Companion
What to start today
Shop Traveler is a job board for the sign-shop floor that schedules by working start date, not just the due date. It comes with the FlightDeck suite.
Most boards track the due date and leave the math to you. Shop Traveler flips it. You enter when a job is due and the hours it takes, and it works backward to the date the job has to start, buffered for a realistic six-hour day plus a day of slack. The board sorts by that start date, so the top of the list is not what is due soonest, it is what has to begin now.
Works backward from the due date
Enter the due date and the hours, and Shop Traveler backs out the start date for you. A banner due Friday that needs six hours of prep surfaces with a start date of Wednesday, before it quietly slides past the point where it can still make the deadline.
File tier buffers the timeline
Rate each client A, B, or C. Clean files run at their estimate; messier ones get 1.5 or 2 times the runway. The difficult clients get the extra time they always end up needing, built into the schedule instead of discovered at the deadline.
See the shop's load before it lands
Print, cut, plot, and finish each carry their own hours. Shop Traveler shows the load on every department today and across the next twelve days, so a Thursday that is already full is something you see on Monday.
Printed strips and job tickets
The floor does not run on a screen. Print a compact strip for every job, or a full job ticket laid out for letter paper, ready for the clipboard and the hand-off.
Handling overhead, counted
Mark a client Easy, Hands-on, or Demanding. Handling does not move dates, but it adds the contact time those clients cost onto your load, so a day stacked with demanding clients does not look deceptively light.
Yours, offline, solo or shared
Installs as an app and runs offline on a shop tablet. Work solo with everything on one device, or self-host the shared board so the whole crew sees the same jobs, each with their own login. No cloud, nothing leaves your shop.
How it fits with FlightDeck
Shop Traveler comes with the FlightDeck suite, and the two cover different ground. FlightDeck works at the file level, getting each file clean and onto the RIP. Shop Traveler works at the job level, tracking the jobs those files belong to. A job is made of many files, so they run side by side rather than one feeding the other.