Watch How Cabinetshop Maestro Transforms Your Shop's Workflow

Video Transcript

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Introduction

Welcome to Cabinetshop Maestro. Job management software made specifically for custom cabinet shops. As we all know, running a custom cabinet shop can be complicated. Cabinetshop Maestro aims to simplify it for you in three ways. A clear picture of every job at a glance. One place where all your job info lives. And a way to keep your whole team on the same page, from office, to the shop floor to the job site. Let's dive in and see how this software works.

Workflow Boards

Cabinetshop Maestro's Workflow Boards show you every active job and exactly where each one stands. With a quick glance, you can see where each job is at and what tasks need to be done next. Cabinetshop Maestro has two distinct workflow boards. One set up for jobs that are in your SALES process, where you are still trying to win the job. The second being for jobs that are in the PRODUCTION phase, for when you have already won the job and are actively working on it. Each board has distinct milestones or phases, which are represented as columns on the board. As the tasks are completed, the job progresses from left to right on the board, moving through each milestone. And, not to worry, these milestones are completely customizable, so you can create your own custom workflow.

Creating and Managing Jobs

Okay, let's say you receive a call or email about a job. You'll get some details that you need to start keeping track of right away. Let's create the job. You can either pick from your database of existing customers or create a new customer here. You'll need to tell the system what milestone this job will be in — let's say this job is in the initial milestone — and then name the job.

Creating the job here allows you to keep all the information and files related to this job centralized into one place. This job folder will now serve as the hub for managing all information about this job for you and your team. For example, here in the job details section, you can spec out all the millwork and cabinet details you know at this point. What type of cabinets? Hinging? What materials will the casework be made of? How about any edgebanding? What will the exteriors be? Cherry? What type of doors? This form can be completely customized and also offers places for type-in notes in each section of the form as well.

You can also upload any files related to the job, such as spec sheets, pictures of the job site, or drawing files. As you detail the job into Cabinetshop Maestro, you can make any notes you need to keep track of progress or important information. Often with custom work these details will be fleshed out over time, so you can keep coming back to the job folder to enter information and details when you get them. You can now use the Default Task Lists to quickly add a whole set of sales tasks for the job.

Moving Through the Workflow

Now let's go back to the workflow boards. This job is now on the sales board since this is a new job. We can see that it is in the initial milestone column and our one initial milestone task is showing. We can click on a task to get more information on that task or to log our time. Or, we can simply mark that task as complete by checking on the checkbox. As we mark tasks as complete, notice that the job will move through the workflow board into the next milestones as each set of tasks are completed.

Now the job is in the estimating and proposal milestone and we have the last set of tasks to be done in the Sales board. Let's mark those tasks as complete. As we mark those tasks as complete, the job will now move from the sales board and into the production board. Alternatively, if we didn't get the job, you could mark it as "not-awarded", and archive it for future reference.

Scheduling and Milestone Timelines

But this job was in fact awarded and we now know from viewing our job on the production board that we need to now schedule this job and order materials. To schedule this job, we open the job and add our production tasks using our default set of tasks for production. We could assign dates to each of these tasks, but we suggest that it's more beneficial to date the milestone dates rather than the tasks themselves. This sets the schedule for the milestones and all the tasks within that milestone, and is much easier to change if things come up and you have to adjust the timeline. You can always come back and assign dates to any task at a later time, especially those tasks that you want to show up on task calendar views. For now, dating the milestones works great for scheduling this job and seeing how it will fit in with your other jobs. Once you have set some dates for your timelines, you can see how this job is going to fit in with your other active jobs. To do this, click on "Schedules" in the top navigation and select "Milestone Timelines."

Here, you will see a Gantt chart that depicts your different production milestones as a horizontal section. In this view, you can think of these milestones as being departments within your company. You can schedule each department's timeline and see where jobs might be overlapping. It may be fine for jobs in the build milestone to overlap, but often, it's not ideal for jobs in the finishing or install department, which are often bottlenecks. More care needs to be taken in scheduling jobs through these milestones. You can adjust your schedules by clicking on the job and adding or adjusting dates and see how they will fit into the chart on the right. These dates are also what is used to give you a warning when the job is not on schedule by displaying an orange bar on the job while it's on the workflow board. The orange bar lets you know that the job should be further along than it is in terms of which milestone it is currently in.

Materials and Purchase Orders

Now back to our sample job. It is scheduled, and we mark that task as complete. Next, we will need to order materials. Materials are added to a job and marked as needed. These materials come from your materials catalog in your account. We have seeded your catalog with standard material items, but you will want to customize this catalog to represent material items that you actually use. When you add materials into a job, they are marked as needed. However, if you have indicated in your catalog that you keep this item in inventory, it will let you know how many you have. At this time, you will be able to "pull" those materials from inventory, and then they will be marked to let you know that you "have" them.

For all the other materials in your job folder that are marked as needed, you can see them and other needed materials from all your other jobs in the Material tab in the top navigation under "needed materials". This page compiles all of your needed materials from all of your jobs. From here, you can create a digital purchase order to track the ordering of materials. You simply click on all the materials you want to order and then click "Create a Purchase Order". This keeps a digital record of what you are ordering, who ordered it, and when it's expected. These purchases can even be sent directly to the vendor if they accept orders through email. You can still order these materials as you normally do. Cabinetshop Maestro just makes a digital record of you ordering it.

Once these materials come in, you can go to the Material tab in the top navigation and this time click on "ordered materials". Here, you can mark all items as received or only certain items as received and mark the rest as back-ordered. This helps you keep track of what materials you have, what you've ordered and received, and any materials you still need for your jobs. When you go back and open your job, the material section will give you up-to-date information on all of your job materials and the status of each.

Building the Job and Tracking Time

Since our materials are ordered and received, we can mark that task as complete, moving the job into the "Build" milestone. Now, all the build tasks are active. We start working on the job, going one by one and completing all our building tasks. As we work on the tasks, we can open a task by clicking on it to get more information or see if the task was broken down into subtasks. We can also comment back and forth regarding this task and log our time spent on it. By logging time on these tasks, you can easily track how much time is spent on each task by employee, milestone, and job. This provides valuable insights and helps you get detailed summaries of where time is being spent.

Notes and Team Communication

As this job progresses, you'll be able to easily access the job whenever important details come up. You can fine tune schedules and keep the job information current and up-to-date for yourself and your team. It's important to get into the habit of adding job notes and discussions since things always come up with custom work. Cabinetshop Maestro makes it easy to keep everyone up-to-date with some of the nuances that come with custom work. To add a discussion or note to a job or room, simply create a note and decide who on your team needs to see it. You can even set up email notifications for important notes. Additionally, Maestro will automatically let you know who has read what, giving people notifications when an unread discussion is available. Clicking the notification bell for unread discussions takes users to their "Me/Everyone" page. On the Me/Everyone page, users can see their task lists, view their calendars and activity streams, read job discussions and notes, and mark any unread discussions as read. It's an effective way to stay organized and on top of everything.

Additional Features

Cabinetshop Maestro offers many additional features, from time tracking to estimates, proposals, and invoicing.

Dive into our free 14-day trial to experience these capabilities firsthand. Get started today and witness how it can effortlessly streamline your workflow and enhance your organization. Thanks for watching.