The big news this month is about a project taking shape in our hangar: A whole new way of estimating offset and digital printing with Morning Flight. Don't worry, we're not abandoning our innovative traditional pricing model. Product-centric estimating has proven itself in more than 6,000 installations worldwide. But soon you'll have a choice. Full auto, or completely manual, all leading to the same estimate.

Nearly obscured by this is another new feature we had to implement to make manual control work. You'll soon be able to add and define custom presses. Did I mention that our flagship product, the Gold Edition, will be rolling up to the gate in just three more months?

It's going to be a hot, interesting summer.

Hal Heindel
Unitac International Inc.
 

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Product Preview - My Way Pricing

 

When you take pictures of friends and special events these days, how often do you manually set the shutter speed and aperture? A better question might be, are there times when you need to? Nine times out of ten, the full-on automatic mode will yield a better picture, reliably and hassle-free. Just the ticket for cousin Mel. But now and then you'll want to control the focus and depth of field, and the rays of the early morning sun at the water's edge breaking through the fog.

Our new manual pricing mode offers exactly that. Instead of starting the pricing process by selecting a product which then picks the most suitable press and dials in the run specs, you begin by selecting a press and then manually enter imposition, makeready, and impressions per hour.

We hope to have a demo version available for downloading from the Printfire web site in July.
 

Read more
 
 

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Marking up Paper - Pros and Cons

 

Cons? Sorry, I couldn't come up with any. If you're charging the same price you pay your vendor, it may look like you're just reselling paper at cost. But what you're really doing is selling every sheet at a loss. Don't believe me? Let's do the math:
 

1. Write-Offs. On average, 2% of all the invoices you send out don't come back with a check attached. ka-ching!

2. Reruns. Somebody read the job ticket wrong and you have to order the same paper twice to do a rerun. ka-ching!

3. One little Mistake! You ordered a bunch of paper and had it cut to size - the wrong size. ka-ching!

4. $%!#&* You ordered enough paper to run the job, but there was more than the usual (wrinkling, ink setoff, ill humor on the part of the press operator), and now a good portion of it is littering the pressroom floor. ka-ching!
 

I could expand the list but only with gotcha's you've already paid for. The point? Even if you don't want to make a profit on paper, consider adding 5% just to break even. Is there ever a time and place for zero markups? Yes, if you're running an in-plant shop and it's not a profit center.
 
 

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