Bisque painting tracking, best of?

[MmThomp]

I am looking to gather more information about ways everyone tracks pottery through their firing loops in a community bisque paint-type setting. We are currently using cards, but I am finding it starts to breakdown at any point when there is an error as our workflow system only allows us to record the name and not item info, per person. Thanks for your help!

[Bill Kielb]

I guess maybe expand or add context. Are you seeking to add an accounting, or maybe ownership ……?  For accounting generally user and some qualifier such as weight and any modifiers etc… often establishes firing cost. What is the primary purpose of the info and what is the ancillary purpose if any? If an existing system that cannot be modified, the next step is often encoding to combine more information into a single entry which often means user codes etc….  Not sure I understand what you are seeking.

Edited April 23, 2023 by Bill Kielb

[neilestrick]

@MmThomp Are you looking to track pieces through the process so that you easily find a person's piece when they come to pick it up after firing? Is this a paint-your-own type business where you have different people coming in every day, or a studio where you have folks signed up for a multi-week session?

[Callie Beller Diesel]

So you already found the post about Trello and tracking things like special orders and production lists.  I made further comments there. I think using Trello has some good potential for scenarios like you describe. It’s a bit of a blank slate, so as long as you can envision the tool you need, you can probably create it. 

For other people reading this, the tl;dr is that Trello is a virtual Kanban board. You create a horizontal list that is some version of to do, in progress, done. You add cards (analog Kanbans involve post-it notes) with assorted tasks or projects that need to move through.  When someone starts the task, they move the card from to do to in progress, etc.  With Trello, the “post it” has a LOT more room to write, and doesn’t fall down and get lost behind a desk.

Trello cards can hold a lot of data if you’re making notes or adding attachments. I usually only need to add an image or 2 for my own purposes, so I don’t know what the file size limits are there off the top of my head, but there’s room for a few. If you want to add images via a cell phone, it’s very easy to do on the mobile app. So you’d either have to have employees download the app and log in via a link you’d send them, or have a studio tablet/phone that could take pics. Notes can be added to a card from the  either app or desktop. Cards move with either a click of the mouse or a finger swipe.

The free version is pretty simple to use and is great for sole proprietors or someone with only 1-2 employees. If you have more people and that’s resulting in chaos, you might find the first tier of the paid version works better. But you could try the free version for a couple of weeks to see if it’s got potential.

If your staff is good about recording everything necessary (contact info, payment status, etc), you could get away with the free. If you want to create a more foolproof form, you’d either need to create it in something like google docs and link it, or if you get the first tier of the paid version ($10/month), you can create card templates to streamline things. 

 

[MmThomp]

On 4/23/2023 at 3:39 PM, neilestrick said:

@MmThomp Are you looking to track pieces through the process so that you easily find a person's piece when they come to pick it up after firing? Is this a paint-your-own type business where you have different people coming in every day, or a studio where you have folks signed up for a multi-week session?

The business has both, but the multi-week is kept in a separate section. I am mainly looking for the paint-your-own type solutions. We are currently using Wix and their workflow system is a bit convoluted. Thank you!

[Callie Beller Diesel]

Just because I was playing around with Trello a bit more this week, I think you don’t even have to link a google doc if you want a form for customer information. You can create checklists that would serve. Tagging also has some good potential to keep track of some things visually.