Inventory & Production Planning for Job Shops
Quote make-to-order work on real material costs, reuse per-job BOMs instead of rebuilding them, run small batches, and buy materials against your actual backlog.
The Hidden Costs of Running a Job Shop on Spreadsheets
Every make-to-order shop hits the same four problems. Most don't realise how much they're losing to them.
Every job is different, so there's no standard price list to fall back on. Without live material costs at hand, a quote is either padded defensively or based on numbers from the last time you happened to buy that material.
Custom and small-batch work means the bill of materials changes job to job. Recreating it from scratch — or copy-pasting an old one and hoping nothing was missed — eats time you could spend running the job.
Saying yes to a new job without knowing how full the shop already is leads to either turning away work you had room for, or overcommitting and blowing a delivery date.
Job shops can't stock everything for every possible order, but buying only when a job lands means lead-time delays. The real answer — buying against what's actually in the backlog and on the floor — is hard to see from a spreadsheet.
Built for How Job Shops Actually Work
Every feature is designed around make-to-order work — from per-job BOMs to quoting on real material cost.
Quote a custom job with real FIFO/BOM-blended cost visible to your team as you type — on-hand materials at actual cost, anything beyond stock priced from the current BOM.
Give each job or product configuration its own bill of materials, multi-level if the process needs it, so the recipe for a repeat job is a lookup, not a rebuild.
Start a run for a single job or a short batch, straight from its BOM — materials deduct automatically and the run carries its true cost through to the finished job.
Use the free capacity utilization calculator alongside your open job backlog to get a read on how much room is left before the next order becomes a bottleneck.
Every run shows as a pending batch until it's received into finished goods, so work-in-progress across multiple concurrent jobs stays visible on one screen.
AI-projected material depletion factors in your real usage history, so purchasing decisions reflect what's actually queued up rather than a flat reorder point.
Real Results for Job Shops
Manufacturers switching from spreadsheets to Nstock see measurable improvements within weeks. Read the full case studies →
Saved on Manual Tracking
Teams reclaim close to a full workday every week previously spent rebuilding BOMs and reconciling spreadsheets per job.
Waste Reduction
Manufacturers switching from spreadsheets to Nstock lot and material tracking have cut material waste by up to 30%.
Cost Visibility Per Job
Every job's material cost is captured from the BOM and FIFO lot cost it actually consumed — no flat markup guesswork.
Quote Every Job on Today's Material Cost, Not Last Time's
Make-to-order work means every job is a fresh pricing decision, and material costs rarely sit still between jobs. Nstock sales quotes show your team real-time cost as you build the quote: on-hand materials priced at actual FIFO lot cost, and anything beyond current stock priced from the job's bill of materials — including multi-level BOMs where a sub-assembly feeds the finished job. The two blend into one true per-unit cost, so the margin you quote is the margin the job actually delivers.
Material Planning Backed by Capacity Awareness
Nstock isn't a finite-capacity scheduler — it won't sequence jobs onto specific machines for you. What it does give you is the material and cost side of the planning problem: per-job BOMs, live production run tracking so you can see every job in progress, and material buying that reflects what's actually queued up in your backlog rather than a flat reorder point. Pair that with the free capacity utilization calculator to get a read on how full the shop is before you say yes to the next order.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Nstock sales quotes show your team live COGS as you build a quote: on-hand materials priced at actual FIFO lot cost, and anything beyond stock priced from the current bill of materials, blended into one true per-unit cost. That means a quote reflects what the job would really cost today, not a price from the last time you bought that material.
No. Each job or product configuration gets its own bill of materials, which can be multi-level if the process has intermediate stages. Once it exists, a repeat or similar job is a matter of reusing or lightly adjusting the existing BOM instead of rebuilding a recipe from a spreadsheet each time.
No — Nstock is inventory, BOM, and production tracking software, not a finite-capacity scheduler. It doesn't sequence jobs on specific machines or resources for you. What it gives you is the material and cost side of planning: live job costing, per-job BOMs, production run tracking, and a capacity utilization calculator you can use alongside your own job backlog to gauge whether there's room for the next order.
AI-projected depletion forecasts are based on your real usage history and supplier lead times, so reorder suggestions reflect what your shop is actually consuming — closer to buying against your real backlog than guessing at a static reorder point.
Ready to Replace Your Job Shop Spreadsheets?
Join job shops already using Nstock to quote on real cost, manage per-job BOMs, and track production. Completely free during beta.