Who we help
Two businesses in the same industry rarely run the same operation. Find yours below — how your orders, stock and production actually move, not what you sell.
Configured around how you work, not what you sell
Plenty of software works when the business fits the software. Workhorse is for businesses that need it the other way round. Two businesses in the same industry can run completely different operations — and two in different industries can run the same one. So the question that decides whether Workhorse fits isn't what do you sell? It's how do orders, stock and production actually move through your business? — and whether you've had to bend that to suit an app, or given up and gone back to the spreadsheet.
Customer breadth
We work with product businesses across food and drink, bespoke furniture, precast concrete, office pods, lampshades, marine engines, dental equipment, radios, safety gates, seed and genetics, certified honey, corporate uniforms, gown hire, festival bars, engraved trophies and wearable safety trackers, to name a few. Most are owner-managed, and all are past the point where spreadsheets and entry-level stock tracking can keep up.
Find your operation
Most of the businesses we work with recognise themselves in one of these four. Each page describes one — what makes it hard to run on standard tools, and how Workhorse is configured around it.
Made-to-order & bespoke manufacturing
For businesses where no two orders are quite alike — varied by customer, specification, finish or assembly. An office pod built to each client’s floor plan; a lampshade run in a designer’s fabric; a trophy engraved with the winner’s name; a seed mix specified for one farm; safety gates sized to site; plants specified to match a planting scheme. The bill of materials changes every time — so quoting, job tracking and costing have to handle variation as the normal case, not the exception.
If quoting variations and chasing jobs through production is where the week goes, start here.
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Batch production & traceability
For businesses where batch, lot and expiry dates come with obligations — wine, premixed cocktails, non-alcoholic spirits, tea, coffee, crisps, plus seed lots, certified honey and chemicals. An auditor or certifier asks which ingredients went into which batch and where every unit went — and a recall tests whether that answer comes straight from the system or has to be pieced together by hand.
If compliance reports are assembled by hand from several places, start here.
Products + services, hire & repairs
For businesses whose stock doesn't just sell — radios, gown hire, hand-worn safety trackers. Units go out with serial numbers and come back for servicing; hire stock sits out on loan; installed products carry maintenance contracts. The stock record has to follow each item out, back and out again — with its serial number, history and contract attached.
If finding a unit's history takes longer than fixing the unit, start here.
Wholesale & distribution
For trade suppliers, importers and distributors — homeware, compost, marine engines, eyewear. Hundreds of lines across trade and retail price lists, supplier-led purchasing, and containers that land in parts across weeks. The stock figure has to hold while orders part-ship and deliveries part-arrive.
If back orders live on a spreadsheet and “in stock” keeps turning out to be spoken for, start here.
Prefer to start from your industry?
Some businesses find their sector before their workflow. We have pages for food & drink, furniture & interiors, manufacturing and clothing.
When Workhorse is the right choice
Workhorse is configured around how your business actually runs, and that holds whether your operation is unusual or perfectly ordinary. Standard apps expect every business to work the same way; when yours doesn't, you end up working around the software instead of the software working for you. With Workhorse the system is set up around you, by our team, during a managed implementation. How that works is set out on our configuration & customisation page.
If your operation doesn't behave quite like anything on these pages
That's often the strongest sign you're in the right place. Show us how orders reach you and how stock leaves, however unusual the route, and we'll show you each piece landing in one system, with stock staying right and Xero updated at the end.