The number should travel from the tape measure to the supplier invoice without anyone retyping it
Nobody in a joinery or steel shop wants more screens. What they want is for the measurement taken on site to reach the cutting list, the purchase order and the final invoice without being re-entered by four people who each round it differently. Everything below is the version of that problem we have actually met in these factories.
Recognise any of this
Where the money goes before anyone calls it a problem
If more than two of these are true this week, the cost is already larger than the system you would replace.
- 01
The shortage is discovered on cutting day. The board is on the saw, the hinge is not in the store, and the imported one is four weeks out.
Materials are 55–70% of the cost of a job in this trade, and Blum, Häfele, veneer, glass and special profiles run 4–8 week lead times. An idle CNC or press is the most expensive object in the building.
- 02
Production started before the client signed the shop drawing, because the programme was tight and somebody said it would be fine.
Every client dispute we have been shown in this industry traces back to this one moment. The panel is cut, the drawing changes, and the factory absorbs it — because there is no signed revision to point at.
- 03
The 240 cm wardrobe was priced as 180. The fifth floor with no lift was priced as ground floor.
The surveyor recorded the working width, the out-of-square and the access. The quotation used the default dimensions of a standard assembly. This is exactly how a factory loses money while its reports say it is profitable.
- 04
The variation was approved on WhatsApp, executed the same week, and never turned into an invoice line.
Factories in this vertical routinely execute approved variations worth 8–12% of contract value and bill none of it. It is the largest single leak in the trade and it is invisible, because the work was done and the client was happy.
- 05
Three tons of steel are at the galvaniser. Which job they belong to is a question for whoever sent them.
Galvanising is always external; powder coat and duco usually are. This is not a purchase — it is your own material leaving the building, getting processed and coming back. Stock says you have it. The yard says otherwise.
- 06
Delivery went to a site that was still being plastered.
A finished kitchen delivered into wet works is damaged goods plus a storage dispute plus a second truck. One confirmation before dispatch prevents the whole sequence.
- 07
Snagging is done by two men and a van and never appears against the job.
Every snag is labour, material and a truck. If the fixes never reach the costing sheet, the margin the system reports is fiction — and the jobs you think are your best ones may be the worst.
What we build
The system that removes those, specifically
Not a feature list. Each of these exists because one of the problems above cost somebody real money.
Material requirement per job, netted against what you hold
Every job explodes into what it actually needs, checked against stock and against what is already on order, with lead time carried on the line. The shortage surfaces when the job is confirmed, not on cutting day.
No cut before the signed drawing
A design revision register holds each drawing, its revision number and the client's approval. Production cannot be released against an unapproved revision. When a client says they never approved it, there is a document with a date.
Pricing driven by the survey, not by the default
The measured width and height, the out-of-square, the lift or stair access and the site difficulty factor are read by the estimate rather than recorded and ignored. The price that leaves your office is the price of the job you will actually build.
A variation register that ends in an invoice
A variation is raised, priced, approved and then appears in the next billing application by itself. Nothing approved stays unbilled because a coordinator forgot it existed.
Custody of material at subcontractors
Galvanising, powder coating, duco and CNC outsourcing are tracked as your material sitting at their premises: what went, what came back, what is still there, against which job.
Finite capacity where it matters, and nowhere else
Not a full plant Gantt that nobody opens. Capacity is enforced on the work centres that are actually the constraint — the press or the paint line in joinery, the CNC or the welding bay in steel — because the factory moves at the speed of its slowest machine.
A costing sheet that includes the snags
Material, labour, subcontract, delivery and every snag visit posted against the job. The margin figure at the end is the real one, and it arrives while you can still do something about the next quotation.
In this industry
Businesses we do this for
Silvertex
Textiles, furnishing and interior manufacturing
We set up every branch on Odoo and have run the software and its maintenance since — not the operation, the system underneath it. They use close to the full application set, which is rare and is the reason the group runs on one set of numbers rather than nine.
- Branches set up and maintained
- 9+
- Continuous, still running
- 4+ yrs
- Countries on one system
- 5
Onesta
Fit-out contracting
Our contracting system on Odoo, implemented for fit-out delivery.
Questions
What people in this industry ask us first
We are engineer-to-order. Every job is different. Does ERP even fit?
Generic ERP does not, which is usually why the first attempt failed. A standard system assumes a product with a bill of material that exists before the order. In your factory the bill of material is created by the drawing, and the drawing changes. What fits is a system built around the job — survey, drawing revision, cutting list, variation, costing sheet — with manufacturing underneath it rather than in front of it.
Will this replace our AutoCAD or our nesting software?
No, and it should not try. Your drawing office and your nesting stay where they are. What we connect is the commercial and material chain around them: what was approved, what was ordered, what was cut, what was outsourced, what was billed. The design tools that work already are not the problem.
How long before the factory floor is actually using it?
We start with a two-week diagnosis rather than a proposal. At the end of it you get the specific list of where money is leaving your factory and what each fix costs, and you can take that list to anyone. Most joinery and steel implementations then run in stages, with the estimate-to-invoice chain first, because that is where the leak is.
How we deliver it
Joinery, steel and fabrication
Start with a diagnosis, not a demo
Two weeks. We walk your floor and your books, and you get the list of where money is leaving the business with a cost against each item. The list is yours whether or not you work with us afterwards.
Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM (GST)
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