Inventory in Pulse — Part 6: pieces, offcuts & the usage report

Trades that cut materials — board, fabric, steel, vinyl — need more than a single number; they need to know which offcuts are sitting on the rack. Pulse’s piece tracking adds a physical sub-ledger on top of the stock ledger for exactly this, while holding a firm line: Pulse records how much you used and what’s left, but never calculates what to cut (no nesting, kerf, or mitre maths). That keeps it honest and off-the-shelf.

Turn on piece tracking

Piece tracking is an opt-in on measure-mode items and is a premium feature (Operate Pro and up). Enable piece tracking on the item, and Pulse starts keeping a list of individual pieces alongside the normal balance.

How pieces work

• Each piece has a remaining quantity, an optional label and location, and a status: available, reserved, consumed, or scrapped.
• Receiving stock creates pieces. Issuing from a piece reduces its remaining amount and can split off a child offcut for the part you didn’t use.
• Reserve a piece for a job so nobody else grabs it, then release or consume it.
• Dimensions are stored as a free-text label for your eyes only — Pulse never parses or compares them.

The golden rule: pieces reconcile to the ledger

The sum of all available and reserved pieces always equals the item’s on-hand in the stock ledger. The ledger is the source of truth; if the two ever drift, Pulse shows a reconcile prompt so you can put them back in step. This is why you can trust both the headline number and the piece list.

See usage and waste

Switch the inventory page from Items to Usage to see, per item, how much was received, issued, and written off over a period, plus a waste percentage and a category roll-up. Combined with attributing issues to projects (Part 3), it tells you what each job really consumed.