The Bill of Materials is one of the most important components of a product’s lifecycle, yet traditionally one of the hardest to collaborate on. Teams needed a way to extract information, review it internally, update characteristics without rebuilding the structure, and reuse existing data instead of starting from zero each time.
The latest improvements to the CommonShare BOM are designed exactly for that: to make the BOM more flexible, more transparent, and far easier to work with in real-world workflows.
A Complete Excel Export for Full Visibility
The BOM can now be exported into a single Excel file that organizes everything into clear, dedicated tabs. Facilities and locations, characteristics, nodes, processes, certifications, supply-chain links, and all related metadata are gathered into one document that reflects the exact structure of the BOM seen on the platform.
This new export gives teams a complete view of the product in a format they can audit, share with suppliers, or integrate into internal systems. It removes the need for manual gathering or screenshots and provides a clean, reliable representation of the entire supply chain behind a product.
Editable Characteristics for Real-Time Accuracy
Product details evolve constantly. A composition changes, a weight is corrected, a sustainability attribute is added or a technical requirement is updated. Until now, these adjustments often forced teams to recreate parts of the BOM or work around rigid structures.
Characteristics are now fully editable. Any detail, from material specifications to sustainability attributes, can be updated directly inside the BOM and the change flows through the product structure instantly. This ensures real-time accuracy without additional steps and gives teams the confidence that their product data always reflects the current reality.
BOM Cloning to Build Faster, Not From Scratch
When teams manage multiple versions of a product, similar SKUs or seasonal variations, the process of rebuilding a BOM repeatedly becomes time-consuming and error-prone.
The ability to clone a BOM changes that. A complete structure can be duplicated instantly and adjusted only where needed. This is ideal for product families, private label variations or any brand working with repeating patterns in their supply chain. Cloning keeps data consistent and saves significant time across development cycles.
Coming Soon: Create a Full BOM Directly From Excel
A major capability is currently in development. It will allow teams to create a complete BOM directly from an Excel file. Teams will be able to download a template, populate the relevant tabs and upload the file to automatically generate the entire BOM structure including nodes, processes, facilities, characteristics and relationships.
This will simplify supplier onboarding, accelerate data migration and allow organizations to build complex product structures in a format they already use every day.
Conclusion
These updates mark an important evolution in how teams interact with their product data. The BOM becomes easier to share through a clean Excel export, easier to maintain thanks to editable characteristics, and easier to scale through instant cloning. And soon, it will also be easier to create directly from a spreadsheet.
CommonShare’s goal is simple: give every team a BOM that is accurate, flexible, and ready for the pace of modern supply chains.