← Back to Bead BoardWelding job tracking spreadsheet vs Bead Board
You probably ended up here because somebody in the shop has been running jobs out of a spreadsheet and you're wondering if there's something better yet. Yeah, once the shop is big enough that anyone besides you is touching it. Here's why.
It's always the same spreadsheet
A Jobs tab with job number, customer, description, due date. A Quotes tab with a markup formula the last guy wrote and nobody wants to touch. A Materials tab with last year's steel prices. It got you from 3 jobs a month to 8. Now you're at 15 and nobody can remember which number you gave Henderson last Tuesday.
The sheet worked fine when it was one person editing on a laptop. It stops working the day somebody else needs to see it.
Side by side
When the spreadsheet is still the right tool
Solo welder, five jobs a year out of the garage? Stay on the spreadsheet. Don't pay $99 a month to replace something that already works. Come back when you hire your first helper, or when a customer calls about a job from six months back and the sheet can't tell you what you charged.
When it starts costing you jobs
The spreadsheet starts losing you money the day it has to leave the laptop. A welder in the truck can't pinch-zoom through a Google Sheet with dirty gloves. A fabricator on the floor can't add in-progress photos to a row. Your wife updates a cell at the kitchen table the same minute you're adding one from your phone, and one of those changes just goes away. The spreadsheet doesn't tell you. You find out three weeks later when a customer calls and the number on their quote doesn't match the one in your file.
Then there's the pricing from memory problem. You charged $340 for a handrail bracket last spring. You remember that. You don't remember that it took you six hours and you barely made your shop rate. The sheet doesn't remember either, because the hours column is empty on half the rows.
Questions from welders still on the spreadsheet
Do I need welding job tracking software if I only have one or two people?
If you are the only person touching the spreadsheet and you can pull up last year's pricing from memory, the spreadsheet is fine. Once somebody else needs to see it, or a customer calls about a job from six months back and you can't find what you charged, that is when it costs you.
Why pay $99 a month when the spreadsheet is free?
The spreadsheet is free until you lose a job because two people edited it at the same time, or until you spend twenty minutes searching tabs for a number you quoted last spring. The $99 buys search, photos, offline, and one version of the truth. Whether that is worth it depends on how many jobs you run per month.
Can I use Bead Board and still keep my spreadsheet?
Yes. A lot of shops run both for a few weeks until they trust the new system. Bead Board does not import from spreadsheets because most welding spreadsheets are structured differently, but you can add jobs as they come in and let the old ones age out of the sheet.
How do I track hours per job in a spreadsheet?
You add a column and hope people fill it in. Most shops we talk to say the hours column is empty on at least half the rows. Bead Board puts a clock-in button on every job card so the welder taps it from their phone when they start and stop. It adds up automatically.
Also worth reading: QuickBooks for the shop floor • WeldTrace (code welding) • Jobber (field services) • the whiteboard • how job tracking works.