Printing software for job pricing, materials and reprints

Priced by the piece, paid for by the roll

A client asks for six banners and a hundred cards, and you quote per banner and per box. Your costs arrive in a different shape — a roll of flex bought in one payment, an ink set that lasts a month.

So the margin on any one job is a guess. The roll cost UGX 500,000 and that order used some of it. By the time it finishes you have run forty jobs and cannot say which carried it.

PesaScope closes the gap from both ends: material in as stock or a dated expense, the job out as a priced service against the client's name. At month end both sit in the same summary.

How a job moves through the shop

1. Quote by measurement, not by argumentA Pro quote line can be priced per square or linear metre — enter width and height and the price follows, so a 3m × 1m banner and a 6m × 1.2m one are priced the same way.
2. Take a deposit before the machine startsRecord what was paid up front; the balance sits against the client's name until collection.
3. Record material the day you buy itFlex, vinyl, ink, eyelets, blank shirts — entered as stock or as an expense, so the month's material spend is a figure rather than a shrug.
4. Collect the balance on deliveryRecord the payment and the debt clears. Everything still owed sits in one list, oldest first.

The jobs you sell and the material behind them

Pick "Printing & branding" at sign-up and this list is already there. Jobs are services; rolls and blanks are stock you count and draw down.

List design as its own line even when you throw it in free. Once it has a price, you can see how much artwork you gave away.

One order: six banners, one reprint

Two banners reprinted for a name the client approved and then changed cost UGX 60,000 — over a quarter of what the whole order kept. Print margins are decided by the mistakes, not by the price list.

What PesaScope will not do for you

It will not cost your machine by the hour. PesaScope has no time tracking — no job clock, no operator timesheets, no machine-hour rate. If your pricing depends on knowing the printer ran for forty minutes, that stays on paper.

What it records instead is what left the till: the operator's pay, the ink, the roll, the power bill, the rent. Across a few months those answer the question an hourly rate would.

There is no spoilage button either. The workaround is an expense category you create and name Reprints. Material burnt on a job that must be run again goes there, and after three months the total is a number you can argue with.

Where a print shop leaks money

1. Corporate jobs waiting on approvalDelivered in a day, paid in six weeks. Overdue invoices are flagged automatically and Pro reminders chase them on the offsets you set.
2. Reprints nobody wrote downA free reprint feels like goodwill until it is the fourth this week.
3. Material bought by the roll, sold by the metrePesaScope cannot measure your offcuts, but it shows material spend against what you billed — the same gap from further away.
4. Small jobs priced from memoryCard jobs at a price you last set when card stock was cheaper.

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Questions print shops ask