Commercial printing managers have many responsibilities that require
their time and attention. There is no time to waste in managing
employees, paperwork, production, equipment, materials, workflow, or
customers. Good time management will allow the manager to address all
of these areas effectively. Use of PowerQuote printing estimating and
management software allows managers to be more informed and
effective in less time.

PowerQuote is much more than a tool to accurately estimate printing
costs. The system has features to help with each time consuming
management area plus sales, accounting and long range planning. It’s a
software application written from the ground up specifically for the
printing industry, making it easy to use, fast and efficient. PowerQuote
works crossplatform and can run on Mac OS X, Windows XP, Vista or any
networked combination of those operating systems.

Spend less time estimating by using PowerQuote’s accurate price
calculation ability. The software’s interface guides you through the
estimating process to insure nothing is missed. It accurately calculates
the production requirements of a print job with minimal user input. For
reorder jobs, the previously used specifications can be instantly located
and used to create new estimates or job tickets. The system uses job
specifications to calculate prices, create written quotes for the customer,
and print detailed job tickets for the production staff. The written quote is
easily created and makes a professional presentation. PowerQuote users
win more work with this complete, flexible and effective written quote.
This system saves time managing customer quote requests and improves

customer service. A “Price List” function calculates 60 prices in a fraction
of a second to dramatically reduce estimating time for complicated bid
jobs. PowerQuote users win more jobs and up sell to higher quantities
when they respond more quickly and give a better quote presentation to
their customers.
PowerQuote saves time in production. The schedule report allows you to
sequence jobs to save washups and setups. It lists jobs by department
and within department, by due date. The report shows the press time,
paper, and gripper width so you can quickly determine how best to
sequence the jobs. Automatically gathering and presenting this
information in this way allows the manager to make good job planning
decisions quickly. This aspect of the software alone, provides good return
on investment. For example if a small 2 color press costs $75/hr and a
color washup takes 20 minutes, you save $25 when you sequence jobs to
save a washup. Save just 3 washups per week for a yearly total of 50 hours
of press time or $3750!

PowerQuote’s job ticket saves time and eliminates mistakes by providing
clear instructions in a sentence format. This is available only with
PowerQuote. A standalone job ticket or a job SAVe™ ticket with special
features to reduce production mistakes is available. Both job tickets
provide estimated production times so employees know how much time
is allowed for a specific operation such as plate making or presswork.
Giving the employees a goal, encourages productivity.
Material management takes less time with the help of PowerQuote. The
system accumulates paper requirements for jobs in production and
displays them on the paper order report. It shows which job is linked to
each paper and provides the information you need to order cut sheets or
in larger sheets to cut in-house. The paper order report makes checking a

paper delivery or verifying a paper invoice quick and easy. PowerQuote
also saves money on paper by accurately calculating spoilage and
makeready. Ordering too much paper is an unnecessary expense but
ordering too little paper creates shortages, reprints, and missed
deadlines. PowerQuote lets you set spoilage and makeready guidelines to
calculate accurate paper requirements that saves on both types of
expenses.
These are some of the key features of PowerQuote that improve
effectiveness and reduce the time spent managing employees,
paperwork, production, equipment, materials, workflow, and customers.
The time saved can be used in other management areas or just to
improve quality of life.

Bruce Moore is author of this article on print estimating software.
Find more information about printing estima

This entry was posted on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 10:03 pm and is filed under Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.