Are customers getting a different price depending on who or when they ask? Are you wasting time quoting the same job over and over for customers who are fishing for a lower price? Commercial printers can save time and add more profit with print estimating software that promotes consistent and equitable pricing.

Win more jobs with accurate prices.
Some print estimating software, such as PowerQuote Print Estimating Software, let you consider the increased productivity of longer run jobs with a “sliding scale discount”. Longer run jobs are produced more efficiently giving you more "billable hours" as compared to "payroll hours". With offset, press speed tends to increase too. Since larger jobs tend to be more competitive, considering this efficiency helps win jobs while protecting profit.

Consider a shop that sells and prints $2000/day, with 20% of the work quoted ($400) and the other 80% from reorders that don’t require a quote. They win 25% of those quotes for an average of $1600 quoted per day. Considering productivity allows them to win a larger percentage of the big jobs. An increase to just 30% from 25% adds $80 in sales per day or $20,000 per year. ($80 x 5 days x 50 work weeks).

Shops with higher volume or that quote over 20% of their business, stand to benefit even more.

Consistent cost-based estimating protects profit.
If your system is not methodical, repeatable or cost based, you lose money on jobs quoted incorrectly. PowerQuote gives you all of these qualities and many checks to insure the price is correct.

Systems with important considerations like press speed, makeready, or markup as continually variable on each estimate, provide flexibility at the expense of repeatability. A better system is to have presets for these variables so that they can be changed to accommodate specific conditions. This allows for flexibility, repeatability, and consistency.

Some managers believe they have priced jobs below cost. Even worse, it's the larger, more complicated jobs that are more subject to estimating errors. An accurate, methodical estimating system that prevents these mistakes can easily save thousands a year in lost profit. PowerQuote Printing Estimating and Management Software leads you through the estimating process showing all the charges so nothing is overlooked.

Stop inconsistent pricing that damages customer relationships.
Customers can become angry when the same job is priced higher one time and lower another time. They may feel cheated and question the printer's competence.

PowerQuote makes it easy to see the previous price when entering reorders. You can maintain price consistency from order to order or be prepared to discuss any price change with your customer. Accurate, repeatable estimating is essential in maintain favorable relationships with customers.

This article written by Bruce Moore, President PowerQuote Software
http://www.pqprintestimating.com

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PrintEstimating.info is operated by PowerQuote Software. This page is intended as a general purpose resource for printers who want to learn about print estimating software.