Replaced five disconnected spreadsheets with one work-order system for a 60-person contract manufacturer

Client snapshot

A 60-person contract manufacturer making fabricated metal parts for industrial buyers. Two shifts, one plant, a sales team of four, one production planner and one owner who still signs off on every quote over a certain size. Everything ran on Google Workspace.

The problem

Each order lived in five places. Sales tracked quotes in a CRM sheet. Once a quote was won, someone retyped it into a production sheet. The planner kept a separate sheet for machine schedules. The floor leads updated a status tab when they remembered, and the owner kept a private sheet of the orders they were worried about. Nobody trusted any one of them.

The handoff from a won quote to a released work order took about two days, mostly waiting for someone to retype it. Late orders surfaced when the customer called to ask where their parts were.

What we built

One Sheets workbook became the system of record, with Apps Script doing the work no one wanted to do by hand.

When a quote's stage moved to "won" in the CRM tab, a script generated the work order: part numbers, quantities, material, due date and routing steps, copied across without retyping. The planner got an email with the new order and a one-click link to schedule it.

Floor leads updated status from their phones through a short Google Form per work order: started, blocked, done, scrap count. Each submission wrote to the work order row and stamped the time. No one had to open the workbook on the floor.

Every morning at 6am an n8n flow read the workbook and Claude wrote a short exceptions report: orders at risk of missing their due date, orders blocked for more than a day, and quotes won but not yet scheduled. It went to the owner and the planner by email, with a link to each row.

Results, 90 days in

Won quote to released work order: about two days → same day.
Late orders flagged before the due date: about one in four → nine in ten.
Admin time spent chasing status: roughly 12 hours a week → about 3.
Four private spreadsheets retired. The owner now reads the morning report instead of keeping their own list.

Quote

"I stopped walking the floor to ask where things were. The report tells me which three orders to worry about." Owner

Build snapshot

Timeline: 21 business days, including a 90-minute workshop to map the order flow before any build
Stack: Google Sheets, Google Apps Script, n8n, Claude, Gmail
Investment: $7,500
Who owned it: the production planner owned the workbook after handoff; the owner signed off on the design doc.

The pattern

This is the kind of problem we take on in a Custom System Build: a workflow that grew out of how the business actually runs and doesn't fit an off-the-shelf tool. If your orders live in five sheets, the approach is the same, with your stages and routing swapped in.

This is an illustrative composite drawn from operator engagements. Names, identifying details, and exact metrics are anonymised. The workflow, stack, and approach are real.