Welding shop management software for 1-10 person shops
Bead Board runs the whole shop from one place: the job board, the quote builder, customers with their full job history, hours against estimates, photos tied to jobs, and search across all of it. What it refuses to be is an ERP.
Quick answer
Welding shop management software for a small shop should cover five things: track the jobs, build the quotes, know the customers, count the hours, and keep the photos. Bead Board does those five on web, iPhone, and Android for $99 a month flat, and deliberately leaves out inventory, dispatch, compliance, and accounting modules a 1-10 person shop does not need.
Everything about a customer in one tap
Open a customer and see every job you have ever done for them: what it was, what you charged, how long it took, the photos, the notes. When they call about "another gate like last time," you are looking at last time before they finish the sentence.
Hours, photos, and the paper trail live on the job
Every clock-in, every photo, every quote line, every invoice belongs to a job. Nothing lives in a text thread or somebody's camera roll. A year later the whole story of the job is still in one place, searchable.
Search the whole shop
Type "handrail" and get every job, quote line, customer, and note that mentions one. The shop's memory stops living in the owner's head. That is most of what "management software" should mean for a shop this size.
Management software that refuses to become an ERP
Most shop management software is sold on the modules you will never open: inventory, purchasing, dispatch, compliance, payroll. You pay for all of it, you configure all of it, and six months later the shop is back on the whiteboard because the software is more work than the work.
Bead Board does not build those modules on purpose. No stock levels — we track material prices for quoting, not inventory. No scheduling engine — the board is the schedule. No WPS/PQR compliance — that is a different product for a different kind of shop. No accounting — you have QuickBooks and a bookkeeper. If a feature does not help a small shop track jobs, build quotes, or find past pricing, it stays out.
Bead Board vs Tradify • Bead Board vs JobQuote IQ • Best welding shop software 2026
Not built for
Questions welders keep asking
Is Bead Board an ERP?
No, on purpose. An ERP tries to run purchasing, inventory, production, and accounting in one system, and it makes sense at 50 people. At 5 people it is a part-time job nobody has. Bead Board covers the pieces a small shop actually manages daily: jobs, quotes, customers, hours, photos.
Does it do inventory, scheduling, or accounting?
No. For material we track your buy prices and markup so quoting is fast, not stock counts. The job board is the schedule. For accounting, Bead Board generates quote and invoice PDFs and you keep QuickBooks. Shops that need dispatch or accounting sync should look at Tradify; we would rather tell you that than pretend.
How big a shop does Bead Board fit?
One to ten people. That covers the owner-operator through a shop with a few welders and someone in the office. Past that, quoting gets more industrial and dispatch starts to matter, and a tool like JobQuote IQ or a real ERP starts earning its cost. We built for the shops below that line.
Free resources
Compare Bead Board: vs Tradify • vs JobQuote IQ • vs QuickBooks • do I need it?