NexWave Logo

Metal Fabrication Edition

ERP Built for
Metal Fabrication Businesses

Accurate job costing, mill certificate traceability, subcontract operation tracking, and capacity management, NexWave gives metal fabricators one connected platform from quoting through to delivery and invoice.

Inventory to finance NZ ยท AU ยท UK Cloud on AWS

NexWave, Live snapshot

98.2%
Job costing accuracy
94%
On-time delivery
87%
First-off pass rate
99.9%
Platform uptime
Make-to-order jobs 74%
Standard stock items 18%
Subcontract processing 8%

Industry Challenges

The real cost of the wrong system for metal fabrication

The metal fabrication sector has complexity that generic ERP simply wasn't built for. Here's where it hurts most, and how it affects your bottom line.

Job Costing Accuracy Across Labour, Material & Subcontract

A fabrication job touches raw material, cutting, welding, machining, surface treatment, and freight, each with different cost drivers. Without real-time job cost accumulation across all these categories, you can't know if a job made money until it's too late to do anything about it.

Material Grade & Mill Certificate Traceability

Structural, pressure vessel, and marine-grade steel require material certificates traceable from the supplier heat number to the finished component. Without mill cert management integrated into stock control, certificate retrieval at customer or compliance audit time is a scavenger hunt.

Subcontract Operation Management

Heat treatment, anodising, plating, galvanising, and specialist machining routinely go outside your facility. Without subcontract purchase orders linked to the works order, these costs disappear into overheads, systematically inflating apparent job margins.

Drawing & Revision Control

Fabricating to a superseded drawing is the most expensive error in the workshop. Without revision-controlled drawing management linked to the works order, production teams have no reliable way to confirm they're working from the current revision.

Scrap & Offcut Tracking

Steel plate offcuts have real value. Without a system that records offcut dimensions and availability, that value is lost, and you purchase new plate for jobs that could use existing stock. Scrap weight reporting is also increasingly required for environmental compliance.

Capacity vs Quoted Lead Time

Every new job that enters the shop needs to be slotted against machine and labour capacity. Without a scheduling tool that shows current load, salespeople quote lead times the workshop can't achieve, creating a constant delivery credibility problem.

Implementation

Live in 8โ€“12 weeks

Our proven implementation methodology has delivered a 99% go-live success rate. We handle the complexity so you can focus on running your business.

01

Discovery & Planning

Weeks 1โ€“2, Requirements workshops across your key teams. Process mapping, data audit, and configuration blueprint signed off before build begins.

02

Core Configuration

Weeks 3โ€“4, System configured to your business rules, product structures, and workflows. Historical data migrated and validated.

03

Integrations & Training

Weeks 5โ€“6, Shopify, Xero, and other integrations activated. Role-based training delivered across all key user groups.

04

Testing & Go-Live

Weeks 7โ€“8, Full UAT, parallel running, and hypercare support through your first live operating cycle. We stay close until your team is confident.

Platform Modules

Everything your metal fabrication business needs, fully connected

NexWave is configured for the specific demands of metal fabrication, with the workflows, compliance tools, and integrations your team needs built in from day one.

Manufacturing & Works Orders

Works orders with operation-level routing across cutting, forming, welding, and finishing. Machine and labour time recording, subcontract operation dispatch, and actual cost accumulation per job.

Routing operations Time recording Subcontract dispatch Actual job cost

Stock Control & Material Traceability

Raw material stock management with mill certificate linking, heat number tracking, and cut-list management. Offcut recording with dimensional searchability for future job allocation.

Mill cert linking Heat number tracking Cut-list management Offcut register

Purchasing & Subcontract POs

Purchase orders for raw material with grade and certification requirements, and subcontract POs linked directly to works order operations, ensuring subcontract costs land on the right job.

Grade-specific POs Cert requirements Subcontract POs Works order link

Job Costing & Project Management

Budget vs actual cost tracking by job across material, labour, subcontract, and overhead. Milestone invoicing for large contracts, and profitability reporting at every stage.

Job budgets Actual vs quoted Milestone billing Profitability report

Quality & Certificate of Conformance

In-process inspection checkpoints, first-off approval workflows, NCR management, and Certificate of Conformance generation linked to batch and heat traceability data.

First-off approvals NCR workflow CoC generation Inspection records

CRM & Estimating

Manage the full estimating workflow from RFQ receipt through material pricing, routing costing, and margin approval to order acceptance. Customer history and repeat-job pricing automation.

RFQ management Routing costing Margin approval Repeat job pricing

Accounting & Job P&L

Job-level profit and loss, Xero integration, WIP inventory valuation, and variance analysis between estimated and actual cost per job, giving management real-time margin visibility.

Job P&L Xero integration WIP valuation Variance analysis

Analytics & Capacity Reporting

Machine utilisation, on-time delivery, job margin distribution, scrap rates, and subcontract spend analysis, providing the data to continuously improve throughput and profitability.

Machine utilisation Margin distribution Scrap reporting Subcontract spend

Get Started

See NexWave working for your metal fabrication business

Book a personalised demo with one of our metal fabrication specialists. We'll walk through the modules most relevant to your specific operation.

From NZ$415/month ยท 8โ€“12 week implementation ยท 99% go-live success rate ยท No hidden fees