Add a material so your team can request, quote and order it. You can type it in, or paste a product page address and let SubBase fill the form for you.
Before you start
You need Can create new material. All 4 of Admin, Purchaser, User and Material Requester hold it by default.
To reach the Material Database itself you also need Can edit material database, which by default only Admins and Purchasers have.
Have the unit of measure ready. SubBase will not save the material without it.
Steps
Open the menu at the top right, then click Material Database.
Click Add.
Enter the Description. This is the name your team will search for.
Choose the Unit.
Fill in any other product details that apply, such as Manufacturer and Size.
Set Default Cost Code, Projects, Preferred vendor prices and Tags if you use them.
Click Create.
Starting from a product URL
Paste a product page address into Import from product URL at the top of the panel, then click Import. SubBase reads the page and fills the fields below it, and tells you so: Auto-fills the fields below using AI. Review everything before creating.
Anything the page did not clearly give comes back empty, and a product image that will not load is left out, so check every field before you click Create.
Your company can import 100 product pages a day. Importing the same address again within 24 hours does not count a second time.
What happens next
The material appears in the list, and your team can find it when they build material requests, RFQs and orders. If you set a Default Cost Code, it is applied whenever the material is ordered.
Notes and limits
Description and Unit are the only 2 fields SubBase requires.
Materials have to be unique. SubBase compares the description, connection type, group, sub group, manufacturer, material, product identifier, size and unit together. Change any 1 of them and it counts as a different material.
If you see A material exactly like this already exists, one is already on file. It may be inactive, so it will not be in the list until you add inactive materials to the Active filter.
An inactive material blocks a new one in the same way an active material does.
Adding many materials at once
Upload, next to Add, takes a spreadsheet and creates or updates materials from it. It is only on the desktop site. It behaves differently from Add in 3 ways worth knowing before you run it:
It updates materials you already have. A row carrying an existing material's SubBase ID overwrites that material with the values in the file. What the file does not say, it does not change; what it says, it replaces. Nothing in the Material Database restores the old values.
A blank cell clears the field. A row with an empty cost code or phase code removes that material's default rather than leaving it alone. The active flag, tags and image are all overwritten the same way.
It does not run the duplicate check. A spreadsheet can create materials that Add would have refused.
An ID from another company's export cannot overwrite anything. SubBase treats it as a new material and adds it instead.
Best practices
Put size and unit in their own fields, not in the Description. SubBase decides whether 2 materials are the same by comparing those fields, so a size typed into the description creates a near-duplicate it has no way to catch.
Download your current list before you upload one. The export is what tells you which SubBase ID belongs to which material, and a row with the wrong ID overwrites the wrong material.
Set the Default Cost Code while you are in the panel. It is applied when the material is ordered, so the alternative is coding it on every order from now on.
If this doesn't work
Start a chat from the Messenger in the bottom-left of this page, or email help@subbase.io. Include the order or project number and what you expected to happen.