…I get to work.
I’ve spent the last 6 weeks making improvements to my work flow and occasionally spending time on making some artwork.
Time for Screen Print Estimator Pro beta
Steve Shaffer, long time friend and screen printing pro, and I were talking about an easy way to estimate jobs. I started working up a google sheet which I used to prove the concept. Then I switched to Numbers.app because the process of creating and updating templates is superior. Unlike Google sheets the templates are private not shared with the whole world. Since one key design concept was it should be portable so I located an app to make saving templates in iOS foolproof.
Opening Screen Print Estimator Pro (SPE Pro) lands you on a work page that is not printed so it will remain hidden from your clients. There is no need for them to know what you paid for your stock or what your markup is or your other fees.
The landing page of Screen Print Estimator Pro beta
Initial input
The first thing you should notice are the shaded cells. They are not actually shaded in the normal sense of setting your cell background color. Numbers.app will only lock an entire page. Apple’s advice if you only want to lock a range is to put a clear graphic over it, I use color as an indicator. Works well enough if you are pointing to cells to get around but if you use the return or tab keys to move around you can accidentally move under the shield. Every thing under the shield is either a constant, a calculation or a label. The docs cover the process of changing the values and updating the template.
The only thing for each job to enter here is the price of the shirts, shipping and the markup. Markup is not usually charged on shipping but this is easily modified. The result is passed on to the main page and inserts at column 2 row 9, total cost shirts.
Screen Print Estimator Pro Main page
The main page – main input
The main page follows the general key as before except the input labels are magenta.
Now enter the client and job designation. At this point save the sheet with a name made up of the client and the job i.e. Smith0001. Be consistent, your filing system relies on it.
Based on the date and due date the app will automatically calculate the rush fees. Now if this is a reorder check the box. Re-orders aren’t charged art fees.
Time to enter some very important information; the number of shirts and the number of colors. Your fees and charges are based on these two numbers. The app looks the number of shirts up on the table from the landing page. This determines the print charge for each shirt. If there is more than one color, it looks up the charge for each additional shirt and multiplies it by the number of additional colors. For example if the order is 50 shirts and three colors the printing fee per shirt is 3.00+ 2*.50 = $4.00.
The main page – additional fees input
The actual values for the fees can be updated on the landing page. You should’t need to do that often. The fees section is for indicating which fees to apply to each job. The fees will be self explanatory to anyone in the business, just check the correct boxes and enter the required numbers. The computer graphics fee is a hold over from days gone by and the rush buttons are vestigial but I may program an over ride in them.
So Steve it has been ready for two weeks and I called you twice to come pick it up but you had other things to do. From my view point the ball is in your court, call me.
Tomorrow I’ll write about the app I made for my self to manage workflow on TeeSpring and maybe share some of the images I came up with.
