Yesterday I brought home my 'estimating bag' with me (leather bag containing clipboard, pencils, measuring tape and measuring laser) to finish some things in the evening, but the clipboard with sketches was forgotten on my desk in the shop.

This is just one of numerous incidents happening regularly and I'm at the stage of admitting that this is a serious problem.

I'm looking for a software that would work on a laptop with touch screen or a tablet and that would be able to do the following:

1. Create and track multiple projects.
2. Take and save photos within the app in a way that those photos are automatically added to the project that is currently 'open' in the app, instead of me later going manually through all the photos that end up in some general space and moving them from there myself).
3. Ability to add random files (like .pdf, Word, Excel, .jpeg and so on) to the project.
3. Create notes (sketches) with stylus pen and also draw with stylus pen over photos (although I can do this outside of that app as long as it is not hard to add external files/photos to the project).
4. All ToDo tasks, notes, and other date:time designated entries that are created within their separate projects should show up all together on some general time scheduling thing (i.e., one general calendar that shows task from all projects together).
5. Everything should have a copy somewhere in a Cloud, so that I can access it regardless of if I'm in the shop, at home or somewhere on a road with just a tablet or a phone.

I would appreciate if anyone knew of such software and share the info here.
Thank you

I’d love to hear some suggestions on this too!

Oggie --

I forwarded your post to my brother, who builds custom FileMaker apps for a living. He is also the smartest person I know.

I wrote:
"Does this person need a custom Filemaker app? Do all of us need one?"

This is his reply:
"That is a perfect use case for FileMaker…..theoretically.

Project estimation is, as far as I have seen, very idiosyncratic and therefore more suited to a custom app than an off-the-shelf app. I’ve built them for my clients and I’ve looked over the shoulders of service vendors I’ve hired. I don’t know of a good one-size-fits-all job estimation app.

The catch with FileMaker is that hiring a custom designer like me is costly for a small outfit - it’ll run $20K or more. FileMaker is touted as a user-friendly DIY platform, but the license is actually not cheap, and making a job estimation app with all those features would be complicated from a data architecture point of view. To DIY you’ll either have to spend some time learning about data architecture or scale down your ambition to the point where you’re just summing line items. And for that you could use Google Sheets.

It’s a great question. Someone other than me might have a better answer."

FWIW, YMMV!

John Costin
Veneer Services Unlimited
(207) 459-7221
vsu@gwi.net
Custom Veneered Products for the Woodworking Industry

We use Microsoft OneNote and ClickUp

OneNote is free with Windows 10 and 11 I believe.
We use this more for getting info to the field like elevations and floor plans.

Clickup is free until you get to a certain level. I forget what that is.
This is a great app for us.
We create a folder for each job on here.
Track material ordering, Field Measurements, Shop Progress and Installation Progress.
This takes alot of time to set up but once you do and train people to use it then it is a valuable resource.
We dont live without ClickUp now.

You could do all of this with Mozaik and google sheets , you may not get the cloud functionality on it unless you sync it all to one drive or Google drive , but that would be the way I would go .

This is my current set up and it works but does not integrate job scheduling .

If there was one piece of software that did all that with the scheduling, I would use it .

Perhaps I will code it and make that my side hustle .

Thank you all for your answers.

John,
It's not just for Project Estimation. The unfortunate example I mentioned was just one of the things that happens. Sometimes I would forget to return a phone call, or an email, or forget to buy this or that, bring some tool with me to the installation, fail to send a quote in a timely manner and so on. Most of these things stem from the situations where at the moment -for whatever reason - it's not convenient for me to stop whatever I'm doing and write my thoughts down in a notebook which I use as a calendar. Then I somehow think I'll just remember it in my head, and it will magically pop out when the right time comes. Which almost never happens. I mean, the right time comes, but the damn things do not pop out.

So, what I was looking for is something more universal where I could easily add all my everyday tasks, thoughts, photos, reminders and similar things and organize them in a way that makes sense for the type of business I'm doing.
My current "setup" is distributed over many places: time schedule is manually written in a paper notebook, template files for surveys, quotes, change orders and invoices are on my laptop, certificates of insurances are on my shop computer, estimate drawings are in an estimate bag, photos on my phone, some things in my pickup truck, other in my box truck, and a lot of other stuff in my head, which, in general, is not particularly user friendly.

In the meantime, I've done some research on my own and stumbled upon an app called Trello. It appears to be very similar to the Clickup app that Sam suggested.
Since I've already skimmed through short tutorial for Trello and found out that it has almost everything I need (it's really that simple that one can start using it after 10-20 min of playing with it) I'm gonna give it a try.
It works in a browser, so it's independent of the hardware/software platform and it's fairly easy to add any files to the project (I think simple drag and drop works too) and everything is kept in a cloud for $10/month and accessible by any device that has web browser. Storage limit appears to be 'unlimited'.

Today I bought an iPad with that famous apple pencil, which will be connected via Wi-Fi to the internet while in shop or at home and via hotspot through my phone while somewhere else. The plan is to use it as the main thing for organizing my work schedule and generate survey drawings either by hand or drawing over photos. If there are paper documents, I'll use its camera to make digital copies and immediately upload to the cloud. Whatever I produce on my desktop computer in the shop or the one at home will be uploaded immediately into cloud too.

Right now, I'm working on how to best organize everything and if someone is still interested, I may come back in a few days and report what I've done and how it works.

Thank you and all the best

Another FileMaker dev here, basically retired but willing to help.

Feel free to ask questions and directions!

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Since you've got a new iPad now, you might download the free Claris FileMaker Go app from the app store. It has some usable apps but they're mostly meant to inspire users to consider exploring the possibilities of more customized solutions.

I use Trello. Every project gets its own board. There are checklists, document uploads, photos, calendar/scheduling features, and a ton of add-ons and integrations. I add tracking and BOL numbers to track shipments. Drawings and contract documents are there. Clients are added to each project’s board and can follow progress as their project is built.

I have one board to track all leads through the sales process all the way through production. Another board is a waiting list that I share with clients so they can see where they’re at in the stack without calling.

Things with Trello didn't go well.

Major problem is that tasks do not have time-duration option. The only option is single point in time when task is due. When viewed in calendar tasks are represented just as single discrete points in time without showing you how much of your daily time is actually occupied by those tasks. That means if you're looking at your calendar at some specific day in order to see if you can add something to it or simply to see where you start tomorrow and how will you day unravel, you have no idea of your time schedule, so you have to open every single task for that day, read it and figure out in your head your daily schedule from morning to evening.
This seems so unbelievable to me that I'm still thinking that I'm just missing some obvious thing/settings in the app?!

I'm checking ClickUp now, the app that Sam suggested.

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Oggie, In your last message you wrote, "That means if you're looking at your calendar at some specific day in order to see if you can add something to it or simply to see where you start tomorrow and how will you day unravel, you have no idea of your time schedule, so you have to open every single task for that day, read it and figure out in your head your daily schedule from morning to evening.".

I wonder whether you are looking for good scheduling functionality in the software. In my opinion, you may not find powerful scheduling functionality in many project management software.

Smartsheet has worked reasonably well for us. It's essentially google sheets on steroids, it can do more with calendar's, durtations, approvals etc but its very raw i.e. you'd have to build it out based on your needs. There are a number of consultants that can work with you to build out a solution but they may end up costing as much as an independent Filemaker developer.

I have been using Stack for estimating and they seem to be expanding their footprint in terms of management software. I really like their estimating product and it's proved to be quite flexible once you use it for a few weeks. They are also offering integration with quickbooks which is a really big deal, interoperability is critical and not enough people consider it.

It's worth noting that these options are SaaS (Software as a service) meaning you're paying by the month or year but typically this includes support, some training, etc. If someone builds you a custom app, you do not get the same level of support unless you're going to take that person on full time. Keep in mind that (while unlikely) you may have to get the developer back in when there are updates to windows (or whatever software you are using).