Most manufacturing software is priced per user at a single rate, which quietly assumes that everyone who touches the system uses it in the same way. In a workshop that assumption is plainly false, and it is the main reason MRP rollouts stop at the office door.
The problem with one rate for everybody
A production manager lives in the system. They plan, reschedule, chase purchase orders, look at margins and run reports, and a full licence is straightforwardly worth it. A machine operator opens the system perhaps four times a shift, to see what the job is, follow the steps, record what they used and mark it finished. Charged at the same rate, the second user is poor value, and the entirely rational response is to buy fewer licences and have operators share a login or work from printouts.
That decision is where the data quality problem starts. Shared logins destroy the audit trail, because every action is attributed to whoever the account belongs to rather than whoever performed it. Printouts mean the record is created after the fact, from memory, by somebody in the office. Both defeat the purpose of buying the system in the first place, and both are caused by pricing rather than by software.
What an execute-only seat is
A shop floor seat is a restricted licence sold at a lower rate. The user can see the work assigned to them, follow the instructions, record consumption and quality results, and complete operations. They cannot see costs, margins, supplier pricing or company settings, which is usually what you want anyway.
| Full seat | Shop floor seat | |
|---|---|---|
| See and complete assigned work | Yes | Yes |
| Record material use and quality results | Yes | Yes |
| Plan, schedule and purchase | Yes | No |
| See costs and margins | Yes | No |
| Brytebuild price from | £45 / user / month | £10 / user / month |
The arithmetic
For a workshop with two office users and six on the floor, the difference is straightforward. At a single rate of £45 the eight users cost £360 a month. With two full seats and six shop floor seats the same coverage costs £150. The saving matters, but the more important consequence is that the six operators now have their own logins, which means the audit trail identifies who did what, and the records are created at the moment the work happens.
What to check
- Does the vendor offer a reduced seat at all, or is every user charged the same?
- Does the reduced seat still write a proper audit record, or is it effectively a read-only screen?
- Does the rate scale with the tier, and what does it cost at the plan you would actually buy?
- Can an operator be added and removed easily, given that shop floor headcount moves?
The second question is the one worth pressing on. A cheap seat that cannot record consumption or quality results does not solve the problem, because the office is still doing the data entry afterwards. Our pricing page lists the shop floor rate for each plan.