The Best BOM Management Tools to Share with Your Contract Manufacturer

The Bill of Materials (BOM) is one of the most important documents when building a product. It's a list of every part and defines the material, color, fabrication method, MPN (if necessary), and other requirements for the part.  In reality, a BOM is an active document. It evolves with design revisions, supplier updates, material substitutions, and engineering changes. If your BOM isn’t easy to share and update with your contract manufacturer, you risk miscommunication, delays, and costly mistakes.

At EPower Corp, we’ve worked with a wide range of BOM management tools, from the simplicity of Excel and Google Sheets to more advanced platforms like OpenBOM and some PLM systems. Each has its strengths, but also its limits, especially when it comes to keeping data live and shareable with your manufacturing partners.

In this blog, we’ll explore the best software options for managing your BOM with a contract manufacturer, highlighting where each tool excels, where it falls short, and how to decide which is the right fit for your company’s stage and complexity.

Excel: The Most Basic BOM Management Option

For many companies, Excel is the default starting point for building and managing their BOM. In some ways, it’s just a slight improvement from pen and paper. It's simple rows and columns that let you list out part numbers, descriptions, and costs. And it doesn't hurt that everyone knows how to use Excel, even your supplier in China. If your RFQ process is based on sharing an Excel file, that’s completely fine. At this stage, you’re likely just looking to communicate part details and pricing in a clear format, and Excel gets the job done.

However, the limitations of Excel become obvious as soon as your contract manufacturer is more involved in development and moving into production. Once you send a file, it becomes static and essentially outdated. This means any updates or changes aren’t automatically reflected in your supplier’s version. That means you can easily end up with multiple versions floating around, each slightly different. Without live updates, version history, or collaboration features, Excel creates room for errors, miscommunication, and costly delays.

For small projects or very early stages, Excel works as a basic tool. But if you plan to scale or involve your contract manufacturer in more advanced development, it’s worth considering alternatives that allow live updates and true collaboration.

Google Sheets: A Step Forward

Google Sheets takes everything that Excel does and makes it shareable in real time. Instead of emailing static files back and forth, you and your contract manufacturer can work on the same document simultaneously. With built-in version history, you can track changes and roll back if something goes wrong. 

That said, Google Sheets is still not built for BOM management. It’s essentially a cloud spreadsheet, which means it’s prone to human error and doesn’t offer structured controls for part numbers, sub-assemblies, or engineering revisions. Links can break, formulas can fail, and if multiple people are editing without clear processes, the BOM can still become messy quickly. Also, there is little control. Meaning, you can't restrict your contract manufacturer from editing a specific column if you don't want them to. 

For companies in early development or transitioning from RFQs into light collaboration, Google Sheets is a good upgrade from Excel. But as your BOM grows more complex and your contract manufacturer takes on a bigger role in development, you’ll start to feel its limits. And sometimes, changing BOM tools is just too cumbersome. It's best to get it right the first time. 

Notion: Flexible but Not Specialized

Notion is often praised for its flexibility, and that’s exactly what makes it appealing for managing a BOM in the early stages of development. You can create custom tables, link documents, embed thumbnails, and organize everything in one workspace. If your team is already using Notion for project management, adding a BOM page can feel natural. It also makes it easy to keep context; your BOM can sit alongside design notes, supplier communications, and testing documentation.

But Notion’s strength is also its weakness. It isn’t a dedicated BOM management tool, which means you need to build the structure yourself. Tracking sub-assemblies, ensuring revision control, and managing large amounts of data can quickly become overwhelming. What works fine for a single product with a simple parts list can start to break down once your contract manufacturer is working with you on multiple SKUs or complex assemblies.

Notion is best for startups or small teams who want an all-in-one space to document and share product details, including the BOM. However, once you begin relying on your contract manufacturer for deeper involvement in development and production, you’ll need something more structured.

Airtable: Adding Structure and Automation

Airtable sits somewhere between a spreadsheet and a database, making it a strong step up from Google Sheets or Notion for managing a BOM. With Airtable, you can link related tables together,  for example, connecting sub-assemblies to a main assembly or linking part numbers to approved suppliers. Attachments, notes, and even images can be tied directly to each line item, which makes communication with your contract manufacturer much more seamless.

One of Airtable’s biggest advantages is automation. You can set up notifications when a field changes, integrate with other software tools, or even build lightweight workflows around BOM updates. For a growing company that wants more control and visibility than a spreadsheet offers, Airtable can feel like a natural evolution.

The downside is that, like Notion, Airtable is still not purpose-built for BOM management. It can handle complexity better than Sheets, but it requires careful setup and ongoing maintenance. Without strict discipline, databases can become inconsistent and hard to manage over time.

Airtable is a great option for mid-sized companies that need more structure and are ready to invest some effort in building a BOM system that’s both flexible and collaborative.

OpenBOM: Built for BOM Collaboration

Unlike spreadsheets or general-purpose tools, OpenBOM was originally designed to manage the BOM. It gives you a platform where you and your contract manufacturer can work on the same live document, with every change tracked in real time. Revision control, part libraries, and automatic updates mean you don’t have to worry about whether your supplier is looking at the right version of the BOM because they are. 

One of OpenBOM’s biggest strengths is integration. It connects directly with CAD tools and other product data management systems, so design changes flow seamlessly into the BOM. This also means you can go from CAD to BOM very quickly. This reduces the risk of mismatches between engineering files and manufacturing instructions, which is often a major pain point when scaling production.

The trade-off is that OpenBOM is more complex than spreadsheets or flexible tools like Airtable. There’s a learning curve, and smaller teams may find it heavier than they need at the prototype stage. It’s also a paid solution, which is the first one on this list. And this can be a hurdle for some budgets. 

Still, for companies moving from development into production, OpenBOM provides a level of reliability and collaboration that spreadsheets simply can’t match.

PLM Systems: The Enterprise-Level Option

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems like Arena, Autodesk Fusion Manage, Teamcenter, or Propel take BOM management to the highest level. These platforms aren’t just about listing parts; they connect engineering, quality, sourcing, and manufacturing into a single environment. With full revision control, approval workflows, and supplier collaboration portals, PLM systems ensure every stakeholder is always working with the latest version of the BOM.

For those larger corporations that need more control in managing complex assemblies, multiple SKUs, or large global supply chains, PLM offers the rigor and scalability needed to prevent costly errors. They allow for detailed traceability, integrate with CAD and ERP systems, and provide the infrastructure that large organizations require to keep products on track from development through mass production.

But with this power comes complexity. PLM systems are expensive, time-consuming to implement, and often require dedicated resources to manage. For most companies, you need a dedicated user who manages these systems and that becomes their full-time job. For smaller companies or early-stage products, they can feel like overkill. The value of PLM really shows when your operations reach a size where version mismatches or data silos could cost millions in rework or delays.

In short, PLM is the gold standard for enterprise-level BOM management. If you’re a scaling brand still in the early to mid-stages, tools like Airtable or OpenBOM are likely a better fit until your operations truly demand a full-scale PLM solution.

Conclusion: BOM Management Tools to Share With Your Contract Manufacturer

Managing your BOM effectively with your contract manufacturer is about more than just keeping a list of parts. It’s about ensuring that everyone is always working from the same source of truth. Excel may be fine for an RFQ or a very early prototype, but once your contract manufacturer becomes more involved in development and production, static files create risk. That’s where live, shareable, and collaborative tools make all the difference.

From the simplicity of Google Sheets to the flexibility of Notion and Airtable, and from purpose-built solutions like OpenBOM to enterprise-grade PLM systems, each tool has its place depending on your stage of growth and product complexity. At EPower Corp, we’ve worked with all of these platforms and have seen firsthand how the right choice can reduce errors, speed up communication, and ultimately get products to market faster.

The key takeaway is this: your BOM is a living document. The sooner you move away from static spreadsheets and into tools that support real-time collaboration with your contract manufacturer, the smoother your path to production will be.