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Jobman vs Cabneo: Which Is Better for a Cabinet Shop?

Compare Jobman ERP and Cabneo for cabinet shops — full ERP breadth vs scheduling-first workshop control you can set up yourself.

6 min read

Jobman and Cabneo both target cabinet makers, but they sit at different points on the spectrum.

  • Jobman is an end-to-end ERP for cabinet manufacturers — quoting, production, inventory, scheduling, time & attendance, and accounting integrations.
  • Cabneo is production scheduling and job-delivery control software for cabinet shops. Its first value starts with accepted work: plan in hours per centre per day, see what's happening in each shed, and keep production and install from slipping. Keep quoting in Cabinet Vision, Excel or another trusted tool, or use Cabneo quoting where it fits.

This guide is for cabinet businesses asking:

"Should we go all-in on a full ERP like Jobman, or start with something lighter and more focused like Cabneo?"

TL;DR – When Each Makes Sense

Choose Jobman if:

  • You want a single system to run everything: quoting, production, inventory, scheduling, time & attendance, and tight Xero/MYOB integration.
  • You're ready for an ERP-style implementation project and have the team, time, and budget to adopt it properly.
  • You plan to drive a lot of work from CAD/CAM into automated production.

Choose Cabneo if:

  • You're a small–mid sized cabinet shop (roughly 3–15 people) and your biggest pains are after sign-off:
    • The real schedule lives in a spreadsheet, a whiteboard, or one person's head.
    • Jobs slip between production and install without anyone noticing early.
    • You can't quickly answer "what's happening in each shed, and where should I direct attention next?"
  • You already trust Cabinet Vision (or similar CAD), Excel, and Xero, and don't want to replace them just to fix scheduling. Cabneo quoting remains available if it suits your workflow.
  • You were burned by a heavy software rollout before and want setup measured in an afternoon, not a project — starting with the week you already plan in Excel or Sheets.

1. Core Purpose & Philosophy

Jobman

  • Built as an ERP for cabinet and joinery manufacturing.
  • Aims to be the central nervous system for the business:
    • Quotes, job files, capacity planning.
    • Machine/CAD integrations.
    • Inventory, purchase orders.
    • Time & attendance, payroll, accounting exports.

In short: it wants to run your whole factory and office.

Cabneo

  • Built as scheduling-first workshop software:
    • Starts with accepted work. Quick Job intake takes a target/install date plus rough labour totals (machining, edging, assembly, install); Cabneo quoting is an optional upstream path.
    • Day-allocation scheduling: planned hours per centre (shed, machine, bench, or crew) per day — not fragile minute-by-minute worker calendars.
    • Explainable capacity: Capacity Planning and the centre/day Run Sheet show exactly which tasks are behind the booked hours.
    • Triage flags unscheduled or slipped work so it doesn't fall through the cracks.
  • Intentionally does not try to be accounting software, payroll, or ERP.
  • Designed to sit beside Xero and your existing CAD/spreadsheet stack.

In short: it wants to give you a schedule you can trust and a workshop you can see, without taking over everything else.

2. Setup & Adoption

This is where the two products differ most in practice.

Jobman

  • ERP breadth means an ERP-style rollout: configuring quoting, inventory, pay codes, and production stages before the system reflects reality.
  • Worth it if you'll use the full breadth — but it is a real project, and shops that stall partway through can end up paying for software nobody trusts.

Cabneo

  • Setup is designed to fit in an afternoon, not a rollout project:
    • Sign up free, confirm your email, rename the starter centres, and put in your first real job.
    • Paste one real upcoming week — jobs, install dates, rough labour totals — from Excel or Sheets, review it, then schedule the first job.
    • You judge Cabneo against live work before rollout becomes a bigger project.
  • Workshop crew don't need training on a complex system: a shared kiosk lets them see assigned work and mark it started or finished without admin-heavy timesheets.

If a previous rollout cost you money because setup and support never came, this difference matters more than any feature list.

3. Scheduling & Workshop Visibility

Jobman

  • Strong on production scheduling across machines and people, with multiple production stages from order entry to dispatch.
  • Granular control, if you're ready to adapt your processes to the system.

Cabneo

  • Focused on a smaller loop that stays believable day to day:
    • Centre Schedule for planning: drag tasks onto centre/day capacity.
    • Capacity Planning to see which centre is idle, tight, or overloaded.
    • Run Sheet to explain any centre's day: "where did these hours come from?"
    • Triage as the scheduling inbox for slipped or unscheduled work.
    • An owner dashboard that answers, from your phone, "what's happening in each shed right now?"
  • On each job, a live status view brings together the production plan, the delivery commitment, and install work — including short progress updates from installers — so jobs don't quietly drift after they leave the workshop.

4. Time, Invoicing, and Accounting

Jobman

  • Full time & attendance and payroll-adjacent capture, feeding job costing and accounting exports.
  • Reliable job P&L depends on disciplined timesheets, pay codes, and inventory use throughout.

Cabneo

  • Deliberately narrower: recorded time for invoice prep, not payroll timesheets.
    • Time recorded from completed workshop tasks rolls up on the job so the office can review it before invoicing.
    • No pay codes, no payroll sync, no surveillance feel for the crew.
  • Xero (or your accountant's system) stays the financial source of truth.

If you need payroll-grade time & attendance inside your job system, that points to Jobman. If you mainly want to know how much time a job actually took before you invoice it, Cabneo covers that without the timesheet bureaucracy.

5. Complexity, Cost & Team Size

Jobman

  • Best suited to growing or larger cabinet businesses ready to standardise heavily on one system, with appetite and budget for an ERP-style implementation.

Cabneo

  • Designed for small to mid-size shops where the owner and foreman still wear multiple hats.
  • Simple AUD pricing by planner seats and centres — workshop workers are included, so kiosk and floor adoption is never punished. See pricing.

6. How to Choose

Ask yourself:

  1. Do we want one system to run absolutely everything, or a focused layer beside the tools we already have?

    • If "everything": Jobman is built for that.
    • If "we already have CAD, Excel, and Xero — we need the schedule fixed": Cabneo is the better fit.

  2. Where is the pain right now?

    • Quoting, inventory, and payroll in one system → Jobman.
    • A schedule nobody trusts, jobs slipping before install, no answer to "what's happening in each shed?" → Cabneo.

  3. How much change can the team absorb this year?

    • A full ERP rollout is powerful if you finish it.
    • Cabneo is designed so value shows up in the first week — because your own schedule is on screen from day one.

Try It Against One Real Week

The fastest way to decide isn't a feature tour. Start free, paste one real week — your jobs, install dates, and labour totals — then judge Cabneo with your own schedule on screen.

Try Cabneo free · See basic setup · See pricing