Job tickets and electronic ledger

[jaspoe30]

I am wondering how other people manage the physical job ticket after it has been printed. Currently we write a ticket using Acrobat, staple that to a folder with a sample of the job and then when it has been printed we assign a number to it and ledger it in an Excel spreadsheet with customer name, quantity, price, etc... It works well but is incredibly time consuming. My thought is to have someway to introduce a barcode or script when the job is being written in Acrobat that contains all the customer information including the job number assigned to the job and then when it gets back to the filing most of that information is already done. I know there are job ticket systems out there, however we are a very small print shop (3 employees) and would like to figure out an alternative method.

Thanks,
Jason

 

[Stephen Marsh]

This is just part of what a print MIS solution streamlines.

Data is entered against the customer. When a quote is raised, it pulls in the customer info. When a quote is converted to an order, the order pulls through the quote info, with minimal additional data entry required at the order stage. A job ticket is then produced including the order number, quote number, customer and job details etc.

There are many MIS systems that are geared around small to medium sized businesses. The question is not so much “can we afford an MIS”, it should be “can we afford NOT to have an MIS”. If you do decide to look into an MIS, a buyer’s guide can be found here:

http://www.accuramis.com/pages/sales/buyers_guide.htm

Even knocking a job ticket system together using Filemaker, MS Access or LibreOffice/OpenOffice database would be better than nothing, it can auto number the records and store information (see attachment, created in about 5 minutes from converting a .csv from a customer’s legacy SaaS license model MIS when they moved over to our perpetual license MIS).

EDIT: The screenshot was of the LibreOffice database entry form GUI, not the “report” layout that would be used for printing the various database fields onto a job bag.


Stephen Marsh

 

[michaelejahn]

Job Ticket ? how 'bout estimate that converts to an order with Paper and digital JT?

Job Ticket ? how 'bout estimate that converts to an order with Paper and digital JT?

I know there are job ticket systems out there, however we are a very small print shop (3 employees) and would like to figure out an alternative method.

We have a customer that has only 5 employees and they use PressWise.

You can use Job bags / barcodes - or pull up orders on the screen.

low as $695 a month

Web-to-Print, Print MIS and Print Workflow Automation | PressWise

 

[Midwestprinter]

"As low as $695 a month"... wow. We do manual Job Tickets (excel) and use a OLD cheap program for estimating. I can't imagine paying that much per month for estimating, job tickets, etc. (I have 7 employees)

 

[michaelejahn]

yeah buddy !

yeah buddy !

"As low as $695 a month"... wow. We do manual Job Tickets (excel) and use a OLD cheap program for estimating. I can't imagine paying that much per month for estimating, job tickets, etc. (I have 7 employees)

It does a little more than estimates and job tickets.

 

[pacart]

We use Printsmith from EFI, it has been very good for us, been using it now for around 10 or 12 years. They just came out with a new version which we haven't upgraded to yet, but it is supposed to be even better.

EFI PrintSmithâ„¢ Vision - Print Estimating and Business Management Software, Print MIS System

 

[jaspoe30]

Thanks for all the suggestions and comments everyone. The main problem I have is that the owner doesn't see the need for a MIS system so he isn't going to spend any money at all (he's very old school and dare I say cheap). We still use a Linotronic 260 for film output and most other equipment we have is very old. If something breaks, he fixes it and it's business as usual. Trying to convince him of a system he doesn't think he needs is the equivalent of beating your head against a brick wall.

The old job ticket system does work, it just works slow and as we have scaled down over the years more tasks and responsibility have fallen on my shoulders which makes it that much harder to make the time to get it done.

I built a database from our existing excel spreadsheets yesterday with OpenOffice Base but I have no idea how to integrate that into a system that would pull customer info, make new tickets, make new quotes and so on. I suspect it requires knowledge I don't have or some sort of programming to make that happen. Maybe I'm wrong though.

 

[pacart]

I would say if you are savvy with Microsoft Access you could probably write your own program in there, I know of a printing company that uses it for their MIS.

 

[splashdesignz]

I would recommend you look at Morning Flight (Features and Pricing | Morning Flight). They have a free edition which will manage pricing and job tickets. There are other versions as well. Ranging from $80 - $445. Check it out. We've been using it for 5+ years and it works quite well for our small shop.