ERP in production: planning, shop floor, and costing

ERP in production means the system that plans what you will make, records what the floor used, and explains why finished-goods cost moved. For a US plant of about 30 to 100 people, Business Central runs that work only on Premium, at USD 110.00 per user per month paid yearly as of October 2026. Odoo includes Manufacturing on Standard and Custom. A bill of materials alone is a lighter job. Routings, a weekly planning run, operator time and scrap, and the cost method decide the license and whether a scheduler still lives outside the ERP.

What production work should leave the spreadsheet

Most plants already have an accounting system and a pile of workbooks beside it. The workbook holds the real routing, the weekly plan, the scrap the operator wrote on a traveler, and a cost that finance rebuilds after the fact. An ERP earns its place in production when the bill, the routing, the weekly plan, what the floor posts, and the cost all live on the same item, order, and inventory ledger.

Keep the list short:

1. The production bill of materials, including what a parent item consumes and, if you have them, the extra items a job throws off.
2. The routing: which work center, how long, and whether setup is charged once per lot.
3. The planning run that turns demand into suggested purchase, transfer, or production orders.
4. What the floor posts: components, finished quantity, scrap, and time.
5. The cost method: a frozen standard with variances, or a product cost that moves with completed orders.

If any of those five still closes in a workbook, you are paying for software and still managing production by hand. Manufacturing ERP work for a plant this size is the project that moves that list into the system in phases, starting with the items you build every week.

People who searched this phrase looking for cutover tasks, environment promotion, or a go-live weekend want a different page. Use the ERP go-live checklist for that meaning. The rest of this page is about planning, shop-floor posting, and cost once the system is where the plant works.

What a BOM, a routing, and an MRP run each decide

A single-level bill of materials answers one question: which components, and how many, does this parent consume. That is enough for a short assembly you release from a sales order and do not schedule across machines.

A routing answers a second question: where the work happens and how long it should take. In Business Central, manufacturing documents production BOMs, routings, work centers, and machine centers on the Premium experience only, along with production orders, consumption, output, scrap, and operation time (Microsoft, Manufacturing overview). In Odoo 19, operations on a bill of materials stay off until you enable Work Orders. Each operation sits on one BoM and can name a work center, a default duration, and a worksheet (Odoo 19, Bill of materials).

Turn Work Orders on, or build routings in Business Central, when any of these are true for your plant:

• Two or more work centers touch the same parent, and you need to see the queue.
• Setup time is large enough that lot size changes the cost per finished unit.
• You want operators to start and stop a step, not only receive a finished pallet.
• Scrap and extra time need to land on a named operation so costing can see them.

Material requirements planning answers a third question: given demand, lead times, and what is already on order, what should we buy or make. Business Central runs that from the Planning Worksheet as the master production schedule (MPS), material requirements planning (MRP), or both. The run can suggest purchase, transfer, assembly, and production orders (Microsoft, Supply Planning). Odoo describes a master production schedule inside Manufacturing, together with multi-level bills of materials (Odoo, Manufacturing).

Order-by-order planning is still rational when you build to a customer order, lead times are short, and a buyer can see every open job. A weekly MPS or MRP run pays for itself when the same components feed many parents and a late purchase order is how you discover the shortage.

What Business Central runs in production

Premium is the gate. Microsoft's US pricing page describes Premium as Essentials plus service management and manufacturing, at USD 110.00 per user per month paid yearly. Essentials is USD 80.00 and Team Members is USD 8.00 on the same basis, as of October 2026 (Microsoft, US pricing). The Premium experience is what shows Manufacturing and Service Management. Only Evaluation or Premium licenses can switch a company from Essentials to Premium, and a user with an Essentials license cannot sign in to a company that uses the Premium experience (Microsoft, Enable Premium features).

Budget every person who must sign in. If you turn on Premium so planners can release production orders, an Essentials user cannot open that company. Each sign-in needs a license Microsoft allows on the Premium experience. The US pricing page describes Team Members with limited read, approve, and update rights. Confirm that a specific floor role fits those rights before you count operators at USD 8.00. The Canadian list, if you also price a Canadian entity, is CAD 108.50 for Essentials, CAD 149.20 for Premium, and CAD 10.90 for Team Members, per user per month paid yearly, plus applicable tax, as of October 2026 (Microsoft, Canada pricing).

Production order statuses

Business Central moves a production order through Simulated, Planned, Firm Planned, Released, and Finished. You change status with Change Status. You do not edit the field. Planned orders are deleted the next time planning runs. Firm planned orders are not. A released production order is where the system records actual material consumption and output, and automatic flushing of consumption and output happens only on released orders (Microsoft, About production orders).

That status ladder is the operating rule for the planner:

1. Use Simulated when you are testing quantity, routing, or cost and you do not want the plan to treat the order as supply.
2. Leave suggestions in Planned only if the next planning run is allowed to wipe them.
3. Move anything the buyer has already promised, or the floor has already staffed, to Firm Planned so the next MRP run leaves it alone.
4. Release the order when consumption and output should post. Until then, flushing does nothing and actuals have nowhere to land.

Assume a Monday planning run proposes 30 production orders and leaves them at Planned. Maintenance has already staffed 8 of them. Move those 8 to Firm Planned before the next run. Tuesday's planning run deletes the other 22 Planned orders and leaves the 8 in place. If those 8 stayed at Planned, the staffing plan disappears with the suggestions. Release an order only when someone is ready to post consumption and output against it.

The Business Central manufacturing: BOMs, routing and MRP guide walks the same objects screen by screen. Use it when you are ready to map fields. The decision here is which of those objects your first phase must contain.

Flushing versus a journal

Consumption and output flushing methods are Manual, Forward, and Backward. Forward consumption assumes the expected quantity is consumed when the order is released, unless routing link codes are used. Backward consumption records the expected material when the order is finished, unless routing link codes are used. The same Microsoft page documents both methods.

The Production Journal is the single page where someone records components used, quantities produced, scrap, and operation time for one released production order line. Only one person can use that page at a time. Closing it without posting loses the entries (Microsoft, Register consumption and output).

Forward or backward flush is a fair design when the bill is stable, scrap is rare, and you would rather post the expected quantity than wait for a traveler. It is a poor design when the gap you care about is extra material, lost time, or scrap: the flush posts the expectation, and the journal never sees the difference. Manual consumption, posted from the journal by a named person before the order is finished, is the setup that makes actual use visible. Accept the constraint that comes with it: one user on that page, and no recovery of a journal someone closed without posting.

Business Central has no dedicated by-product feature. Microsoft's documented path is a negative consumption journal line, which increases that item's inventory and credits the production order's WIP. If your jobs routinely throw off a saleable offcut or a second grade, write that negative line into the process before go-live on costing. A side workbook for the offcut will drift from inventory the first month you trust the ERP quantity.

What Odoo Manufacturing includes before add-ons

Odoo describes Manufacturing as MRP, MES, PLM, quality, shop floor, and maintenance on one platform, including multi-level bills of materials, work orders, a master production schedule, by-products, and a tablet shop-floor dashboard (Odoo, Manufacturing). Treat the MES and finite-capacity wording on that marketing page as Odoo's own claim. Ask for a scheduling demo on your busiest work center before you drop a separate scheduler from the budget.

Shop Floor installs with Manufacturing. From a workstation view an operator can start and time work orders, register lots or serials, scrap, add a component or an extra work order, log notes, request maintenance, and close production (Odoo 19, Shop Floor overview). That is a different data-capture shape from Business Central's production journal: several workstations can run at once, and the employee clock is part of the order.

The Odoo manufacturing module guide covers bills, work orders, and the settings screen in more detail. Here, the buying question is which plan puts Manufacturing on the users who need it.

License math without a fake plant total

As of October 2026, Odoo's pricing page shows more than one Standard figure, so do not collapse them into a single list price. The page shows USD 31.10 on the yearly view and USD 38.90 on the monthly view, and it also shows USD 24.90 next to a 12-month initial-user discount. Custom, which adds Odoo.sh or on-prem, Studio, multi-company, and the external API, shows USD 61.00 and USD 76.20 per user per month on those same yearly and monthly views. Odoo.sh hosting is extra. Standard and Custom include all apps, Manufacturing among them, for one per-user fee. One App Free is one app, unlimited users, on Odoo Online, and the apps that app depends on are included (Odoo, Pricing).

A Light User is listed at USD 8.90. Documented light-user capabilities include the Manufacturing Shop Floor, plus a short list of self-service HR and inventory barcode tasks. Odoo says an advisor quotes that license.

• Business Central Essentials (Figure on the pricing page as of October 2026: USD 80.00 per user per month, paid yearly · Production note: Manufacturing production requires the Premium experience. Essentials users cannot sign in to that company.)
• Business Central Premium (Figure on the pricing page as of October 2026: USD 110.00 per user per month, paid yearly · Production note: Includes manufacturing and service management.)
• Business Central Team Members (Figure on the pricing page as of October 2026: USD 8.00 per user per month, paid yearly · Production note: Pricing page describes limited read, approve, and update rights. Confirm a floor role before you count it here.)
• Odoo Standard, yearly view (Figure on the pricing page as of October 2026: USD 31.10 per user per month · Production note: All apps, including Manufacturing.)
• Odoo Standard, monthly view (Figure on the pricing page as of October 2026: USD 38.90 per user per month · Production note: Same plan, other view on the same page.)
• Odoo Standard, initial-user discount (Figure on the pricing page as of October 2026: USD 24.90 shown next to a 12-month discount · Production note: Do not treat 24.90, 31.10, and 38.90 as one list price.)
• Odoo Custom (Figure on the pricing page as of October 2026: USD 61.00 and USD 76.20 per user per month · Production note: Yearly and monthly views. Odoo.sh hosting is extra.)
• Odoo Light User (Figure on the pricing page as of October 2026: USD 8.90 · Production note: Includes Manufacturing Shop Floor. An advisor issues the quote.)
• Odoo One App Free (Figure on the pricing page as of October 2026: USD 0 · Production note: One app, unlimited users, Odoo Online. Dependent apps for that app are included.)

US Business Central rates are on Microsoft's US pricing page. Odoo rates are on Odoo's pricing page. Multiply the per-user rates by your own headcount. The light-user row at USD 8.90 applies only if the advisor quote matches the shop-floor entitlement on the pricing page. The table is list price, as of October 2026, and it excludes implementation.

Odoo Success Packs, at new-customer prices with 15 percent off the first pack, are Starter USD 493 (4 hours), Basic USD 3,060 (25 hours), Standard USD 5,950 (50 hours), Custom USD 10,625 (100 hours), and Pro USD 21,250 (200 hours). Returning-customer prices are USD 580, USD 3,600, USD 7,000, USD 12,500, and USD 25,000. Manufacturing (MRP, PLM, Quality, Maintenance) is one scope line in the project estimator. Odoo says companies above 50 employees usually use a partner. Odoo also states that 80 percent of projects in the estimator's scope go into production in 200 hours or less, and it labels a 98 percent versus 65 percent success-rate line as its own figure (Odoo, Success Packs). Read the packs as prepaid hours. They are not a published fixed price for a manufacturing implementation at a 30 to 100 person plant. Ask whoever bids the work to price data migration, routings, and shop-floor training as their own lines.

Why the standard cost and the job cost disagree

At month-end the variance report and the scrap bin should describe the same jobs.

Business Central costing methods are FIFO, LIFO, Average, Specific, and Standard. Standard capitalizes a preset cost and records the difference from actual cost as variances. Microsoft says Standard is used where cost control is critical, including repetitive manufacturing, and that it needs staff to maintain the standards (Microsoft, Costing methods). For a produced item, that standard can include direct material, material noninventory cost, labor (capacity), subcontractor cost, and overhead. You cannot change an item's costing method after item ledger entries exist (Microsoft, About calculating standard cost).

Pick the method before the first receipt posts. After ledger entries exist, a change means a new item or a controlled rebuild. LIFO is on the costing-method list. Ask your tax advisor how it applies to your entity before you select it.

Setup absorption changes the unit cost even when the routing time looks fixed. When Cost Incl. Setup is on, setup time is charged once per lot, so a larger lot size lowers setup cost per finished unit. Turning Cost Incl. Setup off keeps setup time for planning and drops it from the standard cost. If sales quotes assume a 20-unit lot and the floor runs 5, the unit standard moves because setup is spread over fewer pieces. Put the lot size you run into the cost worksheet before you publish prices from the standard.

Flushing can hide the variance you bought Standard to see. If Backward flush posts the expected component quantity at finish, and nobody journals scrap or extra issue, the material variance stays near zero while the scrap bin tells a different story. The fix is operational: Manual flush, or routing link codes that flush only the operations whose expected quantity matches the bin, plus a journal line for scrap and extra time on the rest.

Odoo keeps two figures on the manufacturing order. MO cost is the expected cost from the BoM: component cost and quantity, plus operation time and work-center rates. Real cost is what the order used. Real cost moves away from the estimate when time, quantity, component price, or the employee's own hourly cost differs. Product cost for a manufactured item then updates as an average of completed manufacturing orders. Compute Price from BoM resets cost to the BoM expectation, and later orders pull the average back toward real cost (Odoo 19, Manufacturing order costs).

Odoo illustrates the average with a putting-green example on that cost page: an expected cost of USD 65, a real cost of USD 70, and a product cost of USD 67.50 after the average. Use it as a picture of the math, then run the same overview on one of your own items. If your buyers reprice every purchase and your employees have different hourly costs, the average will move every time an order closes. If you need a frozen cost for a season, say so in the design and decide who is allowed to press Compute Price from BoM. That button resets the expectation. It does not preserve last month's average.

A week of numbers, with the assumptions written down

Assume one parent, a two-operation routing, a standard material cost of USD 40, and a capacity cost of USD 25 at a lot of 10, with setup included once per lot. The standard finished unit is USD 65 before overhead. The released order finishes 10, scraps 1 unit of a USD 8 component, and logs two extra labor hours at USD 30 each.

Under Manual consumption in Business Central, the journal can post the extra component and the extra time. The unit standard stays USD 65. The order finishes 10, so the order standard is 10 times USD 65, which is USD 650, and variances can carry the USD 8 component and the USD 60 of extra labor. Under Backward flush with no journal, inventory can relieve the expected components only, and the unposted extra of USD 68 never hits that order. The unit standard still says USD 65. The plant still spent the extra. Finance sees a quiet variance report and a noisy scrap tote.

In Odoo, the same job should show an MO cost near the BoM expectation and a real cost that includes the extra component, the extra time, and any employee rate that differs from the work center. The next completed orders then tug the item's average. Someone has to post the scrap and the time, or the ERP repeats the spreadsheet.

When the journal or the tablet is enough

Use Business Central's production journal when one coordinator can post a released order, the floor can wait its turn on that page, and you accept that an unposted close throws the lines away. Pair it with Manual flush if variances matter. Use Forward or Backward flush only on components whose expected quantity matches what the bin loses.

Use Odoo Shop Floor when operators should start a work order from a workstation, the clock should follow the employee, and scrap or an extra component should be registered before the order closes. A light user is the license to test for that role, at USD 8.90, subject to the advisor quote.

A separate finite scheduler or a machine-level MES is still a separate product when you need one of these and the ERP screen does not do it on your data:

• Sequence a work center by the minute when several jobs compete for the same machine and due dates collide.
• Collect cycle counts, downtime codes, or counts from the machine itself.
• Let many people post the same Business Central production order at the same time. The production journal is one user at a time.
• Reschedule the plant when several jobs compete for one machine. Business Central's planning worksheet suggests purchase, transfer, assembly, and production orders from MPS, MRP, or both. Odoo's manufacturing page claims finite capacity. Have the bidder overload one of your work centers for a week and show whether the run stops stacking time on that center.

Add that extra system when a demo fails a named constraint: a machine, a shift, a queue. Keep the ERP as the place that still releases the order, consumes inventory, and posts the cost. A second schedule on the wall brings the workbook back.

We implement both Business Central and Odoo for manufacturers in this size range, and the first working slice is the one that posts a real order with real scrap. Business Central for growing companies and Odoo implementation are the two paths. The choice is Premium plus a journal discipline, or Odoo Manufacturing plus Shop Floor, with a scheduler only where the demo shows a gap.

How to choose the first phase

Put the first phase on the items and work centers that create most of the shortages and most of the cost arguments. A useful first phase has a short list:

1. Production bills (and by-products, including Business Central's negative consumption line if you need it) for the parents you will release.
2. Routings only where more than one work center, or setup cost, changes the plan or the unit cost.
3. One planning rhythm: order-by-order, or a weekly MPS/MRP run whose firm planned orders survive the next calculation.
4. One posting rule: who records consumption, output, scrap, and time, on which screen, and what happens if they close without posting.
5. A costing method chosen before item ledger entries exist, with a named owner for standards or for the BoM cost reset.
6. License counts built from sign-in rules: Premium for every Business Central user who must enter a manufacturing company, and an advisor quote before you count Odoo light users.

Leave quality plans, maintenance requests, and plant-wide finite scheduling for a later phase unless a customer or a regulator already blocks shipments without them. Odoo includes quality and maintenance in the Manufacturing description. Configure them when a shipment rule requires the record.

Ask each bidder to show three orders on your parts: a clean order, an order with scrap and extra time, and a planning run that does not delete the jobs you have already staffed. The prices above are list licenses and prepaid hours as of October 2026. Implementation scope is whatever those three orders require, priced as its own work.

How Flectic can help

Flectic connects production, inventory and finance on Dynamics 365 or Odoo for manufacturers of 20 to 100 people, so the schedule, the costing and the order book agree. We pilot one cell, then expand, so one line goes live with its operators first while the rest of the plant keeps producing. See Flectic's ERP for manufacturers for finite scheduling, real-time WIP and margin by SKU. To start, book a free discovery call.

Sources

• Manufacturing overview - Business Central, Microsoft, October 2026
• Enable Premium features - Business Central, Microsoft, October 2026
• Dynamics 365 Business Central pricing (United States), Microsoft, October 2026
• Dynamics 365 Business Central pricing (Canada), Microsoft, October 2026
• Supply Planning - Business Central, Microsoft, October 2026
• About production orders - Business Central, Microsoft, October 2026
• Register consumption output for a production order, Microsoft, October 2026
• Design details - Costing methods, Microsoft, October 2026
• About calculating standard cost, Microsoft, October 2026
• Odoo Manufacturing, Odoo, October 2026
• Bill of materials, Odoo 19.0, Odoo, October 2026
• Shop Floor overview, Odoo 19.0, Odoo, October 2026
• Manufacturing order costs, Odoo 19.0, Odoo, October 2026
• Odoo Pricing, Odoo, October 2026
• Odoo Success Packs, Odoo, October 2026