Fabrication & Machine Shop Software
If you don't know exactly how long the work takes, you don't know what it costs — you're just hoping the price covers it.
Machine and fabrication shops live and die by time. Whether you're running the same operation across a hundred parts or building a one-off that's never existed before, the question is the same: how long does this actually take, and are you charging enough for it? MSA is built to answer that with data instead of gut feel.
My Shop Assist at a glance
Fabrication and machine shop software tracks the one thing that sets your price: how long the work really takes. My Shop Assist tracks time on every task, tags every part, moves jobs through your process, and turns your history into prices that cover the work.
Price: $199/month or $1,999/year. Free 30-day trial, no credit card, no contract. See pricing.
Included in every plan:
- Unlimited users, customers and jobs
- Time tracking on every task, by person, billable or internal
- QR codes and zones to tag every project and part and move it through your process
- Task history with average time and 1- and 2-sigma spread for pricing repeat work
- Hourly tasks for one-off fabrication, billed on the real hours
- Groups and packages for repeat jobs
- Parts inventory and purchase orders
- Two-way text messaging and a customer portal for status and photos
- Card payments through 360 Payments: in person, virtual terminal, text-to-pay
- QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop and Xero export
- iPhone and iPad app
Optional add-on: MOTOR labor times and OE parts for general repair, $200/month.
Track time on every task
Everything here starts with real numbers. Your team tracks time against each individual task as it's worked — every setup, every operation, every hour at the mill or the bench logged against the job it belongs to. That's the raw data the rest of this is built on, and it's the whole difference between knowing your costs and guessing at them.
Tag every project and part with QR codes
A machine or fab floor is full of parts that look alike and jobs in a dozen states of done. Print a QR code for each project and part and tag it as it comes in. Anyone can scan it to pull up the job, the specs, and where it stands — so the raw stock, the in-process part, and the finished piece are never a guessing game on a crowded bench.
Move work through your process with zones
Set up zones for the stages of your process — programming, setup, machining, deburr, inspection, ship — and move each job across the board as it progresses. Scan a part into the next zone and the job moves with it, giving you a live, pull-based view of the whole floor without anyone updating a status by hand.
For machine shops: price repeated work from real data, not a guess
This is where the time tracking pays off. Every time you run a repeated operation, MSA keeps the history — and when you pull up that task's history, it doesn't just hand you an average. It shows the average actual time, your book time, and the 1-sigma and 2-sigma distribution of your real runs — so you can see how tightly the work clusters and how bad the outliers get. Price to the average and you bleed on the hard ones; price with the full distribution in front of you and you set a rate that actually covers the work, run after run. The more parts you make, the sharper that number gets.
For custom fab: take the guesswork out of one-off work
Custom fabrication is the hardest thing in the shop to quote, because no two jobs are the same. Building your tasks as hourly work lets you stop pretending you can flat-rate a one-off — you track the actual hours it takes to build the thing and bill for the work you truly did. And over time, even your one-offs start to rhyme: the history gives you a real starting point for the next quote instead of a number pulled out of the air.
Machine and fab work rewards precision, and so does MSA. Time on every task, QR tracking on every part, and statistical history on every repeated process — this is software that treats time like the raw material it is on your floor.
Questions shop owners ask
What does My Shop Assist cost?
$199 a month or $1,999 a year, with every core feature included and unlimited users. There's no contract. Start with a free 30-day trial, no credit card needed. MOTOR labor times are an optional $200/month add-on.
How do I price repeat machining work accurately?
Track time on the operation every time you run it. My Shop Assist shows the average actual time, your book time, and the 1- and 2-sigma spread of your real runs, so you can set a price that holds up across the whole batch, not just the easy ones.
How do I quote one-off fabrication?
Set the work up as hourly tasks and bill the hours it actually took. Over time your history gives you a real starting point for the next quote instead of a number pulled out of the air.
Can I see where every job is on the floor?
Yes. Set up zones for each stage, like programming, setup, machining, deburr, inspection and ship. Scan a part's QR code into the next zone and the job moves with it.
Does it need vehicle year, make and model?
No. Project types let you track whatever you work on, so a part or assembly doesn't have to be entered as a car.
Does it work with QuickBooks?
Yes. Finished invoices export to QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop, with parts, labor and tax mapped to the right accounts. Xero is supported too.
How hard is it to switch?
The free trial includes setup help: remote training, adding your users, importing your data and connecting QuickBooks.