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.

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. It starts after a job is accepted: plan work in hours per centre per day, see what's happening in each shed, and keep production and install from slipping — while quoting stays in the tools you already trust (Cabinet Vision, Excel, Xero).

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 your scheduling system to replace them.
  • 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 when a job is accepted. Quick Job intake takes a target/install date plus rough labour totals (machining, edging, assembly, install).
    • 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