Projects for custom builds, shop events and the spring prep

A tune-up has a start and an end, and it fits on one ticket. A lot of what keeps a shop running does not. A custom build is thirty parts from four distributors, a frame that may or may not arrive in the size promised, and a rider who wants to approve the bar tape color. A demo day is a truck booking, a permit, a stack of rental waivers and a Saturday staffing plan. Getting ready for spring is a list of fifty small things that nobody owns.

That work usually lives in the owner's head, a notebook, or a whiteboard nobody photographs before it gets wiped. Projects gives it a home. Each piece of work is a task with an owner and a due date. Tasks sit in sections, sections sit in projects, and you can look at a project as a list, a board, a calendar or a timeline.

Projects is part of erp.io, the same workspace as Service and Chat. You do not need another login or another subscription outside the plan you already have.

Take a custom build. Create a project named for the rider and the bike. Sections follow the build: Spec agreed, Parts ordered, Parts in, On the stand, Final check, Picked up. Each component is a task: frame, fork, wheels, groupset, cockpit, contact points. When the frame arrives, the task moves across the board. When the wheels depend on hubs that are backordered, the dependency shows on the timeline and you can see at a glance that the pickup date is at risk.

Comments on each task hold the conversation that matters to that part: the distributor's ETA, the photo of the head tube badge, the note that the rider changed their mind on crank length. Link the project to a channel in Chat and the bench sees each update without opening Projects.

If your shop does enough custom work that you need a versioned bill of materials, with sizing, compatibility rules and cost rollups, that is what PLM is for. Projects tracks who is doing what and when. PLM tracks what the bike is made of.

A shop event is a small project with a hard date. A demo day has a vendor to confirm, a location to book, bikes to prep and a rota for the day. Put it on a timeline with the event as a milestone and work backward. The calendar view shows the week everything lands at once, which is usually the week to start earlier.

Spring prep is the project most shops never write down. In January it feels like there is plenty of time. By March the bench is full and the stand that needed a new clamp still has the old one. Make a project in the quiet months with every task that has to be done before the rush: service the stands, restock cables and housing, book the extra mechanic's start date, update the labor rate sheet, deep-clean the wash area. Give each one an owner and a date. Make the yearly ones recur so next January the list writes itself.

None of this needs a work order, and none of it needs Service to be finished. It is the part of running a shop that Projects handles well today.