Print Management software

[Printing Behind Bars]

I really hope someone might be able to assist us in our search. I am a supervisor in a prison print shop and we are looking for new software to run the day to day in the shop. The kicker is that it cannot be web based. Could someone point us in a direction please?

Thanks

 

[jwheeler]

I really hope someone might be able to assist us in our search. I am a supervisor in a prison print shop and we are looking for new software to run the day to day in the shop. The kicker is that it cannot be web based. Could someone point us in a direction please?

Thanks

I also manage a jail print shop for our county sheriff. We should connect to share stories. Curious if you have inmates working in yours as well...?

We are actually going through this process of finding a management software right now. Currently all orders are submitted on a fillable PDF order form.

We had the same requirements of it not being web based due to security restrictions. This was a difficult task as most are cloud hosted these days. After some research, I found Printer's Plan by Print Reach. We've watched several demos and they meet all of the requirements. Oregon State Dept of Corrections uses this for their print shop and I spoke with the manager there who said it has worked well for them for many years. A local commercial printer here in So Cal also uses it and also spoke well of it. It is a completely internal software that you run on your own servers.

The other one we are considering is Print Shop Pro by Edu Business Solutions. This was recommended by several other in-plant managers on the IPMA forum. This software is browser based, however, they have the option for you to host it yourself so there is no need for an outside internet connection, just internal network.

After participating in several demos on both, we have found that each one had little subtelties that we liked over the other, but at this point, they will both do the job. We are getting final bids and should be moving forward with a PO soon. Check back in a few months to see how it goes.

 

[idahodian]

Hi, local county print shop here, we have the PSP, self hosted program. It was a big upgrade from all paper written orders, we can now actually know how many orders we have in any time period. It also keep great track of stock for reordering. We only have employees working, and to access it you must be connected to our network. We have a stand alone PC set up as a Kiosk for people that walk in to use for orders ect and it literally opens to the program and will not access anything else. I'm sure your IT staff should be able to make that the only site available in your staff.

 

[wtpbiz]

There are multiple printing management software available like web to print.

 

[Magnus59]

There are multiple printing management software available like web to print.

OP specifically stated it cannot be web based for security reasons.

 

[Magnus59]

There's an Australian based program called Quote & Print, possibly one of the last standing that hasn't switched to a web based solution, although I see they are now offering a cloud version.
Doesn't need a whole lot of horsepower either, the executable just needs to be in a shared folder on the network.
Runs on a Clarion database.
Q&P Current Software – Quote & Print Software

 

[brushyourideas]

Hello, What kind of printing Software you are looking for?

Brush Your Ideas is a complete Web-to-Print software solution developed by ecommerce industry experts with 14+ years of experience. Print Market-place and Web2Print industries thrive on product design tools. Brush Your Ideas provides a wide range of custom solutions to integrate W2P designer tools and scale your web store.

 

[ReproElectroProspero]

+1 here for PrintShopPro. If you can get away with a locally installed browser-based system it's really fantastic. We love the functionality, even if configuring it comes with a steep learning curve.

 

[jwheeler]

That's good to hear @ReproElectroProspero . We were debating between PrintShopPro (PSP) and Printer's Plan. We just cut the PO last month for PSP and are in the onboarding/setup process now. I'll try and remember to post an update in a few months.

 

[jwheeler]

@ReproElectroProspero , I tried to PM you, but it seems like your profile is marked private. Are you an inplant as well? Any advice during this onboarding process?

 

[ReproElectroProspero]

@ReproElectroProspero , I tried to PM you, but it seems like your profile is marked private. Are you an inplant as well? Any advice during this onboarding process?

I just changed it, feel free to PM me if you want to troubleshoot or bounce an idea around.

One thing that would be very helpful when onboarding is to have an accurate inventory of all your stocks, and a list of the most common kinds of jobs you run. I still don't have the inventory properly configured because 1) it's a pain in the butt and 2) we don't care that much.

The most frustrating thing for us has been the kinds of jobs we run. PSP has a system that categorizes them based on finished size. So theoretically they advise that when a customer wants a one off 3x8.5 print for some special purpose, you should go through the effort to build an entire category for it so PSP can do its magic and autopopulate the stock needed. We do so many odd sizes that we would be programming new finished sizes categories in PSP all day long. So instead, we have a "custom size" option we configured for most of our finish sizes that our operators will just manually configure on the backend for the customer. This messes with reports a lil bit but I think it's necessary to not want to pull my hair out from the constant configurations.

Also - if Chuck is the one helping you onboard, be patient. All our employees thought he was real mean. I think he just has resting jerk voice.