What did the customer order?
The customer’s document, read into lines with parts, quantities, prices and due dates, plus billable services.
Where you read itInbound & OCR
Job shop software for high-mix, make-to-order work.
Every order is different, so Bulk starts from the customer’s own document. It reads the PO into routed jobs, puts them on a planning board machine by machine, and follows each one through the station to the invoice.
From the customer’s PO to routed jobs.
In job shop manufacturing the order is where the work starts. Bulk’s inbound OCR reads the PDF, scan or photo the customer sends, maps each line to a part, process and routing, and once the document is approved creates one job per ready line under a production order. Nobody retypes the PO.
Read per customer
Extraction is set up per customer from a sample document, mapping part number, process, routing, quantity, prices and dates, with a version history to roll back.
Jobs when ready
Keep it manual, or let Bulk create jobs automatically once part number, process, routing and quantity are all found. Due date and price can be required too.
Approval by routing
A routing can require approval. The document locks while it waits, and managers or entity admins approve it before the jobs are created.
What job shop management software should answer.
Job shop software (or job shop management software) runs high-mix, low-volume, make-to-order work: every job has its own routing, due date and customer, and hundreds of small jobs share the same machines. It has to take the order in without retyping, route each job, show where every job is and turn finished work into an invoice. Small job shop software and machine shop software have to do all of that without an administrator.
How is this job made?
The routing chosen for the line or job, versioned, and editable for one job without touching the rest.
Where you read itThe job’s Routing tab, and Routing
Which machine can run each step?
Machines whose type allows the step’s work centre. Only those lanes accept the step on the board.
Where you read itScheduling
What runs first?
Priority from urgent to low, due date and the order planners rank in each machine’s queue.
Where you read itPrioritisation and the work queue
Where is the job now?
Each planned run follows its step from planned to running to done, and the job carries its status.
Where you read itThe planning board, and Find job or step
What is our work in progress worth?
WIP value by age, unplanned value, value overdue and value delivered, in one currency.
Where you read itThe Value Flow dashboard in Dashboards
What did we get wrong?
Quality issues opened at the station, tied to the job, step and machine.
Where you read itThe job’s Quality tab, and Quality
What do we bill?
A standard invoice built from the order’s invoiceable jobs, priced per item, hourly, setup plus hours, fixed or by tracked hours.
Where you read itInvoicing
Job shop tracking software, question by question: how Bulk answers each and where you read it
A routing per job, not one per catalogue.
High-mix work does not fit one standard route per part. In Bulk a routing is a versioned flow drawn on a canvas, with conditional splits and repeat groups, and it is chosen for each order line or job. One job’s steps can be changed on their own, with finished work locked, while the shared routing stays as it is.
Live when ready
A routing version moves from draft to compiled to live, with one live version at a time. Jobs already running keep the version they started with.
Change one job
Edit routing on a single job changes its remaining steps and marks its version custom. Steps that are done, running or loaded, and everything before them, stay locked.
Skip with a reason
An optional step can be skipped with a written reason, which is logged. Mandatory steps cannot be skipped, and the invoicing step is never optional.
Plan machine by machine, bill from the job.
Planners place each step on a machine timeline by hand; Bulk sizes the run from past work on the same part and step, shows each machine’s load and flags runs that overlap. Per-machine queues rank what runs next. When the job is done, it goes onto the invoice with the services and rates agreed with that customer.
Estimates from history
Run length comes from finished runs of the same part and step, then wider history, then the step’s plan minutes. Planners can stretch a run and reset it to the estimate.
Priorities that stick
Jobs carry a priority from urgent to low, and each machine can hold up to eight named queues in Prioritisation, ranked by hand.
Prices per customer
Rate templates by customer and category, per-customer services and price agreements read from the customer’s price list. Timed pricing bills the hours actually tracked.
Every job, from the PO to the invoice.
A job shop lives on handoffs: order to routing, routing to machine, machine to invoice. In Bulk they are one record, so each handoff is a status change, not a re-keyed sheet.
- Inbound & OCRThe customer’s PO becomes jobs.
- RoutingA versioned route per line or job.
- SchedulingSteps placed on machine timelines.
- ProductionTime and counts recorded at the station.
- QualityDefects tied back to the job.
- DashboardsValue Flow: WIP, overdue and delivered value.
- InvoicingFinished jobs become the invoice.
Questions, answered.
01
What is job shop software?
Job shop software, or job shop management software, runs make-to-order work where every job is different: it takes in the customer’s order, gives each job its routing, places steps on machines, records the work at the station and bills the finished jobs. Bulk does all of that on one record, from the customer’s PO to the invoice.
02
What is a job shop?
A job shop is a manufacturer that makes custom or small-batch parts to customer order on shared, general-purpose machines, so each job can take a different route through the shop. In job shop manufacturing the production process follows each order, not a fixed line: machine shops, fabricators and many contract manufacturers work this way, as opposed to a flow line built for one product.
03
Does Bulk do quoting or estimating?
Not today. There is no quote or RFQ module; the priced picture starts when the customer’s order arrives. From there, customer rate templates, per-customer services and price agreements read from the customer’s price list price the jobs.
04
Does Bulk do job costing?
Not as a cost rollup. Bulk records the actual time on every job step and the cost of consumables used, and Asset Revenue (in beta) shows revenue per run hour by machine, but it does not roll labour and machine rates into a margin per job.
05
Does Bulk schedule jobs automatically?
No. Planners place work by hand on the planning board, and Bulk checks each decision: which machines can run the step, how long it should take, how loaded each machine is and where runs overlap. Overlaps are flagged, not blocked.
06
Can we keep our ERP or accounting system?
Yes. Bulk holds the order-to-invoice loop itself, and where you keep an ERP it syncs both ways: Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations is live and SAP S/4HANA is in private beta. See integrations.
07
How do we bring our open jobs into Bulk?
Through imports: customers, parts, routings, processes and production jobs from CSV or Excel files up to 50 MB, in a six-step wizard into the site you have selected. New orders then arrive through inbound OCR.
08
Is Bulk machine shop management software too?
Yes, a machine shop is a job shop with machining centres, and the same flow applies, so Bulk also works as machine shop job tracking software: every job’s step, machine, time and count on one record. See the pages for CNC machine shops and metal fabrication.
Bring a messy PO. Turn it into jobs.
Start a free trial, upload a real customer order, the uglier the better, and run it from the PDF to routed jobs on the board. No card needed.
