A real build · Tauranga, New Zealand · Live since Sep 2026
Inspace, cabinetry and commercial fit-out.
Inspace designs and builds kitchens, cabinetry and commercial fit-outs. Every job passes through a designer, an estimator, CAD, the factory and the installers. I built the back office that holds it together, around the tools they already had.
01 · Who they are
Inspace is an established cabinetry and commercial fit-out firm in Tauranga and Mount Maunganui, with a showroom and its own factory. They do residential kitchens and cabinetry, and commercial fit-outs.
They already ran good software. Jobman ran the jobs, quotes and invoices. Xero ran the accounts. Their designers worked in two CAD packages. The problem wasn’t missing tools. It was everything that happened between them.
02 · What they wanted fixed
The owner put it in one line in the plan for the team:
“A place where no good opportunity is left behind.”Inspace Vision 1.0, the all-team deck, July 2026
What that meant, day to day:
- Enquiries came in three ways (the website, the inbox and the phone) and waited for someone to notice them.
- Quote follow-up existed on paper. It fell away when people got busy, the way it does in every busy firm.
- The same job got written up more than once. A spreadsheet here, a form there, Jobman again.
Every single time, once again, we’re asking people to fill things out.
- The numbers lived in heads and reports. They wanted a live scoreboard:
KPIs or even better a live scoreboard as to where we are at.
- Too much of the business lived in a few people’s heads. In their own meeting notes:
If you got hit by a truck, what happens?
03 · What I didn’t do
- I didn’t sell them a new CRM. They didn’t want another app, so there isn’t one. Jobman stays the job system.
- I didn’t duplicate their data. The owner’s rule is one flow: sales into Jobman, Jobman into Xero. Everything I built feeds that flow. Nothing creates a second set of invoices or a second product list.
- I didn’t put anything in front of their customers they hadn’t signed off. Any automatic email waits for their OK on the wording, and it sends from their own inbox, in their name.
- I didn’t keep the keys. Their accounts, their data, in their name.
04 · What I built
Every enquiry, in one place.
Website form, the info@ inbox and the 0800 number all feed one list, and each real enquiry goes into Jobman as a lead. The inbox reader also checks the junk folder, because a spam filter is a quiet way to lose a kitchen.
Every call, logged.
Calls come off their phone system with answered or missed on each one. A missed call is now a number someone can see, not a job nobody knew about.
A new website built to bring enquiries in.
The old site was rebuilt with a quote form that feeds the same list.
The scoreboard.
The numbers the GM asked for, by department, read live from Jobman every day. Where the data isn’t filled in yet, the tile says so instead of showing a fake zero. That turned “we don’t track that” into a habit to build, visible to everyone.
One job record the whole team works from.
The specification sheet: one place Design, Pricing, CAD and Production all work from, section by section, with each section confirmed by the person responsible. It prints the client’s specification document. Handovers between the designer, the estimator and CAD are one button and one email.
The install board.
Jobman owns the install dates. The board owns who’s on site. Double-bookings get a warning, not a block, because the people running installs know things a calendar doesn’t.
Logins by role.
Each person signs in as themselves and sees what their job needs.
05 · What runs now
- Enquiries from the website, inbox and phone land in one place and go into Jobman.Live
- Every call is logged, answered or missed.Live
- The scoreboard updates from Jobman every day.Live
- The specification sheet carries a job through the first stages, design and pricing. The later stages are being built in the order the team signs them off.Live, and growing
- The install board.Live
The site went live in September 2026. I keep it running, and we add to it every month.
“From where we were with the Excel spreadsheet or Job Master or whatever, we’ve come a long way.”Inspace’s GM, September 2026
06 · How we worked
- One job first. We started with how an enquiry becomes a job, then followed the job from there.
- Their language, not mine. When their GM wanted the stages called “Spaces”, the system changed its words.
- Small releases. Each piece went live, got used, and got fixed in the same week.
- Plain updates. What’s live, what’s next, and what I need from them. Nothing else.
Your turn
Want to see where your jobs leak?
Every firm leaks in different places. The quickest way to find yours is to walk one job through it with me.