Workflow question. I have some assembly items for which I have marked Special Work Order = TRUE. Therefore, when I add that item to a sales order, it automatically creates a work order for the assembly. Is it possible to write a workflow to then have the creation of the work order trigger the creation of an assembly build? Or is a script required to do that? I have gotten conflicting answers on this. It seems that the essential question is, can workflows trigger the creation of transactions, or is that something only a script can do?

sounds like you are looking for the Transform Record Action

A workflow with the Create Record action can create almost any record. However if you want it to be linked to the work order then you will need the Transform Record Action like @battk said However in my experience the transform record action is limited to only very specific instances like SO to Invoice, etc I don't remember seeing WO to Assmebly Build as an option but maybe it's in there now

why would you want a special work order that auto completes? doesn't that beat the point?

@KevinJ of Kansas What is supposed to be the point of work orders and assembly builds? My understanding is that a work order is used to reserve the units of inventory needed to build an assembly. Then the assembly build actually builds it into inventory of the assembly item. My goal is to have the building of the assembly inventory be completely automated so that a customer can order the assembly and the inventory is built as a direct result of the sales order. We don't want to have any inventory of these assemblies pre-built, which is why I want the building of the assembly inventory to be automated. Does this make sense or I am not using the work order / assembly build functionality correctly?

The purpose of the work order is to tell someone to build it

Our assemblies all have their own SKUs. So when the assembly SKU shows up on the pick ticket, the warehouse workers will physically construct the assembly on the fulfillment line. We just want Netsuite to already reflect what the warehouse team is going to do

I agree with @KevinJ of Kansas If you need Part A and Part B to build your assembly, what if you don't have Part A in stock, then the Assembly Build will either fail OR put your inventory of Part A negative.

@AI1 We have a tight enough control of our low stock / out of stock items that we would mark the assembly item out of stock on our website before it actually ran out of inventory of any of the component items. We only have <400 SKUs so it's not that difficult to track what is low in inventory

Ahh i see...(that's lucky lol). So you are saying that you are making a Wave (or pick ticket) to pick the assembly and the picker does the assembly while they are picking? If the Assembly requires Part A and Part B, how does the picker know what components to pick if there is no built assembly at the time the pick ticket is made?

@AI1 We have a small number of assemblies, so our warehouse workers have memorized the components in the assemblies. And if they haven't memorized them, there's a cheat sheet. Each assembly has like three products in it, and we have maybe ten assemblies in total. The Netsuite implementation partner we had told us to use assemblies, so I've never looked into kits.

@Dan Warner I see. Maybe assemblies are a decent way to go. Kits have their own issues. I checked and you can use the transform record action to automatically make an assembly build from a work order So you could make a work order workflow and put the transform record action (I would do after record submit as the trigger) Let me know if you need some help getting it working