Case study · Flagship build

The Triocon ERP.

A complete, custom enterprise system built from the ground up for a steel-fabrication group operating across two countries — and running its real day-to-day business in production.

10+Modules shipped
2Entities · countries
4Currencies handled
LiveIn production
⤢ Click to expand Triocon ERP sign-in
The challenge

A growing fabrication group running on disconnected spreadsheets.

Estimates lived in one workbook, payroll in another, purchases in a third — across two separate companies in four currencies. Numbers were re-keyed by hand, project profitability was a guess until month-end, and nothing talked to anything else. The business had outgrown spreadsheets but didn't want a heavy, generic ERP that would never fit how fabrication actually works.

Before

Manual estimation workbooks · payroll re-keyed each month · no live project P&L · stock tracked on paper · two companies, zero shared system.

After

One system · auto-calculated quotations · payroll from attendance · estimate-vs-actual in real time · multi-entity, multi-currency · branded PDFs on demand.

What we built

One system, every part of the operation.

Each module was shipped, tested against the real workbook it replaced, and put into daily use. Jump to any area:

// 01 · Overview

A single operational snapshot.

The dashboard scopes instantly to whichever company is selected and surfaces what matters that day — active headcount, materials tracked, open enquiries, pending payments and recent quotation activity — pulled live from every module beneath it.

  • Per-entity scoping — switch between companies
  • Live KPIs aggregated across all modules
  • Recent enquiries & estimations at a glance
⤢ expandDashboard
// 02 · Estimation

A quotation engine that mirrors the real costing.

The heart of the system — a rebuild of the estimation workbook the business already trusted, turned into a fast, searchable, auto-calculating engine. Enter the project parameters and it computes factory cost, margin and the final estimate, with a full draft → sent → won/lost workflow.

  • Auto-calculated factory cost & estimate value
  • Verified line-for-line against the source workbook
  • Status workflow with KPIs across all estimations
  • One-click Excel & PDF export
Calculator parityStatus workflowExcel / PDF
⤢ expandEstimations
// 03 · Cost tracking

Estimate vs actual — live project P&L.

Every cost line — material issues, petty cash, purchases — is tagged to a project and category, then measured against the original estimate. The result is a real-time profit-and-loss view per project, so margin erosion shows up while there's still time to act on it.

  • Four cost sources unified per project
  • Estimate-vs-actual variance & result flags
  • Per-category drill-down
  • Multi-currency normalised to a base currency
Live P&LCategory taggingFX normalised
⤢ expandCost tracking
// 04 · Payroll

Payroll generated straight from attendance.

Monthly payroll is built from attendance, overtime and salary advances — no manual re-keying. The calculator handles half-days, attendance-based allowances and cross-month advance deductions, all verified against the spreadsheet it replaced, and finalises into branded payslips.

  • Attendance, overtime & advances feed payroll automatically
  • Half-day and allowance logic matched to source
  • Cross-month advance deduction
  • Finalised monthly payroll & payslip generation
Attendance-drivenAdvancesPayslips
⤢ expandPayroll
// 05 · Inventory & assets

Stock, valuation and depreciation in one place.

Materials are tracked with live stock levels and FIFO valuation, while a dedicated assets module handles the company's equipment with straight-line depreciation. Both export cleanly to Excel and PDF for finance.

  • Live stock levels with FIFO valuation
  • Asset register with depreciation calculator
  • Full CRUD with expandable detail rows
  • Excel & PDF export
FIFODepreciationExport
⤢ expandInventory
// 06 · Purchasing

Purchases and supplier payments, tracked to the last unit.

Every purchase is captured with its tax, payment status and currency, with partial supplier payments and per-supplier statements. Outstanding balances are always current, so cash-flow conversations start from real numbers.

  • Purchase tracking with tax & payment status
  • Partial supplier payments & outstanding balances
  • Per-payment FX capture
  • Supplier statements & pending-payment exports
Supplier paymentsFX captureStatements
⤢ expandPurchases
// 07 · Documents

Branded, automated document generation.

Payslips, estimates and reports all generate as polished, branded PDFs with a shared header and footer, correct tax breakdowns and locale-aware formatting — the kind of output that used to be assembled by hand, now produced in one click.

  • Shared, standardised PDF header & footer
  • Tax split & locale-aware date formatting
  • Letterhead editor with free-floating overlays
  • Generated on demand from live data
pdf-libBrandedOne-click
⤢ expandPDF output
// 08 · Reporting

The whole business, summarised.

A reporting centre rolls every module up into business insights — sales, estimations, inventory, financials and payroll — with category breakdowns and exportable summaries, so month-end is a click instead of a marathon.

  • Cross-module reporting in one place
  • Expense-by-category breakdowns
  • Exportable financial & payroll summaries
⤢ expandReports
// 09 · Custom tools

Fabrication-specific tools, built in.

Beyond the core ERP, the system includes purpose-built tools for the trade — like a pipe-cutting optimiser and an MTO calculator — the kind of niche, high-value utilities only a system built for fabrication would ever include.

  • Pipe-cutting optimisation
  • MTO (material take-off) calculator
  • Built around real shop-floor workflows
⤢ expandPipe cutting tool
Under the hood

Built on a modern, maintainable stack.

Frontend

Next.js 14 · TypeScript

Typed, modern React with the App Router.

Backend

Supabase

Postgres, auth and storage with versioned migrations.

Documents

pdf-lib

Precise, branded PDF generation from live data.

Architecture

Multi-entity

Two companies, two currencies, one codebase.

The outcome

A real business, running on software it didn't have a year ago.

Estimation, payroll, costing, inventory, purchasing and reporting now live in one system, used every day across two countries. Quotations that took a careful afternoon take minutes. Project profitability is visible while projects are still running. And every document the business sends out looks like it was built for them — because it was.

Want a system like this for your operation?

This is what Forvex builds. If your business is outgrowing its spreadsheets, let's talk about where to start.

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