Metal fabrication software for job costs, steel and balances

The quote is built from last month's steel price

A customer wants a 3-metre sliding gate. You count it out in lengths — 40×40 tube for the frame, 25×25 for the infill, a sheet for the panel — and multiply by the price you paid last time you were at the yard. Then steel moves, and your quote is a number from a month ago.

The second problem is quieter. Electrodes, discs, gas, primer and thinner are bought in a lump when they run out, never divided between the jobs that used them, so they sit in no quote at all. Every gate is priced on steel and labour, and the consumables come out of what you thought was margin.

PesaScope records each steel delivery at what you actually paid, and consumables as expenses on the day you buy them. Each job is a service with its own price, so the two can be put side by side.

From measuring up to collection

1. Measure and price the pieceGates, grills, doors and stands are priced per piece, not per metre of anything. Record the agreed figure against the customer.
2. Take a deposit before you cutCustom steel work is unsellable to anyone else. The advance goes on their account and the balance keeps a date on it.
3. Buy the steel against the jobRecord the delivery and what it cost. If the yard is on credit, the amount sits as a payable until you settle.
4. Record labour, fit, and collectWhat the welder and helper were paid, the transport, the day on site. Then the balance clears against what is outstanding.

What a fabrication workshop sets up

Pick "Metal fabrication workshop" at sign-up and this list is already there, and each line is a piece you quote rather than a size of steel.

These are services, because no two are the same and none of them sit in stock. Steel, sheet and consumables are the other side of the ledger, consumed by whichever job needed them.

One 3-metre sliding gate

On steel and labour alone this gate carries UGX 830,000 — a shade under thirty-five percent, and that is the figure in your head when you quote. Consumables, paint and the fitting day pull it to nineteen.

What PesaScope will not do about offcuts

Steel comes in 6-metre lengths and jobs do not. The drop left after a gate is real money that either goes into the next small job or leans in the corner until it rusts, and fabricators reasonably want a register of remnants.

PesaScope does not do that. There is no offcut register, no cutting plan, no nesting and no serial numbers on finished pieces. It records the steel you bought and what it cost, and — if you switch on the optional production module for items you make repeatedly, like a standard window frame — the wastage on a run.

There is no time-tracking either, so hours at the bench are not logged. You record what the welder was paid, and against which job.

Where a fabrication workshop leaks money

1. Consumables treated as workshop overheadA box of electrodes spread across nine jobs is invisible in all nine. As dated expenses, at least the month shows their weight.
2. The fitting day given awayLoading, transport, levelling and hanging is a working day for two people. If it is not priced, it is a discount.
3. The deposit spent on someone else's steelHeld against the customer's account, an advance stays visible as work you still owe.
4. Balances left after the gate is hungOnce the piece is fitted your leverage is gone. A dated debtors list is the difference between chasing and forgetting.

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Questions fabricators ask