Two software conversations, and only one gets the forum
Ask a framebuilder about software and the answer arrives on two tracks at once, though only one of them is what the forums are for.
The first is about design tools. BikeCAD versus rattleCAD versus pencil-and-paper. Whether BikeCAD Pro is worth the lifetime licence. What features were added in the latest version. How to export a tube list. This is the conversation that dominates the forums, because it’s the conversation about the visible craft — the thing that turns a customer’s measurements and intent into a steel-tube geometry.
The second conversation is quieter, more recent, and considerably more frustrated. It’s about business tools: the spreadsheet that started elegant and became unreadable, the Trello board nobody updates, the Notion page that worked for a couple of builds and then somehow stopped, the shared Gmail nobody quite owns, and the bank statements that won’t reconcile against the deposits because the chasing happened over WhatsApp.
These two conversations get conflated because they both involve “software.” But they’re answers to entirely different questions. CAD answers “how do I design this frame correctly?” Business tools answer “how do I run this workshop without losing my mind?” The first of those is largely solved; the second is not, at least not for the size of operation most independent framebuilders run.
The closest thing to a solution most framebuilders end up with is a stack: CAD for design, Lightspeed (sometimes) for parts inventory, Excel or a Trello board for project tracking, a separate accounting tool for the books, Gmail for client comms, WhatsApp for supplier coordination. Each tool is fine on its own. The handoffs between them are where the work happens — and where the time goes.
This article is about the second conversation. The bit that isn’t CAD.
What a custom commission actually looks like
For anyone reading this who doesn’t framebuild for a living, here’s roughly what a custom bicycle commission entails. Skip ahead if you’re already on the inside.
A customer arrives, usually through an Instagram DM or an email. They have an idea — a road bike for long days, a gravel rig for weekend trips, a touring frame for a year off, an off-the-shelf brand they’ve outgrown. The first conversation is partly sales, partly diagnostic. What do you ride now, what works about it and what doesn’t, where do you want to take this bike, what’s your budget, and when do you want it?
If the conversation goes anywhere, you send them a measurement sheet — body dimensions, comfort preferences, riding style, sometimes a bike-fit if they have one. You quote a price; they pay a deposit, typically a third. The build enters your queue. From this moment, the customer’s expectation of how long they wait is calibrated against whatever they last heard you say.
The design phase happens next. CAD work, geometry decisions, sometimes a fit session, often a few rounds of “what if we did this instead?” The Bill of Materials gets compiled — tubeset, lugs or fillets if applicable, dropouts, bottom bracket shell, headset standard, brake mount, water bottle bosses, internal routing decisions. Then the parts kit if you’re spec’ing — fork, headset, BB, seatpost, stem, bar, saddle, wheels, drivetrain, finishing kit.
Then ordering, where most framebuilders use eight to fifteen suppliers across a year and any given build sources from four or five of them: Columbus or Reynolds for tubes, Paragon Machine Works for dropouts and shells, Cane Creek for headsets, a local plating shop for the chrome work, and a particular painter for the final coat. Each supplier has their own portal, their own SKU system, their own lead times that they may or may not communicate accurately.
Fabrication takes weeks of mitring, brazing or welding, alignment, prep for paint, paint, drying and build-up, and throughout it the customer is waiting and wanting updates. The right cadence is roughly once a week — enough to feel present, infrequent enough not to be performative. The wrong cadence is a client message answered six days later because it slipped.
Then delivery — sometimes photographed, sometimes formally handed over, sometimes shipped, and with it the final invoice and the aftercare promises. The customer becomes a brand ambassador if you’ve done it right, or drifts away if you haven’t.
Now multiply that by ten or twenty or forty builds a year, with each one at a different stage. That’s the business problem.
Where the tools you’re using now stop working
If you build fewer than five frames a year, your tools probably still work. The spreadsheet is small, the DMs are answerable, the supplier orders are infrequent, and your memory is enough.
The friction starts somewhere between build five and build fifteen. The exact threshold depends on how many concurrent customers you carry — five sequential builds is different to five concurrent builds at different stages, which is the more common case.
The failure modes are specific and predictable.
The deposit chasing problem. An agreed deposit sits unpaid in an email thread. You don’t want to nag, but you can’t start the build, and without a payment link there’s no easy reminder to send — so the chasing itself becomes a thing to remember.
The change-request memory problem. A changed preference — a different seatpost diameter — arrives mid-build in a DM. Weeks later, at spec’ing time, the change is half-remembered but the message is nowhere to be found.
The supplier-order tracking problem. Two orders placed the same day arrive a week apart, and the late one goes unnoticed because the confirmation emails are buried among dozens of others, unread.
The progress-photo problem. The frame gets photographed post-braze, post-paint, and post-build, and the photos never reach the customer — the phone has them, the laptop doesn’t, and “later” never comes.
The “what stage is everyone at” problem. Someone — your partner, your apprentice, your accountant — asks where a commission is up to, and there’s no one-sentence answer. You have a head full of context but no surface to point them at.
The end-of-year reconciliation problem. The accountant wants the books, but the deposits sit in one place, the final payments in another, some customers paid in cash, some supplier invoices live only in email, and the builds in flight straddle the year end.
If any of these feel familiar, you’re at the threshold where the tools you have stopped being enough. Not because they’re bad tools — they aren’t. Because they were built for different problems.
The five things software for framebuilders should do
If you were going to write a list of what custom-build software actually needs, leaving aside the design tools entirely, this would be it.
One. A workspace that holds the whole project. Every commission needs a single surface that contains the conversation, the measurements, the geometry decisions, the BOM, the order tracking, the photos, the payment history, the calendar dates. Not eight tabs or three apps, but one workspace. The detail lives there; the team sees it; the customer sees the bits they need to see.
Two. A Bill of Materials that works for one-off builds. Most BOM software was built for manufacturers, who want repeatable parts lists for products they’ll make a hundred times. Custom framebuilders need flexible BOMs — each build has substitutions, customer-specific finishing, optional parts that may or may not be ordered until a decision is made. The BOM has to handle “any 1-1/8 ahead-set headset that isn’t Cane Creek” without breaking.
Three. A client portal that shows the right amount of process. Customers want updates without wanting access to the workshop’s internal mess. A client portal should show them their build’s progress, let them message you, let them see and pay invoices, and stop there. The internal notes — the “this customer has changed their mind about saddle height three times” notes — stay internal.
Four. Supplier ordering that recognises you order from many places. Most software treats ordering as a single-supplier event. Framebuilders don’t have one supplier. They have a tubeset supplier, a dropout supplier, a headset supplier, a fork supplier, a paint supplier, a plating supplier. The right tool understands this — it groups what you need by supplier and shows you the order ready to send to each.
Five. Payments that update the books without you doing it. Custom builds typically have a deposit, an interim payment, and a final. Three transactions per build, ten or twenty builds a year. That’s sixty-odd reconciliation events. Software that knows about both your payment processor and your accounting tool can handle this automatically. Software that doesn’t, can’t.
That’s the list. There are useful sixth and seventh things — calendar integration, time tracking, demand forecasting for parts, a customer relationship surface — but those are nice-to-haves. The five above are the ones that move the needle.
What to look for, and what to avoid
When you start evaluating software, here’s what to look for — and the signs that a tool was made for a different trade’s problem.
Look for: project-as-the-unit. Good framebuilder software treats each commission as a thing with a beginning, middle, and end. You can see it on a timeline, what stage it is at, and what it is waiting for. Avoid: ticket-as-the-unit. Tools built for repair shops or support teams are designed around tickets — discrete tasks that get opened, worked, and closed. A six-month bespoke commission isn’t a ticket.
Look for: flexible BOMs. Substitutions are allowed; quantities can change mid-build; supplier choice can be deferred until you decide. Avoid: rigid parts catalogues. MRP tools and inventory software often force you to pre-define every SKU before you can put it on a build sheet. That works for manufacturers. It doesn’t work for one-off custom commissions.
Look for: customer-as-collaborator UI. The customer can see relevant progress, message you, and pay invoices. Avoid: customer-as-helpdesk-requester UI. Tools that funnel customer interactions into a “submit a ticket” form treat your relationship as a service contract, which is not what it is.
Look for: multi-supplier ordering. The tool understands that one build sources from many places. Avoid: single-supplier purchase orders. If the tool wants you to create one purchase order at a time and assign each PO to a specific supplier, you’ll do that workflow forty times a year and hate every minute of it.
Look for: per-team, per-month pricing. A flat fee for the whole team. Avoid: per-seat pricing. Per-seat punishes you for adding your apprentice, the part-timer, the weekend cover. A studio of three on a per-seat tool ends up paying more than a studio of one for no extra value.
Look for: clear “what we don’t do.” Honest software vendors tell you what they’re not. Avoid: feature checklists with everything ticked. If a sales page implies the tool does design, manufacturing, accounting, CRM, marketing automation, and inventory management — for £20 a month — it doesn’t.
The Lightspeed integration angle
If you also run a shop — selling parts, doing the occasional repair, maintaining inventory beyond what goes into custom builds — your software stack gets more complicated. You probably already use Lightspeed R-Series or something similar for the POS side.
The integration question matters here. A custom framebuilding tool that doesn’t talk to your POS forces you to maintain two sources of truth for the same parts. The Cane Creek headset on your shop floor and the Cane Creek headset on your BOM are the same headset, but you’ll be counting them twice — once for inventory and once for the build — and reconciling them by hand.
A custom framebuilding tool that does talk to your POS treats them as one source of truth. The headset comes out of stock when it goes onto a build. The cost flows to the customer’s BOM at the price you actually paid. Reorder triggers fire when stock hits a threshold. You don’t think about it; the maths just stays right.
If you’re already on Lightspeed, this is the integration that saves you the most time. If you’re not, it doesn’t matter for you — but it should still tell you something about the shape of tool we’re talking about.
When a spreadsheet is still enough
Weigh this properly before paying for software.
If you build five frames a year, your customer list is small, your supplier list is stable, and your accounting is straightforward — a well-structured spreadsheet plus a shared Gmail might genuinely be enough. Most one-person workshops below five builds a year operate fine without specialised tools.
The question is whether you’re at five and growing or five and steady. If steady, save your money. If growing — if next year is plausibly eight or twelve or twenty — then the time to put a system in is now, not after you’ve burnt three months of operational hours on the friction. Switching tools is expensive when you’re full of in-flight commissions; switching tools when you have two builds running is cheap.
There’s also a quality-of-life dimension that doesn’t show up in financials. Even at the same volume, the difference between knowing what every build is doing without having to think about it, and being fairly sure a frame is at the painter but having to check, is a real one. Some people enjoy holding the whole studio in their head. Some find it exhausting. There’s no right answer.
Where Vidual Projects fits
If you’ve read this far, here’s how our features map to the framebuilder workflow.
The project workspace is built around the commission as the unit of work. Each build has its own page: timeline, conversation history, internal notes, BOM, parts ordering, payment schedule, calendar, photos. Everyone on the team sees what’s happening. The customer sees the parts you’ve decided to share.
The BOM (we call it the worksheet) handles one-off builds natively. You can swap parts, add substitutions, leave decisions open. It links to suppliers, recognises stock from Lightspeed, and flags shortages before they become problems. We wrote about tracking every bolt and every bearing from order to workbench if you want the longer version.
Concierge handles the supplier-ordering side. It aggregates parts shortfalls across every active project, groups them by supplier, and prepares the order ready for you to send — without sending anything on your behalf. Eight portals become one cockpit. The longer story of why ordering is harder than it looks sits alongside how the worksheet, Concierge, and Demand work as one loop.
The Activity page — what we call the kingfisher view — surfaces which builds need attention. It uses AI to classify projects: which are awaiting your reply, which are stalled, which have overdue payments, which are approaching deadlines, which you’ve flagged. Glide above forty builds; dive to the three that need you today.
The client portal is built for relationship, not for ticketing. Your customer sees their build, messages you about it, sees and pays invoices. Internal notes are not visible to them. The whole experience is designed around the maker-client relationship being part of the product.
Payments work through Stripe Connect (or Nexi XPay for European studios). Deposit, interim, final — each one a payment the customer makes directly. When they pay, the books update automatically through Xero or QuickBooks integration. Three transactions become zero manual reconciliations.
Direct Messages let you talk to your partners — the painter, the plater, the machinist who does your dropouts — inside the same tool where the build lives. You can reference a project from the chat using a slash-picker, which means the conversation about a frame’s orange-fade paint can sit next to the project it’s about. It’s the conversation you used to have on WhatsApp, in the place the project actually lives.
There’s an iOS native app, so the workshop is in your pocket. The Lightspeed integration means stock stays a single source of truth across the shop and the workshop. The 30-day free trial requires no credit card. Pricing is Maker £12.99 / Studio £34.99 / Atelier £69.99 a month, depending on how many active projects you need — every feature included at every tier, every team member included, no per-seat surcharges.
The shape of the tool
A framebuilding workshop doesn’t need a CRM. It doesn’t need an ERP. It doesn’t need anything that sounds like enterprise software, because it isn’t an enterprise problem. What it needs is closer to the workshop apron — every tool within reach, nothing in the way, nothing on the bill you don’t use. That’s the shape we’ve tried to build.
If that’s the shape of what you’re looking for, have a look. The trial is thirty days, no credit card needed. If we’re wrong for your case, we’d rather tell you on a demo call than have you find out three weeks in.
Vidual Projects is available now at vidual.app. 30-day free trial, no credit card required. £12.99 / £34.99 / £69.99 per month after that, every feature, every team member, no per-seat surcharges.