Small Machine Shop Software for 1–10 Person Shops
In a shop of one to ten people, the owner usually runs a machine all day and quotes at the kitchen table at night. What the shop knows lives in that owner's head: what the part cost last time, which rev ran, what the setup looked like. Software built for 50-person manufacturers doesn't fit that day, which is why most small shops still run on QuickBooks, Excel, and a whiteboard.
Traveler is quote-to-invoice software designed for exactly this size of shop. One flat price of $109 a month with unlimited users and no implementation fee, a setup meant to be finished in an afternoon, and a rule that every workflow has to take fewer keystrokes than the spreadsheet it replaces.
“Quoting eats my evenings. I run machines all day and build quotes in a spreadsheet at night.”
Traveler is designed to get a routed three-op quote out in about ten minutes and a repeat part in about three. Quantity breaks price automatically with setup spread across each break, and a fast-quote mode takes lump hours plus material when a full routing is overkill.
“Have we made this before? That answer lives in my head and nowhere else.”
Every quote, job, price, and quoted-versus-actual hour attaches to the part record. Search a part number and you see the last run, the rev, the price, and setup photos, with a button to quote it again.
“Every system I've looked at costs more per seat than I can justify, plus an implementation fee.”
Traveler Cloud is $109 a month flat, unlimited users, no implementation fee, everything included. If you'd rather not subscribe at all, the Shop Server is $4,250 one time and runs on a box you own.
“My guys won't type into a computer. They want to make parts.”
Floor capture is built around scanning: a QR code on each traveler op, a wall tablet in kiosk mode, no passwords on the floor. Machinists clock on and report good and scrap counts with taps, not typing.
“My wife does the books in QuickBooks and she's not switching.”
She doesn't have to. Traveler never does accounting. Invoices and customers push one way into QuickBooks, with a status on every record so she can see what went through.
Why small shops stay on spreadsheets
The tools on the market were priced and built for bigger shops: per-seat licenses, five- to ten-user minimums, and implementations that commonly start in five figures. Owners of small shops say it plainly in forums. An extra $700 a month would end them, and a three-month implementation is three months they can't stop shipping.
So the spreadsheet wins by default. It's free, it's fast for the person who built it, and nobody has to learn anything. The cost shows up elsewhere: slow quotes, lost setup knowledge, and job costs nobody sees until after the invoice is paid.
What Traveler is designed to do in a small shop
The core loop is the one you already run on paper. An RFQ comes in, you quote it with quantity breaks, the customer accepts from a link on their phone and attaches a PO, a job and a printable traveler are created, the floor scans through the ops, and you ship with a packing slip and a certificate of conformance before the invoice goes to QuickBooks.
Blanks are allowed everywhere. Nothing demands every field before it saves, incomplete records get flagged instead of blocked, and you can export everything in CSV and PDF with one click on any plan. If you leave, your data leaves with you.
Start with quoting, grow into the rest
Most small shops will start by using Traveler as the quoting tool, and that's fine. The part record builds up behind every quote, so by the time you're printing travelers and tracking the floor, the history is already there.
If you want to try the math before anything else, the free bar stock calculator on this site works out parts per bar, bars to order, and the drop left over.
Want this handled without the spreadsheet?
Traveler Cloud is quote-to-invoice for small machine shops at $109/month flat, unlimited users. It's in early access — leave your email and we'll bring you in by wave. No sales calls.
Free, no signup: Shop Hourly Rate Calculator →
Straight answers
▸Is Traveler too much software for a two- or three-person shop?
It's designed not to be. You can use only quoting and travelers at first, leave fields blank, and add floor tracking later. Pricing is the same $109 a month whether one person logs in or ten.
▸Does Traveler replace QuickBooks?
No. Traveler is being built to push invoices and customers into QuickBooks one way and never try to be your accounting system.
▸Can I own the software instead of subscribing?
Yes. The Shop Server is $4,250 one time: the full system on a small box on your network, with 12 months of updates included. An optional $59 a month continuity plan adds offsite backup, updates, and support, and the box keeps working without it.
▸Is Traveler available now?
Traveler is in early access and the pricing shown is committed launch pricing. Product screens on this site are design previews of software under development.