Turn Friday's WIP black hole into a one-page shop packet.
WIPFlow gives small custom manufacturers a weekly visibility layer over Microsoft Planner, spreadsheets, purchase orders, inventory notes, and shipping status — without a six-month ERP rollout.
Friday WIP packet
Custom sign shop · 37 open jobs
9
blockers
Setup
1 export
Cadence
weekly
Goal
less WIP fog
Narrow customer
Custom manufacturers with 10-40 people and no appetite for enterprise ERP.
Best fit: sign shops, light fabrication, specialty product makers, and assemble-to-order teams that already use Microsoft Planner, SharePoint, Excel, and QuickBooks-style accounting.
Paid problem
Slow WIP visibility hides trapped cash, blocked jobs, and late invoices.
The cost is not abstract analytics. It is owner hours spent reconciling cards, spreadsheets, POs, shipping notes, and inventory memory before deciding what to chase next.
Validation test
One redacted job export in. One weekly WIP packet out.
The waitlist tests whether real shop owners will share a Planner export or job spreadsheet and ask for a lightweight visibility packet before buying anything larger.
Day-in-the-life pain
The shop has job cards. The owner still asks, “what is actually stuck?”
A custom manufacturer can have Planner cards for every job, SharePoint folders for files, purchase orders in one spreadsheet, inventory counts in another, and shipping updates in someone’s head. By Friday, the team needs to know which jobs can ship, which jobs can invoice, which jobs are waiting on material, and how much cash is sitting in WIP. That answer often takes a manual owner-led reconciliation because full ERP feels too expensive and risky.
Input
Upload or connect the messy job list: Planner export, SharePoint folder map, purchase-order CSV, shipping notes, inventory count, and the spreadsheet the owner already trusts.
Checks
WIPFlow compares job IDs, promised ship dates, material status, outside-vendor steps, and invoice-ready milestones, then flags missing owner, stale status, and material-to-job gaps.
Output
Every Friday the team gets a WIP packet: jobs safe / blocked / invoice-ready, cash tied up in WIP, material exceptions, and the next three decisions the owner must make.
Why the workaround breaks
Task cards do not reconcile material, vendors, shipping, and invoice readiness by themselves.
The evidence suggests the painful gap sits between lightweight task management and expensive ERP. WIPFlow starts with the gap: a weekly exception packet that shows which jobs need action, not a promise to replace every system.
Planner-to-WIP snapshot
Turn Microsoft Planner cards and SharePoint folders into one job-status board without asking a 12-person shop to migrate into a full ERP.
Material and PO check
Spot jobs where the card says in production but purchase orders, inventory counts, or vendor steps do not prove the materials are ready.
Invoice-ready lane
Identify completed or shipped jobs that have not been invoiced, so cash is not trapped because production and admin track different lists.
Owner question queue
Separate normal work from decision blockers: missing artwork approval, outsourced fabrication delay, customer change, or unclear ship date.
Excel-safe export
Send the weekly packet back to Excel/CSV so skeptical owners keep control of their data while testing the workflow.
Evidence, not proof
Public threads point to small manufacturers wanting visibility without ERP cost and migration risk.
Reddit r/smallbusiness · SME finance ops
A finance operator working with SMEs, especially manufacturing businesses, describes working-capital movement, inventory flows, and day-to-day performance visibility as slow, manual, or non-existent because full ERP systems are too expensive or complex and reporting is cobbled together in spreadsheets.
Open source →
Reddit comment · WIP black hole
A commenter says the inventory-flow knowledge gap is normal for small manufacturing: work-in-progress becomes a black hole when the team cannot cost-effectively track material through purchase orders and production.
Open source →
Reddit r/Small_Manufacturing · custom sign shop
A roughly 12-person, $1.5M custom sign manufacturer uses Microsoft Planner, Teams, and SharePoint for job/shipping tracking, but says Dynamics 365 Supply Chain and similar enterprise modules are far too expensive for their stage.
Open source →
Reddit r/Roofing · small contractor data anxiety
A small contractor says the owners store operational data in Google Drive and Excel and are hesitant to adopt a CRM because they fear another company owning their data, reinforcing the need for a lightweight overlay instead of full replacement.
Open source →
Objections
This is not a fake ERP, another dashboard, or a hostage database.
The first validation offer is intentionally small: a weekly packet that returns control to the owner using the files and systems the shop already trusts.
Why not buy an ERP?
The evidence points to shops that are not anti-software; they are anti-enterprise rollout and price. WIPFlow validates a narrow weekly visibility layer before any system migration.
Is Microsoft Planner enough?
Planner can hold tasks. The pain is cross-checking jobs against inventory, purchase orders, shipping, invoicing, and owner decisions so WIP stops becoming a black hole.
Will this replace accounting or inventory tools?
No. It reads the artifacts already in use and produces a weekly exception packet. Accounting, purchasing, and job management stay where they are.
Is the evidence proven demand?
No. It is public complaint evidence. Demand is validated only if real shop operators join the waitlist and share a redacted Planner/export sample for a free first packet.
Early waitlist
Share one messy export. Get a sample WIP packet.
Early users get a redacted first-pass packet, a 20-minute review call, and a say in whether WIPFlow should start as a concierge service, a Microsoft 365 add-on, or a simple CSV-first micro-SaaS.