Questions printers ask.
The ones that come up on the phone, answered the way we'd answer them on the phone. Anything missing, email info@thintent.com and a person replies.
Getting paid
Do I need Stripe before I can use it?
No. Quoting and accepting never touch Stripe: a customer can accept with nothing connected, and the job and invoice happen anyway. Connect Stripe only when you want the online payment buttons, which is about five minutes of their onboarding.
Most of my customers pay by bank transfer, or pay me in the shop.
Then they’ll feel at home. With Stripe connected there’s a Pay by Bank button next to the card one: they approve it in their banking app, no card number typed. Prefer a plain transfer? Fill in your bank details and they appear on the quote, the invoice, the PDF and the emails, with the document number as the reference. When the money lands you mark it paid, and cash, cheque and your own card terminal are recorded the same way.
When does the money actually reach my bank?
A plain transfer is the fastest route: Faster Payments, straight into your account, usually in seconds. A card payment confirms on the spot. A bank payment confirms once their bank releases it, which is normally straight away but is the bank’s call and not ours: nothing is marked paid until it has, and if one does fail after the event, you and your customer are both told. Card and bank then settle through your Stripe account, which pays out on its standard schedule, typically a couple of business days and a little longer for your first. Either way we’re never holding it in between.
Can I take a deposit before we start?
Yes. Choose “Deposit, then balance” on the quote and set the percentage. Confirming the order raises the deposit invoice and the balance together: the job sits waiting until the deposit is paid, then goes into production, and it can’t be dispatched until the balance is settled too. Both are payable by the same routes as any other invoice.
Pricing the job
Can it write the quote for me?
It can draft it. Paste the email the customer sent, or type your own shorthand like “500 A5 flyers, 350 silk, double sided at £45”, and it lays the lines out against your own stocks, presses and finishes, flagging anything it had to assume. What it never does is invent a price: it isn’t told what your rates are. Say what to change in a sentence and it redraws its own lines rather than making you start over.
Can customers ask for a quote from my website?
Yes, two ways. Turn on your quote form and you get a page of your own, with your name, your logo and the questions you choose to ask, to link from your website, your email signature or anywhere else. Already have a contact form? Whoever built your site can send its submissions straight in instead. Either way each request arrives as a draft quote with the lines drafted from what they asked for, and you get an email and the bell to say so. Nothing goes back to the customer until you send the quote, and a request that’s plainly spam is one click to discard.
Does it work the price out, or do I have to?
Whichever you want, line by line. Type a price you already know, or switch the line to Auto-configure: pick the press, the stock and the finishing, and it works out how many pieces fit a sheet, what the job costs you, how long it takes, and the price at your mark-up, all shown on screen rather than taken on trust. Presses and papers are created the first time you need them, from inside the quote.
I print banners and signage, not just paper.
Covered. Add a large-format printer with its cost per square metre and your roll media, and an auto-configured line prices wide-format work by area, the same way it prices sheet work by imposition, with your mark-up on top, on the same quote as the business cards.
We run litho as well as digital.
Both, and on the same quote. Add a litho press with its plate price, its makeready (a flat press-up plus a rate per plate) and its spoilage sheets, and an auto-configured line costs a litho line the way the pressroom does: plates for the colours, makeready, spoilage counted as the paper it actually is, then the run.
Some of the work goes out to a trade supplier.
Tick a hand-typed line as outsourced and name who makes it, or name a supplier against a single extra, like foiling on cards you print yourself. What they charge is the cost, so your mark-up stays honest. Once the job is on, raise one purchase order per supplier, email it with the PDF attached, and mark it received when the work turns up. There is no portal for them to sign into: they reply to ordinary email.
Trade accounts and repeat work
Can I offer credit terms to trade accounts?
Yes. Set a credit period on a quote, or a default for every new one, and once you’ve confirmed the order the invoice due date and the customer’s copy both reflect it: pay within 30 days, by a date shown on the invoice, instead of on receipt. If they work to purchase orders, put their PO number on the quote and it follows onto the job and the invoice, and can be corrected later without voiding anything.
The person who orders isn’t the person who pays.
Usual at a trade account. Put an accounts inbox on the firm and the invoice goes there with whoever ordered copied in, so the buyer knows it has been billed without being the one chased for it. The firm carries its own billing address, and its people sit under it, so everything that firm has had from you reads in one place. The quote still goes to whoever asked. If someone else needs it, copy them in on that quote.
They want the same job again.
Open the finished job and press Duplicate: you get a fresh draft quote carrying the same lines, ready for the new quantity or date. The drafter knows the history too, so a repeat enquiry from a customer you have quoted before is drafted from what they have actually had.
Can my staff use it too?
Yes. Invite them by email and they can do all the quote work. Shop settings, Stripe and billing stay with owners. Nobody sets a password: signing in is a link emailed to you, good for half an hour.
On the shop floor
How do I keep track of what’s in the building?
Jobs has a board with a column for each stage, from awaiting payment to dispatched, and every open job as a card in its column, soonest due first. Drag a card to move the job on. If an unpaid invoice is holding it, or a supplier’s work isn’t back, you’re asked before it moves rather than stopped. One click picks out what’s late, what’s due today and what’s waiting on the customer. Moving a card never emails anyone: telling the customer it’s ready is a button on the job.
Can I plan what runs on each press, day by day?
Yes, on the day board: your presses down the side, then finishing and packing, and the working week across the top. Each job’s work waits in Not scheduled until you drag it onto a machine and a day. Its time comes from the press, finishing and packing times on the job, and each day fills against that machine’s hours, showing red when it’s overbooked. Printing only goes on a press that could run it. You can book a job before its artwork is in: the card says what it’s waiting on and leaves the call to you. Whoever’s on the press gets today’s run list to tick off. Booking and ticking never move the job’s stage; that’s still yours. Planning is drag and drop, so do it at a computer; the run list works on a phone or tablet.
Paperwork, and what it isn’t
I’m not VAT registered.
Turn it off in settings and your quotes and invoices go out clean, with no VAT line and no VAT number. If you are registered, every line defaults to 20%, but you can zero-rate an individual item, or delivery, when the job calls for it. Print is awkward here: leaflets and booklets are zero-rated where posters and stationery aren’t. So when a line’s VAT doesn’t match the way you treated that same product last time, the editor says so and offers the fix in one click. It never quietly changes a line for you.
Can I change a quote after I’ve sent it?
Deliberately not. A sent quote is frozen so what your customer accepted is exactly what you sent. To revise, clone it: you get a fresh quote to edit and the original is marked superseded, so the trail stays honest.
What if the job changes after it’s already been quoted or paid for?
Pause the job and record the change: a different quantity, a reprint, whatever it is. thintent looks at what’s already been invoiced and paid, and once you approve the new price it raises a supplementary invoice, a credit note, or voids and reissues the original, whichever actually fits.
Do we handle delivery, or just collection?
Either, and you choose per quote. Offer collection, UK delivery, international or any mix of them, price each one, and the customer picks as they accept. Work that needs none of it, like a design fee, offers nothing at all. A delivery address travels onto the customer’s quote and the paperwork.
Does it replace my MIS, or talk to Xero?
For a small shop it can. It quotes, gets you paid and runs the job through the building, which is the part of an MIS a shop of a few people uses every day. It isn’t a web-to-print storefront, a CRM or stock control. It does talk to your accounts. Invoices, credit notes, payments and Stripe payouts sync to Sage Accounting on their own, so a payout lands in your books as the invoices it covered rather than one mystery lump. Xero and QuickBooks Online are next. Everything still exports to CSV for your accountant.
Wondering whether you need an MIS at all? ›How do my customers sign in to see their quote?
They don’t. The link in the email is the quote: it opens straight onto the page where they can read it, download the PDF, accept and pay. No accounts, no portal, nothing to forget.
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