Replaces your patchwork stack.
Whether it's Shopify + Katana + ShipStation or Squarespace + email + spreadsheets — the patchwork tax is real. Here's what it costs and what replaces it.
Built for shops that outgrew their patchwork stack and aren't ready for a 6-month ERP.
You know the stack. We replace it.
Which patchwork is yours?
The named stack
You've bought real software and stitched it together. Roughly:
- WordPress or Squarespace for the brochure pages — $30/mo
- Shopify for ordering — $79–$299/mo + 2.9% per order
- Katana or similar MRP — $179–$799/mo
- ShipStation for shipping — $30–$300/mo
- QuickBooks for accounting — $35–$200/mo
- ClickUp / Asana / Trello for production tracking — $50–$300/mo
- Excel for the configurator and quote math — "free"
- Email for everything else — also "free," also where things go to die
$400–$2,000/mo in software before the time spent gluing it together.
The improvised stack
You haven't really bought software — you've improvised. Roughly:
- Squarespace or Wix website you update twice a year
- Email for customer inquiries and approvals
- Spreadsheets for quotes, pricing, and the job tracker
- Paper build sheets on the shop floor
- QuickBooks for invoicing
- Maybe Shopify for a few standardized SKUs
- Google Drive for job documents
- A text thread for rush orders
The bill is small. The hidden cost isn't.
Gut-check: is your patchwork still working?
Your patchwork is probably fine if:
- You're a 1–2 person shop
- Fewer than 20 orders per month
- Products are relatively standardized
- Revenue is under ~$300K
- Nothing's actually breaking
Your patchwork is probably costing you money if:
- 3+ employees and growing
- 25+ custom orders per month
- You pay a web designer to update your site
- You've had a pricing error in the last 6 months
- An order shipped wrong or late in the last 90 days
- Someone couldn't find a build sheet, quote, or job status
- A new hire took more than 30 days to be productive
- You've thought "we need a system" more than twice this year
Three or more on the second list, the math is working against you.
The patchwork tax
The visible cost is the SaaS bill. The invisible cost is bigger and harder to see.
- Re-typing. The same order entered into multiple systems — by different humans, sometimes with different details, always at the worst possible time.
- Data fragmentation. Inventory in Katana doesn't match Shopify. Shipping doesn't know the configuration. Customer history is split across four systems and no one's CRM.
- Spreadsheet quotes. Hours per week of someone writing quotes by hand because no tool in the stack knows your pricing rules.
- Pricing drift. Formulas built two years ago referencing labor rates from before the last raise. Margin leak that nobody catches until a quarterly review (if there is one).
- Missed orders. "We forgot the hinges." "We never sent it to production." Typical baseline: a few per month.
- New-hire ramp. When your operations live in spreadsheets and people's heads, new hires take months to be fully productive instead of weeks.
We don't have a clean number for what this costs your specific shop. But for a typical $5M shop running the named stack, we estimate the imputed time-cost runs $1,200–$2,000/mo on top of the SaaS bill — and for a $2M shop running mostly on spreadsheets, the margin leak from pricing drift alone is often the single biggest line item, even though it never shows up on a P&L.
What TimberCloud replaces, line by line
| Tool you have today | What it does | TimberCloud replaces with |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress / Squarespace / Wix | Brochure site | Hosted website, or embed TimberCloud onto your existing site |
| Shopify | Online ordering | Storefront + Visual Configurator + Stripe checkout |
| Katana | MRP / inventory | Inventory, BOMs, build sheets, purchasing |
| ShipStation | Shipping labels | Integrated shipping — 30+ carriers + LTL (Production) |
| Excel quote workbooks | Configurator math | Step-based formula builder + AI Formula Translator |
| Paper build sheets | Production handoff | Build sheets generated from configuration |
| ClickUp / Asana / Trello | Production tracking | Production stations + dashboard |
| Order intake | AI Order Assistant — PO/email → structured order | |
| QuickBooks | Accounting | Stays. We integrate; we don't replace accounting. |
| Google Drive | Job documents | Documents attached to the order, not a folder somewhere |
Build is $549/month flat. Production (adds integrated shipping and AI Order Assistant) is $1,299/month flat.
How to cut over without breaking the shop
Segment by segment, not big-bang. The patchwork runs in parallel for the cut-over window.
- Week 1–2. Import catalog — AI Product Setup ingests Shopify exports, spreadsheets, or PDF catalogs and builds your product catalog automatically. Configurator and Visual Configurator live on your existing site as an embed if you want. Orders start landing in TimberCloud.
- Week 3–4. Pricing rules dialed in. The quote spreadsheets go away.
- Week 5–6. Production stations configured. Build sheets and BOMs flow from configuration.
- Week 7–8. Inventory cut over from Katana. Integrated shipping replaces ShipStation. QuickBooks stays for accounting.
Eight weeks is the conservative plan. Smaller shops on the improvised stack often move faster because there's less to untangle.
Who should stay on the patchwork
We'll be honest. Some shops shouldn't switch yet.
- Under $300K in revenue. ROI is thin at smaller scale. Revisit in 12 months.
- 1–2 person shop with standardized products. The patchwork works. Stick with it.
- Planning to sell the business in the next 12 months. Don't take on a migration before a transaction.
- Just made a major operational change. Stabilize, then evaluate in 6 months.
For everyone else — especially shops between $500K and $5M with 3–25 employees feeling the friction every week — the math usually makes the decision.
FAQ
What happens to QuickBooks?
Keeps running. We integrate with it but don't replace accounting. Most shops keep QB as the book of record for financials and use TimberCloud for everything customer-facing and operational.
Can I keep my current website?
Two options. Use TimberCloud's full website (custom domain, hosted, themes) — live in minutes. Or keep your existing Squarespace / WordPress / Wix / custom site and embed TimberCloud's storefront and Visual Configurator into it, no code required. Either way, every order flows into your production queue automatically.
How real is the catalog import?
AI Product Setup reads your existing spreadsheets and PDF catalogs and builds your products — including configurable attribute options. You can add plain-language instructions to guide it ("prices are per square foot," "ignore the PHOTO column"). The output is a working catalog you can adjust from there.
What if our pricing formulas are complex?
That's what the step-based formula builder is for. Reference customer inputs (Width, Height), product attributes (Wood Type, Finish), and a purpose-built library of woodworking measurements (Square Feet, Board Feet, Linear Feet, Cubic Feet, Perimeter, Waste Factor) across unlimited steps. The AI Formula Translator writes formulas from plain English. Bring your hardest formula to the demo — we'll build it on screen.
Will our team actually use it?
The best test is bringing your least-technical team member to the demo. See how they react. That's more predictive than any feature list.
Who built this?
Justin Romanos, who grew up in Portadoor — his family's custom door shop in Unionville, CT — and spent twenty years on the floor before writing software. Portadoor is customer zero and the product's design partner.
The real question is when, not whether
Most shops that hit $1M+ with 5+ employees move off the patchwork eventually. The only question is whether you do it while the migration is cheap and the returns start compounding now — or after a few more expensive mistakes.