About ARC Manager

ARC Manager started as an Excel sheet.

A co-worker and I were trying to track material usage and get accurate, real-world numbers for the products we were already selling. It worked — barely. Every new material, price change, or formula tweak made the spreadsheet slower, more fragile, and harder to trust.

During that process, I realized two things at the same time:

1. what we actually needed was real software, not a bigger spreadsheet, and
2. modern AI tools had made building a custom application realistic for someone like me.

I couldn't find anything on the market that fit the way fabrication shops actually work, so I decided to build the tool I wanted to use myself. ARC Manager is the result of that decision.

ARC Manager exists to solve one problem clearly and honestly: help small fabrication and manufacturing shops understand their inventory costs without subscriptions, cloud lock-in, or unnecessary complexity.

The guiding principles are simple:

• Offline First – Your data lives on your machine. No accounts, no servers, no outages.
• No Subscriptions – You buy tools once. Software should work the same way.
• Built for Real Shops – Designed around how materials, hardware, and products are actually tracked on a shop floor — not how spreadsheets wish they were used.

This isn't about scaling to millions of users. It's about building a tool that does one job well and stays out of your way.

I’m a welder-fabricator by trade, but like most small shops, I’m involved in far more than just welding. I wouldn't call myself a traditional software developer — but I'm learning as I go, and I’ve always been comfortable working with computers and technology.

ARC Manager is built from firsthand exposure to how materials, pricing, and inventory are actually discussed, ordered, and tracked in a working fabrication shop. I build features based on problems I've actually run into, and I improve the software as I learn more and as real shops use it.

If you have a feature request, find a bug, or just want to ask a question, you'll be talking directly to the person building the software.

Email: admin@arc-manager.net

Documentation: docs.arc-manager.net