Creating a Special WO for Assembly Sold in Kit
Special Work Orders (SWO) are handy for assemblies that must be built with parameters specific to a given sales order.
This functionality works fine most of the time, but we recently acquired a company that sells in kits. Unfortunately, the SWO functionality doesn’t fire for the kit members because the lines aren’t displayed.
I’ve created a SuiteScript to create the WO, but can’t figure out how to link it to the SO. It is automatically being allocated to the oldest order with that item.
Anyone been able to overcome this?
I believe that kit items themselves cannot create work orders in NetSuite.
Work orders are for assembly items, and Oracle’s docs say “only assembly item records can be set up to default to create work orders.”
So the practical answer is:
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Kit line on SO → no native WO creation.
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Assembly line on SO → yes, can create a WO / SWO.
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If you sell a kit but need manufacturing tied to that order, you usually need to:
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convert that sellable structure to an assembly instead of a kit, or
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script/customize creation of WOs for the underlying assembly members and explicitly link them to the intended SO context.
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Your earlier symptom fits this exactly: because the kit line is not an assembly line that NetSuite can use for native SWO creation, your scripted WO ended up behaving like a general supply and allocating to the oldest demand instead of your intended sales order. That’s consistent with NetSuite’s documented assembly-only work-order model.
kits do not natively create work orders in NetSuite.
