Projects and BOM
A project groups items into a build with a bill of materials (BOM), reservations and a budget — a repair, a make, a job, a kit you're assembling. It answers "do I have everything I need, and can I afford it?"
Where to find it: the Projects screen (in the menu, when the module is enabled).
A project's BOM lists the items it needs and how many of each. From that list, Gubbins works out:
- What you already have versus what's short.
- An automatic shopping list of the missing pieces.
So starting a project immediately tells you whether you can proceed or need to buy first.
Reserve stock for a project to earmark it — the reserved quantity is set aside so it isn't accidentally used elsewhere before you get to the build. Your available count reflects the reservation.
A project can total its cost, and toggle how it's costed (for example, what you'd pay to buy the missing parts versus the value of everything in the build). The missing-parts shopping list flows into your purchasing.
💡 Tip Projects are great even for one-off jobs: drop in the parts, see what's short, and let Gubbins build the shopping list — no need to work it out on paper.
ℹ️ Note A project is a one-off build with its own BOM and budget. A reusable assembly you make repeatedly is better modelled as a kit — that page has a fuller side-by-side comparison of the two.
When it's time to build, the Picking list turns the BOM into a walk-and-tick-off worksheet. For every line it shows where to find it — the exact locations its stock sits in, busiest first (for example "3 in Garage · Shelf B, 2 in Loft bin 4") — drawn straight from your per-location stock. Gather each part, tick it off, and a progress bar tracks how much of the build you've collected.
A line with no matching item, or a matched item you're out of, is still listed so nothing is forgotten — it just shows there's no shelf to walk to.
Once every line is ticked, the worksheet surfaces a Finalise step: the natural moment to consume the gathered parts into the finished build (a new container location, a single assembled item, or simply used up).
💡 Tip Picking is independent of reserving. Reserve to earmark stock ahead of time; pick to mark it physically collected when you're actually at the shelf. A part can be reserved but not yet picked, or picked without ever being reserved.
Use Export BOM (beside Import BOM) to save the bill of materials as a file — for sharing a parts list, ordering, or printing. Pick the form that suits:
- CSV or TSV — a spreadsheet of every line, ready for Excel, Sheets or a supplier upload.
- Excel workbook (.xlsx) — opens straight into Excel or Sheets with numbers kept as numbers.
- JSON — the lines as structured data, for a script or another tool to read.
- Markdown table — drops straight into notes, a README or a wiki.
- HTML — a tidy, standalone page that opens in your browser and prints cleanly.
- Plain text — a simple aligned table to paste anywhere.
Each line carries its part details (designator, MPN, manufacturer), the required / reserved / received quantities, its reservation and procurement status, and the unit and line cost — so the exported file is a complete snapshot of the build's parts.
The same menu also offers an EDA BOM (grouped CSV) — the layout electronics tools such as
KiCad or Altium expect. Parts that share a value, MPN and manufacturer are merged into one row,
their reference designators listed together (R1, R2, R3) and their quantities summed, so the file
imports cleanly into a schematic or PCB tool's BOM.
💡 Tip Choose HTML when you want a printout to take to the bench or the shop — it's laid out for paper, CSV/TSV or Excel when a supplier or spreadsheet needs to read the numbers back, and EDA BOM when you're feeding the parts list into an electronics design tool.
- Budgets — setting and tracking a project's budget.
- Kits & bundles — reusable assemblies.
- Reorder & shopping list — buying what a project needs.
- Export & import — projects get their own export sub-folders.