ControlPro v3.4
Aliases are a way to connect, or pair, multiple materials together. ControlPro treats them as the same product. When pairing up two materials, you have the parent material and child material(s). The parent material is the one that will be assigned to a system. The child material(s) is an alias and cannot be assigned to systems. Whenever you run one of those products aliased together, it’s the parent material that shows up on the automation screen and Bill of Lading.
A common case for aliases is when you have one product but need to bill it two different ways (retail vs wholesale). Another use case is for multiple products that are the same product but made by different companies, such as multiple generic versions of the same chemical. Follow the examples below to set up an alias.
On the main screen, click on the material search screen.
In the material search screen, there is a column labelled “Alias”. If the box is checked, the corresponding material is an alias for another material. Double-click the material to open its information window.
In the material window, go to the Ingredients and Aliases tab. In there, it will list the parent material under the “alias for” field. It will also include the description name of the product. As you can see here, Fertilizer 1 is the parent material, and Fertilizer 2 is the child material. Let’s open up the material window for the parent material, Fertilizer 1.
All child materials are listed in the “aliases” box. If you have more than one child material, they will all appear here. Also, the number of child materials is displayed on the tab itself, “Aliases (1)”.
When assigning aliased materials to a system or ticket, keep the following in mind:
- Aliases (child materials) cannot be assigning to systems. Only the parent material can be assigned to systems. You will receive an error when assigned a child material to a system.
- Both parent and child materials can be added to tickets, but they cannot both exist on the same ticket. You will receive an error when attempting to put both on the same ticket.
- If you have tickets already created with both materials on them, and you attempt to alias those two materials together, you will receive an error with the number of tickets that exist with those two materials on them. You need to purge those tickets before you can alias the materials together.