Add a press and its click charges

Tell thintent what each press costs you to run, and every job on it can be worked out from then on.

Add the press

1. Go to Settings › Pricing › Printers.
2. Click Add printer. Give it a Name (the make and model is fine) and pick its Type: Digital press, Large format or Litho press.
3. Click Add printer again. The press is created with every charge at £0, and you land on its own page to fill them in.
4. Enter what it costs you, then Save changes.

The running cost is ink, wear and time only. Paper is added on top from Materials, so don’t fold it in here.

Digital press

One figure: Cost / 1000 clicks. A click is one side of one sheet, so a sheet printed both sides is 2 clicks. There is no separate mono and colour rate. If you run them at different prices, add the press twice, once for each.

Large format

Cost / m², and two optional figures for its ink, below. Roll work is priced by the area it uses, with your roll media on top.

Ink is the one part of that figure that depends on what's printed: a dressmaking pattern or a plan is lines on a plain sheet, and a flood of colour is the whole sheet. If you price both kinds of work, split the ink out. Ink / m² at full coverage is the ink alone for a solid flood; Work the ink out from a cartridge gets there from what a cartridge costs and holds and the spec sheet's millilitres per m². Typical coverage % is what a usual job on this press inks, and what quotes start at. The quote then charges the running cost on the whole area and the ink scaled by that job's coverage, so a 5% pattern job costs next to no ink and a 100% banner all of it. Leave the ink blank and the press prices as one figure, whatever the coverage.

Litho press

Three groups, the way the pressroom thinks about it.

• Setup: plates & makeready. The Plate cost each, a Makeready base cost paid once per job, and a Makeready cost per plate. Every colour on every side needs its own plate, so a 4/4 job is eight plates.
• Run. The Run cost / 1000 sheets. Sheets, not impressions.
• Spoilage. Whole sheets: Spoilage sheets (press-up), Spoilage sheets / plate and Run spoilage / 1000 sheets. Spoiled sheets are charged as the paper they are.

Each charge has a Mark-up % beside it, with the sell price it works out to. Leave it blank and the press uses your standard mark-up from Settings › Pricing. A litho press has one for setup and one for the run; a blank setup mark-up follows the run’s.

Speed, and how long a job takes

Every press can take a speed: Speed (pages per minute) on a digital press, from its spec sheet, for the sheet size you run most; Speed (m² per hour) on large format; Speed (sheets per hour) on litho. It never changes the price. It adds an estimate of the press time to the quote's breakdown and the job sheet, such as “about 20 min”; change it and open quotes and jobs are re-timed (see How long a job takes). A digital or large-format press also shows what it costs you an hour, worked out from its charge and speed.

Hours a day, under Details, is how long the press runs in a day: its room on the day board. Whole hours from 1 to 24; leave it blank for 7. Like speed, it never changes a price.

Costing a litho press by the hour

Litho's cost is mostly time on the press, so a litho press can be costed from its hourly rate. Give it a Cost per hour £ and a speed, and its makeready and run £ work themselves out, with Makeready (mins) and Makeready per plate (mins) for the makeready. A press at 8,000 sheets an hour costing £40 an hour comes to £5.00 per 1000 sheets, and 20 minutes' makeready to £13.33. Leave the hourly cost blank to type the £ yourself. Plate cost and spoilage are entered the same either way.

Minimum charge

A Minimum charge £ is the least the press's work sells for on a job, after mark-up. Paper and extras don't count towards it. When a short run comes in under it, the quote adds a Minimum press charge row to make up the difference, and the press's own rows keep their mark-ups. When thintent picks the press for you and any of the presses that can run the job has a minimum, it picks the one that comes out cheapest for the customer with its minimum applied. Without minimums it picks the one that costs you least, as it always has.

Say which paper it runs

Under Stocks it runs, tick each sheet size (or roll width, for large format) the press takes. A size that isn’t ticked won’t be offered for that press on a quote. If the list is empty, add and price a material first.

Or add it from inside a quote

On an auto-configured line, the Printer dropdown ends with + Add a printer…. It asks for the same things, and the new press is selected on the line straight away. Spoilage can be left at 0 and set properly in Settings later. Anyone on the team can add a press this way; editing and deleting one is for owners, in Settings.