What fabrication job-work software is
Fabrication and job-work project management software runs each order as a project — not as a loose bundle of cutting lists and labour slips. A job is quoted, opened as a project, broken into a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) of tasks — cutting, fit-up, welding, finishing, dispatch — scheduled on a Gantt with dependencies, resourced with a per-task Bill of Resources of plate, consumables, labour and machine priced from a resource master, tracked as progress and material issued against the task, and billed by milestone or by weight or quantity delivered. Because everything hangs off one job record, the shop can trace a bill back to the exact tasks and resources behind it.
For the underlying lifecycle read the pillar guide, what is project management software. This page is the fabrication-specific view, and it is the thinking behind the fabrication & job-work project software product.
Why a cutting list and a labour slip are not enough
A fabrication shop rarely lacks activity; it lacks a thread that connects the quote to the cost. Three problems follow from managing jobs on paper.
1. The quote and the cost never meet
A job is quoted on estimated weight and hours, but the plate actually consumed and the welding hours actually booked live in different registers. Unless they post against the same tasks the quote was built on, the shop finishes the job with no idea whether it beat the quote or bled on it.
2. Concurrent jobs fight over the same machines
Several jobs run at once, all needing the same cutting machine, the same welders, the same crane. Without a resource-wise view of how those are loaded, the shop over-commits and jobs slip — and the customer is told a date the shop cannot keep.
3. Free-issue material becomes a reconciliation headache
Job-work runs on customer-supplied material, which has to be tracked against the job even though the shop does not bill for it. On paper that reconciliation is a monthly argument; on one engine it is a running total.
Breaking a job into a WBS
A fabrication job breaks naturally into a deliverable-based or stage-based WBS, and a serious tool lets you author whichever fits.
By assembly
Decomposed by the fabricated assemblies and sub-assemblies, so each can be cut, welded, finished and costed in its own right.
Deliverable-basedBy operation
Cutting, fit-up, welding, grinding, blasting, painting and dispatch — the WBS mirrors the shop-floor sequence and the way progress is measured.
Stage-basedBy job
The whole job-work order as one project, broken into the tasks that fulfil it — the natural shape for a job that differs every time.
Order-basedEach task carries an owner, an assigned user, dates, a budget, a progress percentage and its predecessor dependencies — cutting before fit-up, fit-up before welding, welding before finishing. Those dependencies turn the operation list into a schedule you can hold and re-flow when a stage slips. See the pillar's WBS versus a task list section and the WBS, tasks & dependencies feature.
Bill of Resources and job costing
Scheduling says when a task runs; the Bill of Resources says what it takes and what it costs. Each task carries a header, its processes and the resource lines drawn from the resource master.
- Material — plate, sections, fasteners and consumables such as wire and gas from the shared item master, each with quantity and rate.
- Labour — cutters, fitters, welders and painters, priced by their rate and effort from the resource master.
- Machine & tool — cutting machines, welding sets, cranes and blast booths, with rates and working hours held once in the resource master.
Because every line is priced, the BOR is the job cost. Cost estimation rolls each task up to an estimated cost compared against the quote before work starts; as plate is issued and hours are booked against tasks, the same structure records estimated-versus-actual, so a job eating its margin is visible before dispatch. See the Bill of Resources & costing feature.
Finishing jobs without knowing which ones actually made money?
We will show you a live fabrication job — WBS, per-task Bill of Resources and quoted-versus-actual costing — in 30 minutes, on your own job.
Free-issue material and job-work
Pure job-work runs on customer-supplied (free-issue) material: the shop adds cutting, welding and finishing but does not own the plate. That material is received and issued from the store against the specific task through the shared inventory engine, so consumption is tracked against the job even though the shop bills only for the conversion it adds — the labour, machine and consumables. The result is clean free-issue reconciliation and a true picture of the job's conversion cost, separate from the value of the customer's material.
Billing by weight or milestone
Because project bills are resource-itemised and keyed to tasks, a fabrication job is billed the way the contract is priced — by weight delivered, by piece, by milestone, or as the whole job. The measured output on each task feeds the claim, so a bill for tonnage fabricated traces back to the tasks and material behind it. Where the job is job-work or a works contract, the GST treatment sits on the same bill and should be confirmed with your CA. See the pillar's milestone and progress billing section and the project & milestone billing feature.
One job, from quote to weight-based bill
A structural fabrication shop takes a job to fabricate steelwork to a customer's drawings, priced per tonne. It is opened as a project with the estimated weight, budget and dates, then broken into a WBS — cutting, fit-up, welding, blasting, painting, dispatch — with dependencies so welding waits on fit-up. Each task carries a Bill of Resources: plate and consumables from the item master (customer free-issue plate tracked separately), welder and fitter hours and the cutting machine and crane from the resource master, rolled up to an estimated cost checked against the quote. As material is issued and hours are booked against each task, the estimate becomes actual, and the job is billed by tonnage delivered at each dispatch. Because it all rides one engine, the shop closes the job knowing its true per-tonne margin. This is the profile behind real deployments such as Micro India.
How Fast Project Management does it
Fast Project Management for fabrication and job-work is a working implementation of everything above, built by Improsys in Pune on the shared Fast Suite platform and available cloud or on-premise.
Frequently asked questions
What is fabrication and job-work project management software?
It is software that runs each fabrication or job-work order as a project rather than a loose set of cutting lists and labour slips. A job is quoted, opened as a project, broken into a Work Breakdown Structure of tasks — cutting, fit-up, welding, finishing, dispatch — scheduled on a Gantt with dependencies, resourced with a per-task Bill of Resources of plate, consumables, labour and machine priced from a resource master, tracked as progress and material issued against the task, and billed by milestone or by weight or quantity delivered. Everything hangs off one job record, so the shop can trace a bill back to the exact tasks and resources behind it.
How does it handle weight-based or job-rate billing?
Because project bills are resource-itemised and keyed to tasks, a fabrication job can be billed the way the contract is priced — by weight delivered, by piece, by milestone or as the whole job. The measured output on each task feeds the claim, so a bill for tonnage fabricated traces back to the tasks and material behind it. Where the job is job-work or a works contract, the GST treatment sits on the same bill and should be confirmed with your CA.
Can it compare quoted cost against actual on a fabrication job?
Yes. Each task's Bill of Resources — plate and consumables from the item master, welder and fitter hours and the machines they run from the resource master — rolls up to an estimated job cost compared against the quote. As material is issued from the store against a task and labour and machine hours are booked, the same structure records the actual, so estimated-versus-actual is live and a job that is eating its margin is visible before dispatch rather than after.
Does it manage customer-supplied (free-issue) material?
Job-work commonly runs on customer-supplied material. The material is received and issued from the store against the specific task through the shared inventory engine, so consumption is tracked against the job even when the shop is not billing for the material itself — only for the labour, machine and consumables it adds. This keeps free-issue reconciliation clean and the job's real conversion cost visible.
Is it cloud or on-premise, and does it suit a small fabrication shop?
It is available both cloud and on-premise. It suits shops of most sizes because it scales from a single job run as one project to many concurrent jobs on the Active, On-Hold and Completed tabs, with a resource-wise Gantt showing how machines and welders are loaded across jobs. Pricing is indicative in INR and should be confirmed for your user count.