Digital Estimating

[realrdp]

Over the years, having gone from Covalent, to PrintSmith, to ePace, I am still on a quest to find an affordable truly digital estimating system that will easily integrate with the bookkeeping, order entry, real time inventory and the fulfillment program(s). Most systems that I have seen are built around or based upon offset and we are a mid sized, *totally* digital print company, with no need for offset estimating functions. Workarounds have become tiresome. Any ideas?

[Dammacx]

Re: Digital Estimating

I have been trying to find the same thing. I'd be happy with a system as simple as, type up work order click button and it becomes an invoice when jobe is done. I have been thinking of looking into Bento and just creating exactly what I want. It might not be strong enough for a bigger operation but for a small shop it might work.

[Morning Flight]

Re: Digital Estimating

Dean,

If you're a Mac shop running Leopard, Bento may be a viable choice. At $49.00, certainly the most affordable choice. With one caveat: Make sure you can set aside the time. After more than 25 years of writing printing estimating and order entry programs, I can tell you that rolling your own will not be a trivial project.

For instance, Morning Flight, the PC (or Intel-Mac) application I discussed with Richard at http://printplanet.com/discuss/threa...=2506&tstart=0 consists of more than 280,000 lines of handwritten code. Printed out, that's a two-foot high stack of 20 lb paper, give or take. Morning Flight +does+ include Offset. A digital-only version would probably take less than a third of that.

Note that the Free Edition of Morning Flight is a bona fide free download (not a trial or a demo), code-signed for security. The program is available at http://www.printfire.com/products.html. If there is enough interest, we may decide to release a strictly digital version in the future.

Hal Heindel

!http://www.printfire.com/Images/Forum_Anim2.gif!

[Dammacx]

Re: Digital Estimating

Thanx Hal, I will check this out. Any chance a OS X version of this will be coming out?

[Morning Flight]

Re: Digital Estimating

No plans, Dean, mainly because of Apple's decision to abandon the Motorola chip and switch to Intel processors. While we haven't had a chance to check out Morning Flight under OS X Leopard and Boot Camp, all MF editions run fine under Parallels. Even on a 1GB MacBook.

With more than 1,000,000 installations (and apparently rated the number one Mac utility), Parallels is definitely outpacing Boot Camp in popularity. Small wonder. Having to reboot whenever you need to switch from one OS to the other when running Boot Camp can get old fast. If I were Apple, I'd give serious thought to coming up with a name that doesn't include the word "Boot." Better still, match the feature set of Parallels. Or buy the company.

Hal