The workshop and the site, finally running off the same schedule.
A 13-person business that both manufactures and installs commercial event rooms — tables, stages, sound equipment — was running production, jobs and invoicing out of GoHighLevel, text messages, Xero and Excel. We built one system covering the bill of materials through to the delivery docket, so what the workshop is making and what the site is waiting on are the same plan.
The challenge
This is two businesses that depend on each other. A workshop manufactures the fit-out; a site waits to install it. If production slips, the install slips, and if the install date moves, production should move with it.
Neither half could see the other. Production scheduling lived in one place, the job in another, stock in a third, and the coordination between them ran on text messages. GoHighLevel was carrying most of the operational weight — a marketing CRM being used as a production system, because nothing better was in place. What that setup could not answer was what a finished unit actually cost to make, where a batch of material ended up, or whether the workshop could realistically hit the date the site had been promised.
What we built
One system covering the product from bill of materials to delivery docket.
- Bills of materials for each product
- Work orders and production scheduling
- Raw material and finished-goods inventory
- Stock takes
- Batch and lot traceability
- Quality control checks recorded against the work order that produced the item
- Machine and line capacity planning
- Scrap and wastage tracking
- Purchasing and supplier management
- Dispatch and delivery dockets
- Per-unit costing
- Two-way Xero sync
Two halves of one business that used to coordinate by text message, now working from the same schedule.
The technical foundation
Capacity planning is what ties the two halves together — a work order is scheduled against the machines and hours actually available, not against optimism, so an install date is committed to on the basis of whether the workshop can hit it. Costing rolls up from the bill of materials through labour and scrap to a real per-unit figure, which is the number the business never had before. Batch and lot records follow material from goods-in through to the delivery docket, so tracing where something ended up is a lookup rather than an investigation.
The outcome
Stock and materials go missing far less often. Per-unit cost is a number the business can see rather than estimate, which makes forecasting and quoting meaningfully better. And the operation is running closer to its actual capacity without adding staff, at a lower cost than the tangle of tools it replaced.
Want something built like this?
Book a free 30-minute call — no pitch deck required.