I came to framing from a creative background. The craft side made sense to me immediately — the materials, the techniques, the satisfaction of a well-made frame. The business side was another matter entirely.
Pricing, in particular, was a problem I didn't know I had. In the early days I was quoting jobs the way most framers do — a rough feel for the materials, a guess at how long it would take, a number that seemed reasonable. It was only later, when I started tracking things more carefully, that I realised how much I was leaving on the table. Not through laziness or carelessness, but simply because I had no reliable system for working out what a job actually cost me to produce.
The spreadsheet years
So I built a spreadsheet. It started simple — a few formulas for moulding costs and a rough labour rate — and grew from there. Over time it got more sophisticated, more accurate, and considerably more complicated. It worked, after a fashion. But it was slow, it was fragile, and every time I wanted to quote a job I had to sit down at a computer and hope I hadn't accidentally broken a formula.
More than that, the spreadsheet only solved one part of the problem. It helped me price a job. It didn't help me track where that job was in the workshop, or remind me when a customer was waiting for an update, or tell me what stock I had before I promised a particular moulding. For all of that, I was still relying on memory, sticky notes, and optimism.
Why I built Framaid
I looked at the software that existed for framers. Some of it was perfectly good at pricing — in a general sense. But that was the problem. It was general. It assumed every framer works the same way, charges the same labour rate, takes the same amount of time. It didn't account for the fact that I do things a particular way, that my jobs have particular characteristics, that my costs are mine and nobody else's. It felt like software built for a version of framing that didn't quite match the one I was actually doing.
What I needed wasn't just a pricing tool — it was a pricing tool that understood my business specifically. One I could tell exactly how long it takes me to cut a frame, fit a mount, finish a tray. One that would remember those timings and apply them consistently to every job, so that every quote was built from my reality, not an assumption about the average framer.
Framaid started as a better version of my spreadsheet. A calculator that understood the whole job — every material, every stage of labour, calibrated to how I specifically work. From there it grew into something bigger: a tool that could track a job from the moment a customer walked in to the moment they collected, manage stock, handle client communication, and run on any device without any installation.
The goal was always the same: to give a one or two person framing business the kind of organised, accurate, professional back-end that usually only bigger operations can afford — for a price that made sense for an independent shop.
Who it's for
Framaid is for framers who are good at their craft and want to be just as good at running their business. For people who are tired of guessing at prices, losing track of jobs, or spending their evenings on admin that should take minutes. For anyone who's ever looked at a finished frame and wondered whether they actually made any money on it.
It's the tool I needed when I started out. I hope it's useful to you too.