Case Study · No. 001
From sticky notes to a full business OS
How Backyard Builds Co. went from tracking orders in her head to running a fully automated order, revenue, and tax system — in one session.
Small Business / Woodworking · Systems Design & Automation · Excel → Operational Platform
17
Orders migrated
$6.2K
Revenue tracked
919
Working formulas
8
Sheets in one session
Before Automate & Align
- Orders tracked manually after the fact — no pipeline view
- No way to see outstanding balances or unpaid deposits
- Revenue and profit calculated by hand, if at all
- Tax liability unknown until end of year
- No product catalog — pricing was inconsistent
- Every order came in through Facebook DMs
After Automate & Align
- Live order pipeline with status, deposits, and balance tracking
- Outstanding balances auto-calculated
- Profit calculated automatically per order and in aggregate
- Estimated tax liability updates in real time
- Full product catalog with costs and margins locked in
- Monthly Summary auto-populates revenue, payments & tax
One workbook. Eight systems.
Settings Hub
Deposit rules, tax rate, lead times — change once, ripples everywhere.
Product Catalog
19 products, 8 categories. Material cost, labor, margin, price.
Orders Tracker
100 rows, dropdowns for status & payment, auto totals & tax.
Monthly Summary
Orders, revenue, cost, gross profit, payment mix, tax liability.
Business Dashboard
KPIs, pipeline by status, outstanding balances, 12-month revenue.
Cut List + Future Builds
Production reference plus mapped future product expansion.
"I built the spreadsheet to keep track of orders, but I want to elevate it — I want to turn this into an entire project and project plan."
