Is there a board view?

Not today. Records are listed per stage with counts, and every count is clickable as a filter, but there is no drag-and-drop board. If dragging cards is the thing you want, a board tool is the better fit and we would say so.

Can I move a job backwards?

Yes. Gates apply to moving forwards only, so sending a job back to an earlier stage is never blocked. Correcting a mistake should not need a workaround.

Can I import from Trello?

Export your board to CSV and import it, mapping the columns to fields. The list a card sat in becomes a starting stage.

StreamsApp compared with Trello

Trello lets you drag the card

Trello is a very good board. It is the fastest way to get a shared picture of who is doing what, and for a lot of teams that picture is the whole requirement.

It becomes the wrong tool at the point where the columns stop being a picture of the work and start being a claim about it.

Where Trello is the better choice

If what you want is a shared view of work in flight, Trello is lighter, faster to set up and easier for a new person to understand. Nothing here is easier than a board.

If your work does not have a fixed order, a board is a better fit than stages. Stages assume there is a sequence. Plenty of work genuinely does not have one.

If people need to sketch, reorganise and regroup constantly, the freedom of a board is the feature, and any rule we add is friction.

Side by side

Product features change. Check anything here against Trello before you decide.

Can a card move to the next column before the work is done?

Trello: Yes. Dragging is the interaction. Nothing inspects the card first.
StreamsApp: No. The move is refused, and the person is told which fields are missing.

Are required fields enforced?

Trello: Custom fields can exist. Nothing makes them mandatory to move.
StreamsApp: Per stage. A job cannot leave a stage while a required field is empty.

Where do the instructions for a column live?

Trello: In a card template or a description somebody has to open.
StreamsApp: On the stage, shown to whoever is working on it.

Can it quote and invoice the customer?

Trello: No, without adding another tool.
StreamsApp: Built in, including GST and sync to Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks.

Can I hide a column from some people?

Trello: Board-level access, not column-level.
StreamsApp: Stage by stage: work on it, view only, or hidden entirely.

A board is a picture. A process is a rule

The columns on a board describe where things are. They do not decide where things are allowed to be. That distinction does not matter at all until the day something expensive depends on a column being true.

The job that was dragged to Complete but never invoiced. The one moved to Ready for collection before anybody rang the customer. The one that reached Despatch without a QA sheet. In each case the board was accurate about what somebody did and wrong about what happened.

Stages with gates close that gap by making the move conditional. The customer has to have been told. The invoice has to exist. The certificate has to be attached. Until then the job does not move, so the board cannot lie.

What you get besides the gate

Because a job is a record rather than a card, everything that happens to it is kept: every field change, every stage move, who did it and when, exportable when somebody asks.

And because the customer-facing parts are built in, the job carries its own quote, its own invoice and its own message history. The customer's reply to an email sent from the job comes back onto that job rather than into one person's inbox.

See the difference

Tick one box and a record cannot leave a step until the work behind it is actually done: the quote sent, the invoice raised, the customer told. Excel lets you type Done. Trello lets you drag the card. Neither of them knows nobody was ever billed.

Questions

Is there a board view?: Not today. Records are listed per stage with counts, and every count is clickable as a filter, but there is no drag-and-drop board. If dragging cards is the thing you want, a board tool is the better fit and we would say so.
Can I move a job backwards?: Yes. Gates apply to moving forwards only, so sending a job back to an earlier stage is never blocked. Correcting a mistake should not need a workaround.
Can I import from Trello?: Export your board to CSV and import it, mapping the columns to fields. The list a card sat in becomes a starting stage.

Other comparisons

Try it against your own process

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