A labor backflush can be entered for an operation on a shop order route in the same manner that a material backflush is entered for a bill-of-material item. The labor backflush occurs in lieu of reporting labor hours for the operation and is entered automatically at the time of shop order receipt.

Labor backflush is typically appropriate in situations where cycle times are short. The ability to modify the backflush labor hours during Backflush Confirmation allows labor variances to be properly reported and reconciled.
A labor backflush transaction reports hours completed for a shop order operation at the time of shop order receipt. The setup and/or labor hours reported depends on the hours required for the shop order operation and the quantity received of the shop order parent item. For instance, if a shop order for 100 printed circuit board requires 20 hours at the surface mount operation, a shop order receipt for 50 printed circuit boards would backflush 10 hours of operation run time for the surface mount operation. If the operation required setup, the setup hours would also be backflushed.

When the shop order receipt is entered from the Inventory menu, Catalyst allows the backflush labor hours for backflush operations to be modified in the Backflush Confirmation screen. The Backflush Confirmation screen can be used to adjust the setup and run labor hours based on actual reported hours. The primary disadvantage of backflush transactions involves the timing of the transaction. When using the backflush, the labor transaction does not occur until the shop order receipt is entered. This means that backflush operations will still show the same hours required for capacity planning and finite scheduling purposes until the shop order receipt has been entered. For situations where cycle times are long or real-time updates are required, reporting labor by operation or shop order may be the better option.

The operations on a shop order can be a mix of both backflush and non-backflush. A work center can be designated as backflush on the Work Center Master, Product Configuration Master, and Shop Order Master. The backflush flag in the Work Center serves as a default setting when the work center or a standard operation requiring that work center is selected for a product configuration. When a shop order is created, the backflush labor flag from the product configuration is copied to the shop order. The backflush labor flag can be changed for any product configuration or shop order. The Backflush Confirmation screen will only display operations that have the backflush labor flag set on the shop order regardless of the setting on the Work Center Master or Product Configuration Master.