Manufacturing software · New Zealand
Manufacturing software for the jobs your ERP can’t do.
When production is still scheduled on a whiteboard, stock lives in a spreadsheet, and every made-to-order quote is rebuilt from scratch, another ERP module rarely fixes it. Tally Digital builds the custom software around your shop floor — scheduling, inventory, quoting, data capture and the integrations that tie it to your ERP, Xero and freight — hand-coded by a senior engineer and yours to own.
In short
Custom software for manufacturers, built around your shop floor
Manufacturing software development means building the production scheduling, inventory, quoting and data-capture tools around how your plant actually runs, instead of forcing your plant to run the way a boxed ERP assumes it does. In practice that’s a finite-capacity scheduler that respects your machines and your bottleneck, live stock and work-in-progress that reconciles against what’s actually on the floor, a made-to-order quoting tool that prices a job from materials, labour and machine time, shop-floor terminals that book time and scrap where the work happens, and the ERP/MRP integration that stops your team re-keying the same order into three systems. For a Waikato manufacturer or advanced-engineering firm, it’s usually the layer that sits between an ERP that can’t quite do a specific thing and the spreadsheets people built to fill the gap.
What we build
What we build for manufacturers
Most jobs are one of these, or a few of them wired together. If it involves your production data, your stock or a workflow the floor depends on, it’s in scope.
Production scheduling & capacity planning
Finite-capacity scheduling that respects real constraints — machine availability, tooling, setup and changeover time, your actual bottleneck — instead of a whiteboard and a supervisor’s memory. Drag a job, see the flow-on, and give the floor a plan that matches the plant.
Inventory, stock & work-in-progress
Live stock and WIP with real validation, batch and serial tracking, and bin or location awareness — raw material, sub-assemblies and finished goods reconciled against what’s physically on the floor, not a month-old spreadsheet that only one person trusts.
Made-to-order & configure-to-order quoting
A quoting tool that prices a non-standard job the way you actually cost it — materials, labour, machine time, fabrication and margin — with configurable rules, revisions, and a quote-to-works-order flow so a won job carries its detail straight through instead of being re-typed.
Shop-floor data capture
Rugged terminals or tablets on the floor for job booking, time and scrap, batch traceability and quality checks — data captured where the work happens, so your numbers are current by the hour instead of key-punched from paper dockets on Friday.
ERP / MRP integration
The integration layer that makes MYOB Advanced, Unleashed, Cin7, Katana, Fishbowl, Odoo or a legacy ERP talk to the tools around it — so an order, a stock movement or a works order is entered once and flows everywhere, instead of being re-keyed between systems by hand.
Freight, Xero & supplier links
Connect the systems either side of production — Xero or MYOB for invoicing, GoSweetSpot, NZ Post or Mainfreight for freight and labels, EDI or portal feeds to the merchants and distributors you supply — so despatch, costing and reordering happen without a re-key.
In depth
How to think about a build for a manufacturing business
When an existing ERP or MRP product is the right choice
For a lot of manufacturers the right first move is a proper inventory or MRP product — Unleashed, Cin7, Katana, MYOB Advanced or Fishbowl — and if one of those genuinely fits how you run, we’ll tell you to buy it rather than build. Off-the-shelf is cheaper, faster and someone else maintains it. Custom earns its place at the edges the boxed product can’t reach: a scheduling model that respects your specific constraints, a quoting engine for genuinely made-to-order work, a shop-floor capture flow your ERP doesn’t offer, or the integration that ties the whole thing to the systems either side of it. The honest test is whether you’re bending the product badly out of shape — a stack of spreadsheets and manual exports propping up an ERP that almost fits — because that patchwork usually costs more, and breaks more, than the one custom piece that would do the job properly.
What scheduling on a whiteboard actually costs at scale
A whiteboard and a shared spreadsheet are a fine way to run a small job shop, and a genuinely expensive way to run a busy plant. The costs don’t appear on an invoice: the job promised on a machine that was already committed, the rush order that quietly bumped three others, the changeover nobody sequenced for, the supervisor who is the only person who knows the real plan and can never take leave. A scheduling tool that models finite capacity turns that implicit knowledge into a system — one plan the whole floor can see, a realistic promise date, and immediate visibility of what a new order does to everything already in the queue. The whiteboard got you here; on a plant running near capacity it’s usually the thing quietly capping throughput.
Made-to-order quoting is where the margin leaks
For a fabricator or advanced-engineering shop, most of the margin is decided at the quote. Rebuilding every made-to-order price from a blank spreadsheet is slow, inconsistent between estimators, and easy to under-cost — the job that looked fine on paper loses money on the floor because the machine time or the material movement wasn’t in the number. A quoting tool that codifies how you actually cost work — material take-off, labour and machine rates, setup, fabrication steps, margin rules — makes quotes faster, consistent across whoever raises them, and traceable when a customer asks why. Tie it to a works order and the detail the estimator captured carries straight into production, instead of being re-interpreted from a PDF.
Integration is usually the actual job
On most manufacturing sites the software already exists — an ERP or inventory system, Xero or MYOB for the books, a freight portal, a CAD or CAM package, spreadsheets in the gaps — and the pain is that none of it talks. So an order gets typed into the ERP, again into a stock sheet, again into the freight portal, and a person spends their week being the integration. We wire those systems together against their real APIs — MYOB Advanced, Unleashed, Cin7 and Katana all expose them, Xero and the freight carriers likewise — with proper error handling and reconciliation, so a record is entered once and flows. Where a legacy system has no API we work with what it does have: a database, a scheduled export, an EDI feed. Getting the existing tools to move data on their own is frequently the highest-return software a manufacturer can commission.
Who you actually work with
Not an account manager fronting an offshore team — Isaac Vicliph, a senior software engineer with a decade shipping software in financial services, designing and writing the code himself. On a manufacturing job that means someone who will walk the floor, learn how a works order really moves, and sit with the estimator and the scheduler before writing a line — because the constraint that matters is the one on your plant, not the one in a generic template. You get one accountable person from the first scoping call to launch, direct contact throughout, and a written plan you can read before anything is built. It’s a deliberately small operation, Waikato-based and set up to work closely with the Ruakura-aligned manufacturing, food-machinery and metal-fabrication base. NZ-based, priced in NZD, GST-registered.
How a project runs, and how it’s priced
We scope before we quote. The first step is a conversation about the actual constraint — the schedule that lives in someone’s head, the stock figure nobody trusts, the quote that takes half a day, the order re-keyed into three systems — followed by a written plan: what gets built, which integrations, what you own at the end, and a fixed price for that scope. No hourly meter, no open-ended estimate that drifts. A shop-floor capture tool that feeds your existing ERP is a smaller job than a full scheduling-and-quoting platform, so rather than publish a number that’s wrong for your plant, we give you a firm one once we understand it. Tell us where production is losing time or money and you’ll get a straight plan and a straight price back.
Reviewed July 2026 · written by Isaac Vicliph, Tally Digital
Questions
Frequently asked
What is manufacturing software development?
Building the production, inventory, quoting and data-capture tools around how your plant actually runs, rather than forcing the plant to fit a boxed ERP. In practice that’s a finite-capacity scheduler, live stock and work-in-progress, a made-to-order quoting tool, shop-floor terminals for job and time booking, and the integration that ties them to your ERP, Xero and freight.
How much does custom manufacturing software cost in New Zealand?
It depends entirely on scope — a shop-floor capture tool that feeds your existing ERP is a very different job from a full scheduling-and-quoting platform, so a blanket price would be misleading. We scope your actual constraint first, then give you a fixed price for that scope before any work starts: no hourly meter and no open-ended estimate. Tell us where production is losing time or money and you’ll get a firm number back.
Should I buy an ERP or MRP product, or build custom?
Buy the product whenever it genuinely fits how you run — Unleashed, Cin7, Katana, MYOB Advanced or Fishbowl are cheaper and faster, and we’ll say so. Build custom for the edges they can’t reach: a scheduling model that respects your specific constraints, genuine made-to-order quoting, a shop-floor capture flow the ERP doesn’t offer, or the integration that ties it all together. Often the best answer is a mix — the ERP for stock and accounting, one custom piece for the work that’s specific to your plant.
Can you build production scheduling software?
Yes — finite-capacity scheduling that models real constraints like machine availability, tooling, setup and changeover time and your actual bottleneck, so the floor works to a plan that matches the plant. It can run standalone or feed off works orders already in your ERP, and show immediately what a new or rush order does to everything already in the queue.
Can you integrate with our ERP, Xero and freight systems?
Yes — integration is usually most of the work. MYOB Advanced, Unleashed, Cin7, Katana, Fishbowl and Odoo all expose APIs, as do Xero, MYOB and the freight carriers (GoSweetSpot, NZ Post, Mainfreight). We wire them together with proper error handling and reconciliation so an order or stock movement is entered once and flows. Where a legacy system has no API, we work with what it has — a database, a scheduled export or an EDI feed.
We run everything on spreadsheets — is that a problem to move off?
No, and it’s the most common starting point. A spreadsheet is a brilliant prototype and a poor production system once a plant is busy — versions drift, one person owns the macros, and a fat-fingered cell becomes a mis-costed job. We usually start by turning the one spreadsheet that hurts most into a proper tool with real validation and a shared source of truth, then extend from there, so you see working software early rather than a big-bang cutover.
Do you work with manufacturers across the Waikato and the rest of NZ?
Yes. Tally Digital is a New Zealand software studio based in the Waikato, set up to work closely with the region’s manufacturing, food-machinery and metal-fabrication base, and working with firms across the country — remotely, and on-site when walking the floor helps. The process is the same wherever you are: a clear scope, direct contact with the engineer, and code you own.
Are you a software developer or a digital agency?
A senior software engineer. Custom production, inventory and integration software — not templates, not a monthly marketing retainer. On a manufacturing job you talk to the person who walks your floor, designs the system and writes the code, every time.
Tell me where production is losing time or money.
The schedule that lives on a whiteboard, the stock figure nobody trusts, the made-to-order quote that takes half a day, the order re-keyed into three systems — tell me the constraint and I’ll scope the smallest build that fixes it, then come back with a clear plan and a fixed price.