Onyx has a very flexible approach to how you enter and use parts, however the cost of this flexibility is that it can at first be a bit confusing when trying to understand how to use it.

Please note..... the screen shown below has two main purposes, the first is that it is how you add an item to an invoice, the second is that it allows you to enter parts into the parts inventory as you are creating invoices, this means that you don't have to sit for hours entering parts separately.

It may help to think of the parts inventory as nothing more than a storage area that can store up to 1500 characters to describe a particular part, and that you can assign a reference to.

For example, If you consider the following generic parts

Oil Filter, Fuel Filter, Spark Plug

If you decided to add these items to the inventory you might decide to use OF as a reference to Oil Filter, FF to reference Fuel Filter and SP to refer to Spark Plugs. Once added to the parts inventory you only need to type SP to add a spark plug to an invoice.

Of course this would be a little limited, so you can also store additional information along with the description, such as retail price, cost price, tax type.

And here we can see the item stored in the parts inventory, to re-use the item we only needed to type OF in the 'Part Number' field and press enter, Onyx then filled in the rest of the details for us.  If the price is still correct then we need do nothing more than press 'Ok' but we can also edit the price if needed.  When we press 'Ok' Onyx will check to see if you have made any changes, if we have Onyx will ask if we want to save the changes to the inventory (so that they will be correct the next time that we sell an oil filter), it's up to you how you answer as you might have a generic price for all oil filters or you may edit the price for each one that you sell.

For those that are wondering how to add the part into the inventory in the first place, simply proceed through the fields entering the relevant information and when you press 'Ok' Onyx will ask if you would like to save the new part in the inventory, if you do it will be there for next time.

Please note that you don't have to enter a part number at all, if you are selling a one-off item, for example a TR6 Horn Button, then you can just enter the retail cost and the description, when you press 'Ok' Onyx will realise that there isn't a part number and will not ask whether you want to save the item to the inventory.

Of course, you don't have to use generic part numbers, you can use specific ones, for example you could enter OF1, OF2, OF3 which all relate to oil filters but which all have different retail prices.

The parts inventory concept is also used for labour and works in exactly the same way, for example you could have a reference of FS for 'Carry out full service.'

Please remember that this is a very quick look at the parts inventory and doesn't cover all aspects of the system.  For example Onyx can also monitor stock levels and automatically create purchase orders for particular suppliers etc.