Step Board: A Smarter Way to Track Jobs in Your Workflow - shopVOX Pro

Tyler MacDonald Updated by Tyler MacDonald

The Step Board introduces a powerful new way to visualize, manage, and anticipate work across your production process. Unlike the Job Board, which provides a high-level overview of jobs and their current steps, the Step Board gives you a detailed breakdown of every step within each job, allowing for better planning, tracking, and efficiency.

What’s the Difference?

Before the Step Board, job tracking was limited to the Job Board, where each job appeared as a single line item, displaying only the current step in its workflow. While useful for monitoring jobs in real time, this approach had limitations:

🔹 You could only see where a job was right now, not where it was headed.

🔹 There was no way to anticipate how jobs would move through future steps.

🔹 Identifying bottlenecks or workload imbalances required extra effort.

The Step Board solves these issues by displaying each step of every job individually, giving you:

✅ A comprehensive view of all workflow steps for all jobs.

✅ The ability to forecast upcoming work, helping teams stay ahead.

✅ More control over job prioritization and resource allocation.

How It Works

Step Breakdown for Full Visibility

When a job enters production, it follows a predefined workflow consisting of multiple steps. The Job Board only displays the current step a job is on. The Step Board, however, breaks down every job into each of its workflow steps, giving a complete picture of production.

For example, instead of seeing:🔹 Job A – Printing (Job Board View)

You now see:🔹 Job A – Review🔹 Job A – Prepress🔹 Job A – Out For Approval, and so on

This means you don’t have to wait until a job arrives at a step to prepare for it—you can see everything that’s coming well in advance.

Sorting & Filtering for Efficient Workflow Management

The Step Board allows you to sort and filter jobs by:

🔹 Step Name – Focus on specific production stages (e.g., Printing, Cutting, Assembly).

🔹 Job Status – View jobs that are active, completed, or pending.

🔹 Due Dates – Prioritize jobs based on urgency.

🔹 Customer or Order Number – Track specific orders efficiently.

🔹 Employee Assignments – See which team members are responsible for each step.

With these controls, you can customize your view to focus on what matters most at any given moment.

Example: Jobs on the Step Board

Let’s take a real-world example. Suppose you have three jobs in production:

Jobs on the Job Board

Notice Sales Orders: 10033, 10037, 10038 on the Jobs Board

This limited view only tells you where a job currently is—not what’s coming next.

Jobs on the Step Board

Notice Step : Review, We can see all the jobs that have the Review Step. We have one line item with the Status of idling, meaning its ready to be worked on, while the others are all Completed.

Notice Step: Prepress, We can see all the jobs that have the Prepress Step. The Status column shows you Pending, Idling,Complete. i.e the Pending is coming down the pipeline, while the idiling means its waiting to be produced, and the completed items are done this step

Notice Step: Out For Approval, We can see all the jobs that have the Out For Approval Step. The status of pending, indicates it is work coming down the pipeline, while the status of Idling means those are ready to be worked on.

Notice Step: Printing, We can see all the jobs that have the Printing Step. And in this case the Status is all Pending, meaning that they are coming down the pipeline

Now, instead of just reacting to what’s happening now, you can proactively manage upcoming steps:

✅ If multiple jobs are entering Printing soon, you can prepare resources ahead of time.✅ If too many jobs are scheduled for Finishing, you can allocate additional team members.✅ If a job is delayed at Pre-Press, you can spot the issue before it disrupts the rest of the workflow.

Why the Step Board is a Game-Changer

The Step Board is more than just an alternative view—it’s a critical tool for better job management. Here’s why it makes a difference:

1. Proactive Job Planning

Instead of waiting for jobs to arrive at a step, the Step Board allows teams to plan ahead, ensuring the right resources, materials, and personnel are available at the right time.

2. Bottleneck Identification & Resolution

If multiple jobs are stuck at a particular step (e.g., Printing), you can spot the problem early and make adjustments before it slows down production.

3. Workload Balancing

Seeing all steps across jobs makes it easier to assign tasks evenly among team members, preventing work from piling up in one area while others remain idle.

4. Enhanced Decision-Making

Having full visibility into job steps means you can make smarter scheduling and resource allocation decisions, reducing delays and improving overall efficiency.

Best Practices for Using the Step Board

🔹 Check the Step Board at the start of each shift – Know what’s coming and prepare accordingly.

🔹 Use filtering & sorting – Customize your view to focus on the most critical tasks.

🔹 Monitor bottlenecks – If certain steps are overloaded, adjust staffing and resources to balance workloads.

🔹 Communicate with your team – Ensure everyone understands what jobs are in progress and what’s next in line.

Final Thoughts

The Step Board transforms job tracking from reactive to proactive, allowing you to stay ahead of production, improve efficiency, and reduce workflow disruptions. With greater visibility into every job step, you can make better decisions, optimize resources, and keep production running smoothly

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