Some products are not counted in units: bulk wire sold by the foot off a spool, sound deadening sold by the square foot, hardware sold from a bin. Manifold calls these bulk (measured) products. You buy them in packages (a spool, a roll, a box) and sell them in whole base units (feet, square feet, each).

Setting up a bulk product

Go to Inventory > Products > Add Product. In the Bulk / Measured card, set Stocking Style to "Bulk - sold by measure from a supply". Three fields appear:

  • Sold By: the unit you cut and bill by (ft, sq ft, each). Invoice quantities are in this unit.
  • Purchase Package: what the vendor ships it as (spool, roll, box). Purchase orders are placed in this.
  • Units Per Package: how many base units come in one package. For a 250 ft roll, enter 250.

Pricing works differently for bulk products, and the form walks you through it

  • Cost Price is what you pay the vendor for ONE WHOLE PACKAGE. A $100 roll of 250 ft: enter 100.00.
  • Retail Price is what the customer pays PER UNIT. To sell at $1 per foot, enter 1.00.
  • The form shows your derived cost per unit ($100 divided by 250 = $0.40 per ft) and calculates margin per unit automatically.
  • Minimum Sell Price and Dealer Price are also per unit, like Retail.

Low Stock Threshold and Max Stock Quantity are entered in base units (feet), not packages. The Restock Assistant converts for you: if you are 400 ft short, it suggests ordering 2 rolls, not 400.

Quantities are always whole numbers. You sell 12 ft or 13 ft, never 12.5. If a technician uses 12 and a half feet, round up to 13. The system will not accept fractional quantities on bulk lines. Labor hours are unaffected and stay fractional.

Finding your bulk products

On the Products list (Inventory > Products), use the Type filter and choose Bulk Only to see just your measured products, or Standard Only for everything else. It combines with the search box and the category, vendor, and stock filters, so you can, for example, show only bulk items from one vendor that are low on stock.

Ordering and receiving

Purchase order lines for bulk products are in whole packages. The PO line shows the conversion ("qty is rolls - 1 roll = 250 ft" with a running total in feet) so there is no ambiguity. When you receive the PO, stock increases by the base units (receiving 2 rolls of 250 ft adds 500 ft) and your weighted average cost is tracked per unit.

Selling

On an invoice or estimate, add the product normally. The quantity field switches to whole units and shows the unit label. The line total is quantity times the per-unit price. Technicians can also log materials from their phone: on the work order's Work tab in the mobile bay, tap Add Material, pick the product, and enter the quantity used. The line lands on the linked invoice at current retail price with a "Materials from bay - review pricing" banner so the writer can double-check pricing before posting.

Returns

Cut wire and film generally cannot be resold, so on refund documents bulk lines default the destination to "Do not add back". You can override it per line if the material is genuinely restockable.

Physical counts

Bulk products appear on count sheets like any other product, tagged with their unit ("count in ft"). Count the total base units on hand and enter a whole number.

Invoice Display Name (works on every product, not just bulk)

Vendor SKUs often encode the package, like 8G-BLK-250 for a 250 ft roll of 8-gauge black wire. That is right for ordering but misleading on a customer invoice for an 18 ft cut. In the Product Information card there is an optional Invoice Display Name field (for example "8-Gauge Power Wire - Black"). When set:

  • Customer documents (printed and emailed invoices, estimates, printed work orders, the online invoice link) show the display name in the Part # column instead of the vendor SKU, and the product's Description text in the Description column.
  • Internal screens keep showing the real SKU so staff can pull stock and match purchase orders.
  • Search finds the product by either name: typing "power wire" or "8G" both work on invoices, the mobile bay, the inventory list, and purchase orders. The product's Description is searched in all of those places too.

Leave the field blank and customer documents show the SKU in Part # and the line's own text in Description, with one exception worth knowing. If that line text is nothing but the code already printed in the Part # column, which is what happens when a product is named after its SKU, the product's Description prints instead. So a tint line reads "Install Ceramic IR 70%" beside Part # IR70, rather than "TINT IR70" twice over. The brand comes across when the product name carried one ("Compustar CS-PRO-T12" prints as "Compustar 2-way remote start system"), and is dropped when the description already says it. Anything a writer typed or edited on the line is always left exactly as written.