NSG Engineering is an invented company. We built this to show how the thing works, not for a customer, so there are no business figures anywhere on this page.
The situation
What this kind of business is dealing with
Common in the trade, not a description of anybody in particular. If two or three of these sound like your week, the build below is the shape of the answer.
- Quotes are built in a spreadsheet that one estimator fully understands.
- Two people price the same job and arrive at two different numbers.
- Nobody in the office can say what stage a job is at without ringing the site.
- The paperwork the invoice depends on is sitting in a van.
- Years of past jobs exist, but only as folders nobody can search.
What we built
The pieces of it
Each of these exists and runs. Ask for a walkthrough of any one of them.
- A quote request customers fill in themselves
- Enquiries arrive as structured data -- drawings attached, quantities, deadline -- instead of an email an estimator has to decode before pricing anything.
- Pricing from a parts catalogue
- Rates, standard assemblies and margin rules live in one place, so two estimators quoting the same work land on the same number.
- One board for the shop floor
- Every job on a single view: quoted, accepted, scheduled, in progress, ready, invoiced. Anyone can see where a job is without asking anyone.
- Four roles, four views
- The owner sees everything, estimators see quotes and costs, the shop floor sees jobs and hours, the office sees invoicing. Set up once and changeable later without a developer.
- A job record that carries everything
- Quote, drawings, variations, hours booked and the final invoice on one record, so nothing has to be reassembled at the end from three places.
- Exports the accounts package accepts
- Invoices and purchases out in the format the accounts package takes, rather than keyed in a second time by someone in the office.
How it works
What actually happens, in order
- 01
A customer sends a quote request through the form, with drawings and quantities attached.
- 02
It lands as a draft quote with catalogue prices already applied to the lines it recognises.
- 03
The estimator adjusts what needs judgement; the margin rules handle the rest.
- 04
The quote goes out as a PDF, and the customer accepts it from a link.
- 05
Accepting turns the quote into a job, carrying the priced lines across with it.
- 06
The shop floor moves the job along the board and books hours against it from the workshop.
- 07
When the job is marked ready, the invoice is drafted from what was quoted and what was actually booked, with the difference visible.
The build
Facts about the thing itself
Size, scope and how long it took. These describe the build. They are not customer figures, because there is no customer and a number we did not measure would be worth nothing to you.
- Screens
- 24
- User roles
- 4
- Build time
- 5 weeks
Built with
- Next.js
- PostgreSQL
- Role-based access
- PDF generation
- CSV export