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inventory bid software

7/12/20       
Matt Member

I own a shop with 3 employees. Annual sales just under $600k. We build made to order furniture; beds, tables, and small-scale built-ins like murphy beds and vanities. No kitchens or large-scale stuff. We have all the usual equipment: slider, CNC, edgebander, wide belt, etc…
I'm looking for software recommendations for the following:
Must have: inventory controls, quotation features
Nice to have: Scheduling, Job Tracking, Cutlist integration
Don't care: Payroll, Time Tracking
Goal software budget would be around $15k.
To elaborate on what I think we need:
Inventory Controls. Our inventory is a perpetual headache. I'm trying to find a way where the inventory gets barcoded and tracked upon receipt then tracked through the shop until it becomes either trash or a remnant on a shelf for future use. Since we build furniture and few "cabinets" we have a lot of waste that we try to repurpose. We currently use the Shared Materials feature of Cutlist Gold. It was fine but we’ve outgrown it. Too many people are now accessing the shared file and it doesn’t have any kind of barcoding feature so we find the database to be frequently off.
Quotation Feature. I'd also like to start to improve our bid software so I can work towards hiring and training someone else to handle that workload under my supervision instead of me handling it directly. Like most shop owners, I’ve developed some elaborate spreadsheets over the years. The spreadsheets work well, but with all the additions and modifications over the years they’ve become akin to the Winchester Mansion. Explaining the spreadsheet’s functionality to an employee would be confusing to even the brightest employee. Furthermore, they contain years of time and pricing data I don’t want copied and utilized for someone else to jumpstart their own woodshop venture.
Scheduling/Job Tracking. We currently use a Kanban board along with a Scrum app for individual job tracking. It has worked remarkably well. I’m not opposed to considering something new, but it wouldn’t be a “selling” feature for me since what we have is working.
Cutlist Integration. Having software that automates cutlist-inventory integration would be very helpful. Borderline a Must Have, but I could go without this if the inventory features of the software were otherwise really helpful.
Our CNC and edgebander aren’t used in a traditional cabinet shop sense so integrating them with software is of minimal utility at this point.
Payroll/Time tracking. We currently use an app for this. Each employee has on their phone. Job info is on the plans. Employees long in/out of the project codes on their phones. Since that data is also used for payroll I have found it to be remarkably accurate. Like my Scheduling comments I would consider alternatives but it’s not a selling point since what I have works.
All the software I look at requires big front investment of both time and money. I’d appreciate your thoughts on which software might offer the best solution.

7/13/20       #3: inventory bid software ...
Oggie Member

Not sure if a single peace of software that does all that even exists, but even if it does I don't think I would go that route in a small shop.

I prefer many 'smaller' solutions that do one or small number of tasks well to one big that does it all.

7/14/20       #4: inventory bid software ...
Patrick S Gilbert

You are looking for the holy grail.

I can save you some trouble, it doesn't exist.

IMO it is best to keep it simple. You might check out Lean manufacturing. Checkout what Paul Akers has to say.

7/15/20       #5: inventory bid software ...
Sam

Take a look at this....
https://www.innergy.com/

I have good things but have not used them.
Not sure of the cost but sure its not cheap.

7/16/20       #6: inventory bid software ...
Gary Balcom Member

Another to add to your browsing list would be Tradesoft. We've been using their products for a long time. No matter what, I think you need to have something database driven.

7/16/20       #7: inventory bid software ...
Patrick S Gilbert

Matt

I would think that Quick Books will handle your situation nicely, talk to an accountant and tell them what you want to accomplish, I bet they can accommodate what you want with QB


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