Solution · Team
See Who Is Working on What — and What Each Order Costs in Labour
In a busy atelier the work is everywhere and nowhere — you know the room is full, but not who is on which gown, or what their hours add up to. Bomble puts assignment, time and labour cost on the same record as the order.
Updated 19 June 2026
The short answer
Most ateliers cannot answer two simple questions: who is working on this order right now, and how much labour has gone into it. The hours live in heads and notebooks, so payroll is a guess and margin is a mystery. Bomble fixes this by assigning people and teams to orders and stages, timing the work with per-order timers and time logs, and converting those hours into a real labour cost at each person's wage rate — all visible to the right people through per-user permissions.
The cost of not knowing who is on what
An atelier rarely loses money on the fabric. It loses money on the hours nobody counted. When the only record of who did what is the memory of the person standing nearest the gown, two things go wrong at once: work gets dropped because no one was clearly responsible for the next stage, and the labour that went into an order is never measured, so you price the next one off a feeling.
The day a client calls about their order, you should be able to say who has it and what stage it is in without walking the workshop. The week you run payroll, the hours should already be recorded against the orders that earned them — not reconstructed from sticky notes. Until both are true, the most expensive part of couture, the human time, is the part you are flying blindest on.
- Stages stall because responsibility was implied, never assigned.
- Payroll and overtime are estimated, because hours were never logged against work.
- You price new orders on instinct, with no record of what past ones actually took.
- When a client asks for a status, finding who has the order means interrupting the room.
Assign the work, then time it
Bomble starts with real employee records — name, role, level from Junior to Master, status, wage rate, contact and team. Those people are organised into teams that carry a department and workshop location, and teams are not just a label: they drive which team is responsible for a production stage and which orders are assigned where.
From there the work becomes visible. Each order has a salesperson or owner, and each stage in your pipeline names the responsible team. Then you time it: a per-order timer you start, pause and stop accumulates time against the order, and per-employee time logs record who spent how long, on which date, with a note. The hours stop being a guess and start being data.
- Employees with role, level, status and wage rate, grouped into teams.
- Teams carry department and workshop and drive stage responsibility and order assignment.
- Per-order owner and per-stage responsible team, so every step has an owner.
- Per-order timers plus per-employee time logs with date and note.
Turn hours into labour cost and protected access
Logged hours feed straight into money. Bomble computes labour cost as hours logged multiplied by each employee's wage rate, so the human time on an order finally has a number — and that number flows into per-order economics alongside price and material cost to produce margin. The order that felt profitable but ate three weeks of a Master's time stops hiding.
Because a team can see the work without seeing the money, Bomble uses granular per-user permissions and built-in roles. A floor employee can see their own orders and stages; a manager can see the team's load; finance figures stay hidden from those who should not see them. And department reporting rolls the same data up so you can see where the load is actually falling.
- Labour cost = hours logged × wage rate, feeding per-order margin.
- Granular permissions: view, money and scope (all or own) controlled per user.
- Built-in roles for owner, manager, salesperson, floor and CEO.
- Department reporting shows where the work and the hours are landing.
With Bomble
What you get for managing the team
- Employee records with role, level, status, wage rate and contact details.
- Teams with department, workshop and shift pattern that drive stage responsibility and order assignment.
- Per-order owner and per-stage responsible team, so nothing is unowned.
- Per-order timers and per-employee time logs that capture who worked, how long and when.
- Labour cost calculated as hours × wage rate, feeding straight into order margin.
- Granular RBAC permissions and built-in roles, so teammates see their own work while money stays hidden.
- Department reporting and best-employee / employee-of-the-month insights to see where the load falls.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I see who is working on a given order?
- Every order has an owner or salesperson, and each production stage names the responsible team. Together they show who holds the order and which team is accountable for the current step, without walking the workshop.
- How does Bomble track how long work takes?
- Two ways that share the same data: a per-order timer you start, pause and stop to accumulate time against the order, and per-employee time logs that record who spent how long, on which date, with a note.
- Can Bomble tell me the labour cost of an order?
- Yes. Labour cost is hours logged multiplied by each employee's wage rate. That figure feeds into per-order economics alongside price and material cost, so you see margin and margin % per order.
- Can I stop staff from seeing wages and finances?
- Yes. Permissions are granular per user — view, money and scope (all orders or only their own) are controlled separately, and built-in roles like floor or salesperson keep money hidden from people who should not see it.
- How are teams organised?
- Teams have a name, department, workshop location, shift pattern, colour tag, team lead and members. Teams are not cosmetic — they drive which team is responsible for a stage, how orders are assigned, and how department reporting rolls up.
- Can I see which team or person is overloaded?
- Yes. Department reporting surfaces team load, and best-employee and employee-of-the-month reports show hours and output, so you can rebalance work before a bottleneck forms.
Keep exploring
Order Tracking for Couture Ateliers
When you have twenty gowns open at once, "where is that order?" should never need a phone call to the workroom. Bomble follows each order through your own stages and surfaces what is overdue, due soon, or in for a fitting today.
Client Measurements for Couture Ateliers
A client's body is the single most reused piece of data in your atelier — and the most likely to be lost in a notebook. Bomble holds 22 measurements per client, grouped by anatomy, ready to pull onto every order.
Deposit Tracking for Couture Ateliers
Couture runs on deposits — and deposits are exactly what a notebook loses track of. Bomble records what each client has paid against the price, keeps the outstanding balance live, and gives you a payment reminder with the figure built in.
See Exactly Which Stage Every Gown Is At
When you cannot say, off the top of your head, whether a gown is being cut, sewn, fitted or finished, the atelier is running on memory. Bomble turns that memory into a pipeline the whole floor can read.
Guide: Tracking labour cost in an atelier
Know who is on what — and what their hours cost.
Bomble was built inside a working couture atelier to connect assignment, time and labour cost on one record. Free 3-day trial, no card required.