Operating reports
A small tool that reads your ERP, your accounting system and a couple of lists your team keeps, then emails each person the report they need: cash, orders, late jobs, payroll mistakes, and the monthly reports somebody used to put together by hand. It runs in the background, so there's nothing new to log into. Everything you see from it arrives as email.
7:00 AM. The daily brief lands.
What to watch
Nobody pulled it together. It was built from your ERP and your accounting system at 7:00.
What happens next
Each step is marked with what does the work. In this tool, every one of them is plain software.
Every morning it reads your ERP, your accounting system, and a short list your team keeps of recurring payments like payroll and rent. It only reads. It never changes an order, an invoice or a bill.
Before a report goes out, it checks that what it's about to use is current. If a feed has stopped refreshing, the report says so instead of quietly using an old copy.
The first email goes out at 5:00, before the first shift starts. It reads every step of every open job and flags the ones that will stop the next operator, like hours clocked with no piece count or a step with no record at all. It also watches past-due orders, scrap and time-clock mistakes against limits you set.
A new problem shows up once at the top. After that it stays on a still-open list with today's figure next to it, so one getting worse doesn't go quiet.
Since the last email
No longer flagged: 51790-02.
At 6:00 the operations sheet lands, ahead of the morning meeting. It lists what's due today and tomorrow, what shipped yesterday, what new orders came in, and how much of your open backlog is already late, sorted by how late.
Jobs due today and tomorrow
| Due | Job | Customer | Open qty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Today | 51831-01 | Ridgeline Hydraulics | 250 |
| Today | 51836-02 | Cascade Fabrication | 40 |
| Tomorrow | 51840-01 | Harbor Line Plastics | 1,200 |
The daily brief goes to whoever watches the money. The top is never more than three plain sentences about what needs attention, like cash dropping below the amount you want to keep on hand, or new orders running behind goal. On a morning with nothing wrong, it says so in one line.
Under that is cash on hand and a twelve-week cash forecast built from your open orders, open invoices, open bills and recurring payments. Money that's past due or has no date on it is listed on its own, so it never gets counted as if it's coming.
| W1 | W2 | W3 | W4 | W5 | W6 to 8 | W9 to 12 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash in | $88,400 | $71,900 | $64,300 | $69,800 | $58,200 | $171,600 | $292,400 |
| Cash out | $74,100 | $96,300 | $70,200 | $81,500 | $62,400 | $356,050 | $251,800 |
| Ending | $426,950 | $402,550 | $396,650 | $384,950 | $380,750 | $196,300 | $236,900 |
Past due or with no date on it, and not counted in the weeks above: $14,300 due in to us, $6,850 due out from us.
Every forecast it sends is saved. When a week is over, it compares what it predicted against what really came in and went out, and the brief tells you in one plain sentence which way it's been leaning. If it's been running high, you know to read the forecast as a best case.
That record is also what I tune it against each month.
In the brief: "Our recent cash forecasts have come in about 3.8% above the cash that actually turned up, so treat the figures above as a best case."
Three reports land by 7:00 on Mondays. At 5:00, the time-clock review lists last week's entries that need fixing before payroll runs, and gives payroll a checked sheet of hours to enter from. At 5:30, the management scorecard covers on-time delivery, orders in, how late the backlog is, hours against estimate, scrap and quotes won. At 7:00, the controller's digest covers collections, what shipped but hasn't been invoiced, and customers over their credit limit.
Fix these before payroll runs
The monthly reports wait until the month has settled. On the 7th, your quality reports for on-time delivery, nonconformances and scrap get filled in, straight into the same cells of the same spreadsheets someone used to type up by hand. A frozen copy is kept too, so the record survives somebody typing over a cell.
On the 10th comes operator and machine performance. On the 12th, the repeat parts where the cost to make them has crept up while the price hasn't moved. It suggests a new price and never acts on it. On the 15th, once your books have closed, the monthly finance pack, and on the 16th, the trends month over month.
HL-2250 bushing, Harbor Line Plastics
Ran 9 times, last on Sep 14
If a system can't be read, the report still goes out and says which part is missing and why, instead of printing a blank or a zero. The 5:00 alert email goes out every working day even when there's nothing to report, so no email at all means something broke. And a report that couldn't do its job says so in the subject line, where you'll see it.
Nothing is over a threshold this morning. This email is sent every day even when there is nothing to report, so that no email at all means something has broken.
Some of the data could not be read
No repeat parts were checked this month, so nothing here means none need requoting.
Where the AI is
Reports about your cash and your jobs have to come out exactly right every time, and AI isn't exact. So this one is plain arithmetic on your own records. AI earns its place reading documents it has never seen before, like a customer's purchase order, and when I build that, every number it reads gets checked before anything happens.
The numbers so far
As of September 2026, from the tool's own records. I tune each of these tools every month on what it got wrong the month before, so the numbers climb over time. The first month is always the worst one.
It had to earn it
The 5:00 alert email is there so the first shift sees it before starting. The first morning it went out for real, every item on it was right except one. It said a job still needed a piece count on one step, and that count had been keyed in at 3:10 the afternoon before. I caught it when I read it that morning.
The easy fix was to send it later. That's no good when the point of it is to be waiting when the shift starts. So now it reads piece counts from the time clock entries, which update all day, and a check that can't prove its data is current holds itself back and says so in the email instead of guessing. That's what making one of these hold looks like: find the one wrong line, trace it to the cause, and fix the cause so it can't come back.
Built once, adapted to yours
Everything above is the tool as it runs today. The parts that do the hard work stay the same. Which numbers matter, and who needs to see them, get fitted to your operation.
Batch yields, material usage and changeovers instead of piece counts.
Late jobs, hours against estimate, and quotes won and lost.
Fill rate, backorders and how fast inventory turns.
How it gets set up
It reads from the systems you already run and changes nothing in them. Nothing gets replaced.
Your goals, the cash you want to keep on hand, your recurring payments, the limits worth an alert, and which reports you actually want.
Every report goes to one person at the start, so you can hold it up against what you know is true before anyone else relies on it.
Who gets which report lives in a shared list your team edits. Adding someone is one cell, with no call to me.
Quoted up front, no hourly billing. I host it and keep it running, and a care plan covers fixes and changes as your business changes. The code is yours, and I'll transfer it to you at any time.
Linked Operations · AI implementation for manufacturers
Tell me which numbers you chase down every week and where they live today. I'll tell you straight whether a tool like this fits, whether something lighter would do, or whether it isn't worth it for you.
Email Jason →Jason Markham
Nearly 25 years in manufacturing, including a decade running a machine shop. I build these tools myself, and they run every day.
I help manufacturers and distributors implement AI, automate workflows, and reduce errors with small, focused software builds that take over the back office work: the data, the paperwork, the busywork between the systems they already run.