every BOM, shows the same figure.
Orders¶
New order records stock you have ordered: the quantity, the supplier (the part's own, unless you change it) and when it is expected. An order is for the whole workspace, not for one project. One order of forty bolts can cover two projects.
An order moves through Ordered, In transit and Received. Each open order has one button for its next step:
- Mark in transit when the supplier has shipped it;
- Receive… when it arrives. This opens Receive stock, filled in with what is still to come.
If fewer arrive than were ordered, the dialog asks what happens to the rest: keep them in transit, or close the order short. You have to choose one. An order kept open goes on counting the missing parts as on the way, and an order closed short stops counting them. If more arrive than were ordered, they are all received and the order closes.
The ⋯ menu on an order holds Cancel order, and, for an order that has not shipped yet, Receive… (for a local pickup).
Stock on order counts towards every project's Still to buy until it arrives, so a project does not ask you to buy what is already on its way.
To buy¶
When the part's claims add up to more than the shelf and the open orders hold, To buy says how many are short across every planned build in the workspace, and how many to order. The order is rounded up in this order:
- to a whole number, for a part counted in each;
- to at least the MOQ;
- to a multiple of the pack size.
So 21 short with an MOQ of 30, sold in packs of 25, is an order of 50, and it says "rounded up from 21". Cost to buy is that order times the part's own unit price, or a count of what has no price. New order starts with that quantity filled in; you can change it.
Claimed¶
Lists each planned build that needs the part — "20 Leveller · Beta ×20" — and how many. Completed and cancelled builds claim nothing. Other projects' Still to buy figures can only count the stock these claims leave free. A project whose BOM you cannot open is listed as Another project, without its build.
The record¶
The list at the bottom is every change to the part's stock, newest first: the date, who, what happened, how many (+ or −), and what that left on the shelf. Nothing in it can be edited or deleted. A mistake is put right by a Count, so both the mistake and the correction stay on the record. A Used by build entry names the build that used the stock and links to its project's BOM; a reopened build's stock comes back as Reopened — reversed. Show older loads the earlier entries.
Revisions¶
New revision copies the part with a new revision letter. The copy is independently priced and independently editable, and its contents come with it — revising a twenty-part assembly does not mean re-entering twenty parts. Stock is not copied: the parts on the shelf are the old revision, so the new one starts with an empty stock record.
No project moves onto the new revision on its own. A revision is a different physical thing at a different price, so moving a project onto it would change that project's design and its cost without anyone deciding to. Projects using the old one keep using it, and it shows a newer revision marker so you can see there is a choice to make.
Changing what the catalogue records¶
Under Attributes you can add a new kind of information — a compliance flag, a finish, whatever the team starts needing — and say which categories require it. No deploy, no developer.
Archiving is still the everyday way to retire one: it hides the field and stops it asking for an answer, while keeping everything anyone has typed.
Deleting an attribute is also possible now, for the field that should never have existed — a duplicate, a typo, something nobody reads. Press Delete next to it and TaskTree first shows you everything that would go with it: every part carrying a value for it (each one linked, so a value worth keeping can be moved to a different field first), every project that has overridden it on a line, every BOM column showing it, and every category that requires it. Nothing is deleted until you confirm, and if something changed in the meantime — a value was added while you were reading the list — the delete is refused and the list is shown again, updated. There is no undo once you confirm.
Unit price and Qty on hand cannot be deleted, because the BOM's cost and stock columns depend on finding them by name. Relabel or hide them from the BOM instead of removing them.
Categories¶
Categories (Fastener, Assembly, and so on) are managed the same way:
- Add one with a name. A name that already exists — even with different capitalisation or spacing — is refused, because a near-duplicate category quietly reports every part filed under it as complete.
- Rename or reorder it inline.
- Delete it, after the same kind of warning: every part currently filed under it (linked, so you can see them), and every attribute that requires it for that category. Confirming does not delete any part — they become uncategorised, which the Missing column already knows how to report — but it does remove the category's required-field rules.
What it does not do yet¶
Building a project does not yet take its parts out of stock. Until it does, Count a part after a build has used it. Orders have no invoices, approvals or payments, and there are no supplier quotes.
Change history records who last changed a part and when, but not what the value used to be.
Removing a part¶
Two buttons sit at the bottom of the editor and they do different things.
- Archive hides the part from the catalogue and can be undone. Nothing that already uses it changes.
- Delete permanently removes it, and cannot be undone. It is refused while any BOM line, assembly or revision still refers to the part — the message tells you what, so you know where to look. Archive that part instead.
Delete is for the part you created thirty seconds ago by mistake. Archive is for everything else, because the colleague whose work a delete would destroy is usually in another project and is not in the room.
Getting back to a BOM¶
If you reached the catalogue from a project's BOM, a ←