Free job card template for fabrication workshops

What is on the card

Each block answers a question somebody in the workshop asks every day.

• Job number. One number per job, never reused. It is what the foreman says over the radio and what the invoice refers back to.
• Customer, order number and drawing number. The three things you need to find the paperwork when someone phones.
• Quantity and due date. The due date has a heavy box on purpose: it is the first thing people look for.
• Description and scope of work. What is actually being made, in a few lines, so nobody has to hunt for the quote.
• Stages. The route the job takes, in order. Each stage has boxes for who is responsible, when it was started and finished (date and initials), a signature, and a tick when it is done.
• Completed, checked and released. Three sign-offs: the person who finished the job, whoever checked it (QC), and whoever released it for dispatch.
• Notes. Ruled lines for the things that always come up: a drawing revision, a change from the customer, a delay.

How to use it

1. Print one card per job on A4. Black and white is fine: nothing depends on colour, and the lines are dark enough to survive a photocopier.
2. Fill in the job number, customer, drawing number, quantity and due date before the card leaves the office, and write in the stages that apply.
3. Send the card out with the work. Clip it to the drawing or keep it in a plastic sleeve on the job. A card in a drawer is not a job card.
4. When someone starts a stage they write the date and their initials under "Started". When they finish, they do the same under "Finished", sign, and tick the box.
5. Before dispatch, the person checking the job and the person releasing it sign their blocks.
6. File the finished card by job number. It is your record of who did what, and when.

Make it fit your workshop

The steel fabrication version comes with seven common stages already written in: engineering and drawings, material ordered and received, cutting, fabrication and fit-up, welding, QC inspection, and surface preparation and painting. The blank version leaves every row empty for your own route. Either way there are spare rows at the bottom for a stage that belongs to one job only: galvanising, machining, a site visit.

Keep one route for each type of job rather than one card that tries to cover everything. A set of handrails and a structural frame do not go through the same stages, and a card full of rows that do not apply is a card people stop reading. Our guide to tracking jobs through a workshop covers how to choose stages.

If you are new to job cards, what is a job card? explains what belongs on one and how to introduce them without a fight.

When writing the same thing every time gets old

This is the same card that Fabricata Flow prints. In Flow the job's details and stages are filled in for you, finished stages are ticked, your logo is added, and a QR code on the card opens the live job on a phone. The office sees every job's progress on a board without walking the floor. Paper stays the working record in many workshops; Flow just stops anyone typing it out twice.

See how Flow works, or start a free 14-day trial. No card is needed.