Right now
Work in progress that has to finish first. Zero if you are free now.
Job 1
What it is, for example Wedding signs.
How long it takes on the bench or machine.
Leave blank if there is no due time.
Charged once if it finishes after the due time.
Added for every hour after the due time.
Job 2
What it is, for example Wedding signs.
How long it takes on the bench or machine.
Leave blank if there is no due time.
Charged once if it finishes after the due time.
Added for every hour after the due time.
Job 3
What it is, for example Wedding signs.
How long it takes on the bench or machine.
Leave blank if there is no due time.
Charged once if it finishes after the due time.
Added for every hour after the due time.
Job 4
What it is, for example Wedding signs.
How long it takes on the bench or machine.
Leave blank if there is no due time.
Charged once if it finishes after the due time.
Added for every hour after the due time.
Job 5
What it is, for example Wedding signs.
How long it takes on the bench or machine.
Leave blank if there is no due time.
Charged once if it finishes after the due time.
Added for every hour after the due time.
Job 6
What it is, for example Wedding signs.
How long it takes on the bench or machine.
Leave blank if there is no due time.
Charged once if it finishes after the due time.
Added for every hour after the due time.
Job 7
What it is, for example Wedding signs.
How long it takes on the bench or machine.
Leave blank if there is no due time.
Charged once if it finishes after the due time.
Added for every hour after the due time.
Job 8
What it is, for example Wedding signs.
How long it takes on the bench or machine.
Leave blank if there is no due time.
Charged once if it finishes after the due time.
Added for every hour after the due time.
Job 9
What it is, for example Wedding signs.
How long it takes on the bench or machine.
Leave blank if there is no due time.
Charged once if it finishes after the due time.
Added for every hour after the due time.
Job 10
What it is, for example Wedding signs.
How long it takes on the bench or machine.
Leave blank if there is no due time.
Charged once if it finishes after the due time.
Added for every hour after the due time.
Job 11
What it is, for example Wedding signs.
How long it takes on the bench or machine.
Leave blank if there is no due time.
Charged once if it finishes after the due time.
Added for every hour after the due time.
Job 12
What it is, for example Wedding signs.
How long it takes on the bench or machine.
Leave blank if there is no due time.
Charged once if it finishes after the due time.
Added for every hour after the due time.
Job 13
What it is, for example Wedding signs.
How long it takes on the bench or machine.
Leave blank if there is no due time.
Charged once if it finishes after the due time.
Added for every hour after the due time.
Job 14
What it is, for example Wedding signs.
How long it takes on the bench or machine.
Leave blank if there is no due time.
Charged once if it finishes after the due time.
Added for every hour after the due time.
A job needs hours. Leave a job blank to leave it out. Up to 14 jobs.
Result
Questions shop owners ask
What order should I do rush jobs in?
Put the jobs in the order that makes the total cost of lateness smallest. Earliest-due-date-first is a good rule when everything can be done on time, and shortest-job-first helps when many small jobs wait on one big one, but when a queue is overloaded and jobs carry different penalties neither is reliably best. This tool tries every possible order, by dynamic programming over subsets of jobs, and gives the cheapest one for up to 14 jobs.
How do I put a price on being late?
Use two numbers per job. A flat fee covers what a miss costs however late it is: a rush surcharge you refund, a lost repeat customer, a contract penalty. An hourly cost covers what each extra hour costs, such as a daily late fee divided by working hours or the cost of a customer waiting. Either can be zero, and a job with no due time costs nothing to leave until last.
What does the tool say about overtime?
It re-solves the queue as if you had one more hour, and four more hours, before the work starts, and reports how much lateness cost each would remove. Compare that with what an hour of overtime or a helper costs you.
Which job should I turn down or outsource?
The tool removes each job in turn, re-solves the rest, and names the one whose removal saves the most lateness cost. That is the job whose presence is hurting the others most, which is a better guide than the job with the lowest price.
What if my hour estimates are wrong?
It re-solves with every job 20 percent longer and 20 percent shorter and tells you whether the order holds. If it changes, plan the first jobs firmly and decide the later ones when you see how the first ones go.
Is this advice about my customers or contracts?
No. It is arithmetic on the figures you type, treating one worker or machine doing one job at a time with no changeover time. Check the penalties against your actual contracts.
Not decided
Whether your hour estimates are right, the real cost of disappointing a customer, changeover and setup time between jobs, jobs that can be split or worked on by two people, materials that have not arrived, and anything that happens after the queue is cleared. Each job is treated as done in one piece, back to back.
Related tools: which job first, a head-to-head ranker for choosing between jobs, and the tutor weekly schedule optimizer.