The quick answer
With Advanced Bill of Materials, schedule a component change as a new revision on the same bill of materials. Open the BOM, click Create New Revision, set its Effective Start Date, list the full component set, and end the current revision the day before. A work order then fills Bill of Materials Revision from its Production Start Date, not its transaction Date. Move that date past the cutover and the revision and component lines change with it.
The screenshots show sample data. Person and operating-company names are fictional. Use your own records and values when following the steps.
Before you start
You need Advanced Bill of Materials (Setup > Company > Enable Features, Items & Inventory subtab), Assembly Items, and Work Orders enabled, plus permission to edit BOM revisions and enter work orders. The assembly already has a BOM on its Manufacturing subtab, marked Master Default, and the component items exist. In this example the BOM is available for all locations and no location has its own Default for Location BOM. If yours does, that BOM takes precedence over the Master Default at that location, so set Subsidiary and Location on the work order before you judge which BOM and revision it picked. The work order screenshots use a custom form. On the standard form, Subsidiary, Department, Class, and Location sit under Classification, and the bill of materials and production date fields sit under Primary Information. Custom forms can hide or rearrange them, but the field names are the same. Dates follow your date format preference.
01. Check the assembly's BOM
Open the assembly item (Lists > Accounting > Items) and click the Manufacturing subtab. The Bills of Materials sublist shows each BOM and its Current Revision, which is the revision effective today. It reads No Active Revision when nothing is effective today, which includes a BOM with no revisions yet, as here. You can also reach the BOM from Lists > Supply Chain > Bills of Materials. Click the BOM name to open the Bill of Materials record. Its Revisions subtab shows No records to show.
02. Create the first dated revision
On the Revisions subtab, click Create New Revision. The Bill of Materials Revision form opens in its own window. Enter a Name, an Effective Start Date of 10/01/2026, and an Effective End Date of 11/15/2026. Bill Of Materials is already filled from the BOM you started on. On Components, pick each item and click Add. New lines default to Component Yield 100.0% and BOM Quantity 1, which is the quantity per assembly. This revision uses one Lantern Housing and one Acrylic Lens. Click Save. The window closes and the BOM record shows the new revision.
03. Create the replacement revision
Click Create New Revision again. Start this one on 11/16/2026, the day after the first revision ends, and leave Effective End Date blank so it stays open-ended. List the complete component set again: Lantern Housing and the new Tempered Glass Lens. A revision replaces the whole list for its dates, so leaving out an unchanged part would drop it from work orders. Save, then check the Revisions subtab. Both revisions are listed, neither is inactive, and the ranges don't overlap.
Revision ranges on one BOM can't overlap, though gaps are allowed (a gap just means no revision is effective on those dates). If the current revision has no end date, NetSuite rejects the overlap, so edit that revision and end it the day before the new start date first.
04. Enter a work order
From Create New, choose Work Order. Select Subsidiary and Location, then Assembly, and enter Quantity 25. Units shows the assembly's stock unit with its conversion rate, Each(1). In Transaction Information, Production Start Date shows 10/14/2026, the same as Date on this form. Bill of Materials fills with the master default BOM, and Bill of Materials Revision fills with SL-R1 Acrylic Lens because 10/14/2026 falls inside its range.
The Items subtab lists the components from that revision: 25 Lantern Housing and 25 Acrylic Lens, which is BOM Quantity 1 times 25 lanterns at 100% yield. Commitment defaults to Available Qty, and Available and On Hand show each component's stock.
05. Change the Production Start Date
Replace Production Start Date with 11/20/2026 and leave Date alone. Bill of Materials Revision switches to SL-R2 Tempered Lens, because 11/20/2026 is on or after its 11/16/2026 start date. The Items subtab recalculates from SL-R2: Lantern Housing stays at 25 and Tempered Glass Lens replaces Acrylic Lens. The walkthrough stops here without saving the work order.
Check the result
- The BOM's Revisions subtab lists both revisions with ranges that don't overlap.
- A Production Start Date inside the first range fills SL-R1 and lists Acrylic Lens.
- A Production Start Date on or after 11/16/2026 fills SL-R2 and lists Tempered Glass Lens.
- Date stays 10/14/2026 throughout, so the revision followed Production Start Date.
Changing the date or revision rebuilds the top-level component lines, so any manual line edit is overwritten. Check the lines again before you save. Subassemblies resolve their own revisions, and a work order that is released or already has production transactions may limit what you can change.
Common questions
Why did my work order pick the old BOM revision?
The work order uses the revision that's effective on its Production Start Date. In this example any date from 10/01/2026 through 11/15/2026 gets the Acrylic Lens revision, and 11/16/2026 or later gets Tempered Glass Lens. Check Production Start Date, not the transaction Date, and make sure the revision you expected isn't marked inactive.
What's the difference between Date and Production Start Date?
Date is the transaction date. Production Start Date is when production is planned to begin, and that's the date NetSuite uses to pick the BOM revision. They often start out the same on a new work order, which is why the difference is easy to miss.
Will existing work orders update when I add a revision?
No. Adding or re-dating a revision doesn't rewrite work orders you already entered. They keep their revision and component lines unless you change their Production Start Date or revision yourself, so reopen any affected orders and check them.
What does No Active Revision mean?
On the assembly's Bills of Materials sublist, it means no revision of that BOM is effective today. That happens when the BOM has no revisions yet, when the first revision starts in the future, when today falls in a gap between revisions, or when the only matching revision is inactive.
Can two revisions be effective at once, and can I pick one manually?
No to the first: revision date ranges on the same BOM can't overlap, so only one revision applies on any date. If your form lets you edit Bill of Materials Revision on the work order, you can choose a different revision, and the top-level component lines update to match it.