Products, Components & BOM
Product
A Product is the finished item you sell or produce — the thing that appears on an invoice or in your catalog.
Component
A Component represents a physical part used to build one or more Products. A Component is not tied to a single Product — it’s the thing itself, independent of which finished items happen to use it.
Components can be shared
If Product A and Product B both use the same Component, they are referencing the same Component record — not two separate copies. This means:
- Its Production Profiles (how it’s printed) are shared between both Products.
- Changing that Component’s production configuration — renaming a Profile, adjusting yield, deleting or archiving a Profile — affects every Product that uses it, not just the one you happen to have open.
This is intentional: if two Products genuinely need the same physical part, sharing one Component means you configure production for it once, and both Products benefit from any correction or improvement.
Where this matters in the interface: a Component’s BOM row shows a small “Shared by N products” indicator whenever it’s used by more than one Product, so this shared impact is never a surprise.
When Components should NOT be shared
If two Products need what looks like a similar part but actually requires genuinely different production configuration that shouldn’t be linked — different print settings that must be free to diverge independently — they should use two separate Components, not one shared one. Components are for parts that really are the same physical thing.
Product BOM (Bill of Materials)
The BOM defines, for a given Product:
- which Components it needs, and
- how many units of each Component are required per finished Product.
This “how many per Product” number is what the interface labels “Per product ×N” — it belongs to the BOM relationship between a Product and a Component, not to the Component itself (the same Component can require a different quantity in a different Product’s BOM).
Removing a Component from a Product
Removing a Component from Product A’s BOM only removes Product A’s relationship to that Component. If the Component is shared, Product B’s BOM is untouched — the Component itself survives and remains fully available to every other Product still using it.
This is a deliberately different action from Production Profile changes:
| Action | Scope |
|---|---|
| Remove Component from a Product’s BOM | This Product only |
| Delete / Archive / edit a Production Profile | The shared Component, and therefore every Product using it |
See Production Profiles for what happens when a Component’s production configuration is deleted, archived, or edited.
Cost estimates and suggested price
A Product’s page shows an estimated cost per unit, and a Suggested price worked out from it. The filament part of that estimate — for the Product and for each of its Components — uses the cost per gram of usable filament: a spool’s price divided by the filament it held when new, with the empty spool’s tare left out. See Inventory & Spools for how that rate is defined.
Where the filament price comes from, in this order:
- If the Component has been printed before, the spools its most recent completed print actually used.
- Otherwise, the spools you currently have in stock for that material (and color, when you have it).
- Otherwise, the Reference filament price from your Settings.
A free spool (price 0) is a real price of €0, not a missing one — it isn’t replaced by the reference price.
Your selling prices are not changed for you
The Suggested price follows the estimate, so it moves when your costs do. A selling price you’ve saved does not:
- A Product that already has a selling price keeps it. SpoolIQ never replaces a saved selling price on its own, whatever happens to the estimate or the suggestion.
- A Product with no selling price yet gets the suggested price saved as its selling price when you open its page. While that page stays open, the price keeps following the suggestion until you type one of your own; the next time you open the Product it’s a saved selling price like any other.
Product status: Active, Discontinued and Archived
Every Product has one of three statuses:
| Status | In the catalog | New production | Sales and transfers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active | Yes | Yes | Yes — selling more than you have queues a production order |
| Discontinued | Yes, with a Discontinued badge | No | Only from the units available now |
| Archived | Only under View archived | No | No |
Changing a Product’s status never changes anything else about it: its images, BOM, costs, stock records, sales and production history all stay exactly as they are. The one exception: archiving unpublishes its showcase listings (see below).
Deleting a Product
Delete removes a Product permanently, and it is offered only for an Active Product that was never used: no sales, production, stock movements or other history, and no units in stock or reserved.
Deleting never changes a Product’s status. If SpoolIQ finds that the Product can’t be deleted — it has history, units in stock or reserved, an active production order, or it is Discontinued or Archived — nothing happens to it and the message tells you why. To take a Product with history out of use, Discontinue it instead, and archive it later from its page once nothing is left (see below).
Discontinued Products
A Discontinued Product stays in your catalog (and on your public showcase, if it is published there), marked Discontinued. It can still be sold and transferred, but only from stock that already exists:
- No new production orders can be created for it, from any screen.
- A sale is limited to the units available — what is physically in stock minus what other sales have already reserved. The sale screen marks the Product Discontinued and won’t let you go above that number. If someone else sold or reserved the last units while you were filling in the sale, the sale is refused with that reason instead of being backordered.
- Returns and stock corrections are still accepted.
- It does not raise low-stock alerts, because it will not be replenished.
When a Discontinued Product runs out of stock
Running out of stock never archives a Product by itself. A Discontinued Product with no units left anywhere — workshop and points of sale included — stays Discontinued for as long as you like.
When you open such a Product, its page suggests archiving it, with two choices:
- Keep discontinued — nothing changes. The suggestion is not shown again during the same session, and you can still archive the Product later from its page.
- Archive product — asks you to confirm, then archives it.
Archiving manually
On a Discontinued Product’s page, Archive (or Archive product in the suggestion) archives it after your confirmation. Archiving is refused, and the Product stays Discontinued, while any of these remain:
- units in stock at any location,
- reserved units,
- an active production order,
- an open sale.
The message tells you which one applies.
Archived Products and your public showcase
An Archived Product is not on offer, so it never appears on your public showcase. When you archive a Product, its showcase listings are switched to not published in the same step. Nothing else about the listing changes: its title, texts, price, collection and other settings are kept.
In Showcase, the listing of an Archived Product is marked Archived, and its Published switch is off and cannot be turned on, with a note explaining why. To publish it again, reactivate the Product first.
Reactivating
Reactivate, on the Product’s page or in the catalog, makes a Discontinued or Archived Product Active again, with everything it had before. An Archived Product cannot be made Discontinued directly — reactivate it first.
Reactivating does not publish the Product’s showcase listings again. Its Published switch can be used again, and you decide whether to turn it on.
Status history
Every status change — discontinued, archived, reactivated — is recorded with its date and time and the previous and new status. These entries appear in the Product’s history, next to its stock movements, and are never edited or removed. Changes made before status history existed are not shown.
Archived Components
A Component may be archived rather than permanently deleted when historical data needs to be preserved — for example, when it has real production history.
Archived Components can still appear when linking an existing Component to a Product (the “Link Existing” flow), clearly marked with an Archived badge. Selecting an archived Component there:
- reactivates the Component, and
- links it to the Product you’re editing.
Reactivating a Component does not automatically reactivate its Production Profiles. Any Production Profiles that were individually archived stay archived until you explicitly reactivate each one — see Production Profiles.