ShopPAK is a comprehensive job management system designed for project-oriented manufacturers. Seamlessly integrated with ProjectPAK, it gives ‘make-to-order’ and ‘engineer-to-order’ manufacturers a total solution for managing, tracking, and costing jobs. ShopPAK automates several core business functions, streamlining work flow and improving efficiency. It combines powerful database technology with unparalleled ease of use. ShopPAK requires a network version of ProjectPAK in order to work properly.

Job Creation

When you win the bid, ShopPAK automatically generates a first-cut job by extracting relevant customer, project, and estimate information from the ProjectPAK estimate. It creates a ShopPAK job, one or more job items, one or more work orders, estimated materials, estimated labor, and product information. There are dozens of ways to convert an estimate into a first-cut ShopPAK job. For example, you may have organized your estimate by room number, but you want ShopPAK to organize the ShopPAK job by product type.…..or by laminate color. Conversion not only speeds the process of entering an order, it eliminates data entry errors. Whether you convert an entire estimate or just append a change order to an existing ShopPAK job, you’ll appreciate the tight integration between ProjectPAK and ShopPAK.

Job Tree

ShopPAK’s job tree is a powerful tool for organizing, managing, and tracking every element of a job. It contains 4 levels: Job, Job Item, Work Order and Product. ShopPAK keeps related information automatically updated. For example, if you change work order percent complete, it automatically ‘bubbles up’ percent complete to higher job levels so they stay in sync with changes made at the work order level. The job tree uses ‘smart’ icons that change color and graphics depending on the stage the work order is at. With just a quick glance, immediately see where you’re at with any section of the job.

Work Orders

ShopPAK generates customized work orders that contain relevant job information. Work orders act as "Job Travelers", accompanying shop drawings as they travel through the shop. They provide the control and tracking mechanism needed between the front office and the shop floor. Work orders not only summarize what the job requires, they also specify labor routings and materials. Work orders are the corner stone of ShopPAK. Actuals (both labor and material) are captured at the work order level. ShopPAK automatically keeps the overall job in sync with work order transactions so you always have accurate costing and tracking information at every level of the job.

Purchasing

ShopPAK offers complete integration between purchasing, job costing, receiving, material tracking, inventory, and accounting. Two kinds of purchases are supported: direct job purchases and stock purchases. Direct job purchases let you buy directly for one or more jobs and automatically cost the purchase against the ‘requesting’ job. Stock purchases replenish inventory.

A powerful ShopPAK feature is automatically creating stock purchase orders for any stock item that is at or beyond its re-order point.

Running the automatic stock reorder function creates one purchase order for each vendor. Each purchase order has all of the stock items for which the vendor is listed as the primary vendor and is at or beyond its reorder point.

This is one example of how ShopPAK increases efficiency and productivity by automating labor intensive functions.

PO Builder

Fast, accurate purchasing is critical to project based manufacturers. That’s why we created our unique and powerful PO Builder. PO Builder lets you analyze material needs across several jobs at the same time. Organize material by job, vendor, or description. Quickly reserve job specific material against existing and on-order inventory, or rapidly create new purchase orders by dragging materials on to the purchase order window. PO Builder’s ‘drag and drop’ interface is easy to use and incredibly fast. Purchase material for the entire job, or just those sections of the job that you’ll fabricate first.

Receiving

When receiving materials or buy out items, ShopPAK displays the original purchase order so employees can reconcile order quantities against ship quantities. When the PO is marked received, ShopPAK automatically updates inventory counts and valuation, job costing numbers, and purchase order status and receive dates. You can generate material labels from both the Purchase Order window and the Receiving window.

Reconciliation

When you receive the vendor invoice, you can reconcile the vendor invoice against the corresponding receiver record. If there are discrepancies, ShopPAK automatically updates job costs accordingly. The reconciled invoice (AP Bill) can be exported to your accounting package via ShopPAK’s powerful export capability.

Material Status

ShopPAK has dozens of reports and windows that help you track materials. By automatically updating material status and tracking dates, you always have accurate and up to date information. Instead of project managers asking the purchasing agent material status questions, they simply access the information themselves from ShopPAK. This saves time and ensures that the purchasing agent remains focused on ordering materials and managing vendors.

Inventory

ShopPAK has a powerful inventory system that surpasses what is found in most stand-alone accounting packages. It utilizes a perpetual inventory model, greatly reducing the need to take physical inventory counts. It supports FIFO, LIFO, and moving weighted average inventory valuation methods, and allows users to store the same inventory item at multiple locations. Inventory is 100% transaction based so you have an excellent audit trail of every transaction and inventory event. Each inventory item is linked back to a corresponding ProjectPAK library item. This ensures material costs and vendor information stay in sync across estimating, purchasing, receiving, reconciliation and inventory functions. You can store raw materials, supplies, sub-assemblies and even finished goods in inventory. For a given inventory item, see quantity on hand, quantity on hand that is reserved for a specific job, quantity on order, quantity on order but reserved for a particular job, and quantity currently available.

Job Tracking

Woven throughout ShopPAK is powerful job tracking that helps you manage work in progress. Dozens of reports and windows are available to help you track progress and monitor status. Whether you are tracking scheduled start, scheduled finish, ship date, actual hours against estimated hours, or actual cost against estimated cost, ShopPAK keeps you informed and in control. Choose the level of the job at which you want to enter percent complete and ShopPAK automatically ‘bubbles up’ changes to higher levels of the job. If you wish, you can have shop floor production workers or supervisors enter percent complete and ShopPAK will automatically propagate changes throughout the job tree. As described earlier, ShopPAK’s job tree has ‘smart’ icons that change color and picture based on work order status. At a glance, instantly see where each phase of the job is at.

Job Costing

ShopPAK significantly reduces the effort and time needed to capture, and more importantly, analyze raw production data. Instantly see which jobs are on budget and which jobs are in trouble. ShopPAK empowers you to make the right decision, at the right time. As more jobs are run through ShopPAK, you’ll build a repository of historical data that can be used to analyze profitability, improve estimating accuracy, and spot trends. Armed with this intelligence, you’ll be positioned to make informed decisions regarding investments in new equipment, process improvements, and employee effectiveness and productivity. Whether you are analyzing a job, a phase of a job, a department, or an employee…..job costing was never this easy, accurate or automatic.

Shipping

ShopPAK generates customizable ship tickets and bar-coded product labels. Most of the shipping information automatically flows from work orders to the shipping form, saving time and promoting consistency. This simplifies and speeds the task of preparing packing lists. At the dock, employees check fabricated products and loose materials against anticipated counts using ShopPAK’s ship ticket verification reports and/or computerized hand-held scanners. ShopPAK automatically updates work order status and product level shipping information when you post a ship ticket. Shipping mistakes cost money, waste time, and put additional and unnecessary strain on installers and schedules. If you list products on work orders and use our shipping function, you can eliminate problems associated with incomplete shipments.

Billing

Information from a ship ticket automatically flows to the billing form. This saves time and improves accuracy. On the billing form, you can add additional comments and extend discounts if you wish. As with all ShopPAK documents, you can customize the output according to your preferences. Billing summary and detail reports give you lots of filters and options for finding and grouping invoices. Use ShopPAK’s powerful export capability to export invoices to your accounting package so you can track account receivables and payment.

AIA Progress Billing

ShopPAK automates AIA progress billing. You can use job item and work order descriptions as the basis of your application for payment detail items, or you can manually create the detail items you want printed on the application for payment form. ShopPAK automatically calculates and stores the ‘Completed To Date’ amounts, retainage, and all other calculations for every payment application. It generates both the AIA G702 Application and Certificate for Payment, and the AIA G703 Continuation sheet that shows the details of each payment item. You have the option of printing on a blank AIA form, or if you prefer, ShopPAK will create the entire form on blank paper. As with all of ShopPAK reports and documents, you can choose to generate a PDF and email it.
What people are saying about ProjectPAK and ShopPAK:

Paul Jutras - Jutras Woodworking - Smithfield, RI:

“It [ProjectPAK and ShopPAK] lets you know if you are making money or losing money; it helps you bid jobs more accurately; it tracks things from one end of the job to the other. Before, we would evaluate jobs at the end and say, ‘Did we make money or did we lose money?’ With this system, we evaluate jobs every day. We get a current listing of where we are on each job financially, in man-hours, the whole thing.”

“I think it’s really hard for a guy whose skills are in woodworking to spend money on a business tool. We are used to buying machines. You buy a CNC router and by the time you have everything set up, you may spend $200,000. But if you are going to spend $10,000 or $15,000 on something that will help you coordinate your work, organize your work, track it through the shop, find out what your margins are on your jobs, all of those business tool things, you go, ‘Oh no, do we really want to spend $10,000 on this?’.”

“I think that if you came back here a year from now and asked me about what we have invested in that has made the biggest difference in the business, I will say that it is this software. I think that will be the thing that will have made us more money and put us in a better situation, without a doubt.”

Don Clements - Atlanta Cabinet Shop - Buford, GA:

“Profits are up thanks to the information I readily get out of ShopPAK. I don’t seem to get that occasional money loser since incorporating ProjectPAK and ShopPAK, and estimates are very accurate. It’s surprising how close we come [referring to actual vs estimated costs]. I then take that information and try to replicate jobs that make money. I can look at why a job was profitable and then apply the same science to other jobs.”

“I think a lot of shops are not aware there is a better way to estimate. What CNC has done for the shop, ProjectPAK does for the office. It’s absolutely ingenious. What good is all the CNC equipment in the world without an accurate estimate?”