Printavo is simple shop management software. We help you streamline your business, keep jobs moving forward and your team on the same page.
Scheduling, quoting, approvals, payments, customer communication, automation and more. With Printavo, you’ll work smarter–not harder.
Estimated reading time: 13 minutes
Last updated: February 2020
The #1 question screen printers and print shops have is "How do I set my prices?" This is a topic as controversial as it is difficult – every shop we talk to at Printavo has a different strategy for their screen printing pricing.
We've spent several months developing a way to encourage responsible pricing. We are not accounting or pricing experts, but we knew that we could add something valuable: what if we could help print shops generate a price matrix for every job they print?
There are lots of tools, softwares, and methods for developing a pricing model for screen printing shops. We wanted to arm you with something simple that you can use to generate a screen printing pricing matrix.
From there, you can take the wheel and make your own adjustments for your own unique financial situation. Here's what we came up with:
Let's dive in and show you how to get started! First, download the screen printing price matrix spreadsheet below:
Important Note: be sure to download the spreadsheet. You can download it by viewing it in Google Sheets, then clicking File > Download. It is only designed for Microsoft Excel.
Update for version 2: a huge thanks to Andrea Harmon from Idaho Shirt Stack for her help. She corrected several errors on the first version of this spreadsheet.
To use our screen printing pricing matrix generator, there are 7 essential steps. It's important to understand them all so you can get the most out of the spreadsheet (and modify it for your own purposes). The 7 basic steps are:
You can invest as much or as little time in calculating accurate values each step as you choose.
Initially, you may need to estimate certain values (or develop a plan to collect more data) to get an accurate value. As the saying goes, good stuff in, good stuff out. The more accurate your inputs, the more accurate your price matrix eventually is.
The first step is defining the percentage profit you want to make. You select a percentage from the drop-down menu. The higher the percentage, the more the tool will charge per screen printed impression (and the higher your shop’s suggested hourly rates and daily revenue targets will be).
How this number is used: this value is used to calculate an idealized cost per impression. Since you are not inputting your revenue – and this is a forward-looking calculation – we provide you a “target revenue” based on your costs plus the desired percentage of revenue above those costs.
To clarify: if your shop has $1,000 in costs per month, your target revenue (at 50% profit) would be $1,500.
The second step is to input your monthly costs (overhead). We’ve provided you with the following basic costs:
We’ve provided three extra cells for additional costs. This is where you may want to play your variable costs: office supplies, inks, tape, and other consumables. We can’t anticipate every shop’s different costs, but these cover most of the bases. We’ve found that labor expenses, rent, and equipment leases are typically the lion’s share of a small-to-medium print shop’s monthly expenses.
How these numbers are used: these numbers are used to calculate your estimated total monthly operating costs. You will be provided with:
From there, these break-even and target numbers are used to calculate several values which factor into your price matrix.
Let’s be transparent: this is where things get a little bit more challenging. Let’s dive in to each area separately and help you understand what values to input.
Here’s what you need to know:
With the info provided, we can create simple metrics to judge your shop’s performance and gain a high-level overview . The image above shows several interesting calculations:
Tip: these values may seem higher than you anticipate. It is worth examining how utilization plays into your shop’s hourly rate: as utilization goes up, your hourly rate goes down (you’re more efficient per hour).
Now here’s where the data gets interesting: we’ve broken down your costs into yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily (5 day work week) targets.
These numbers capture what you need to take in to cover your costs (break-even targets) and also provide a high-level target revenue to match your desired profitability.
These are highly idealized values, but they can still be useful as a benchmark to check against. You can do basic back-of-the-envelope calculations about how long a job will take and compare the price to your revenue targets. This could help you know whether to take a job, raise or lower the price of a quote, or subcontract a money-losing job.
For each specific job, you’ll need to enter the price of each garment. This is the foundation of your pricing.
"How do I know what to charge as a markup?" You can choose a percentage markup from the drop-down menu. It will calculate the specific dollar amount and display it beneath the drop-down menu. Ultimately, the markup you charge is based on your judgment.
Note: the price per garment that’s displayed in your pricing matrix will never fall below the yellow “Garment Pricing” amount (here, $7.16).
We consider set-up and break-down to be comprised of three primary elements:
Determining your set-up and break-down cost is simple:
Tip: If we haven’t accounted for some element of your set-up and break-down process, we suggest adding additional time under the Administration section.
Once you’ve entered data, your price matrix will automatically generate in the "Step 3 - Matrix" tab (no need to do anything but enter your data – the spreadsheet updates in real time).
Some things to notice:
Tip: since this is a simplified pricing model, you can add ~1-5 “colors” as an additional print location, or add 1-2 colors to represent flashing.
A spreadsheet never replaces your good judgment and hands-on knowledge of your shop.
We hope this helps your screen printing quotes become more accurate and profitable.
But we think this can give you a boost. With this tool, you can start to examine the relationship that pricing has in relation to your shop's productivity, your shop's costs, and your revenue goals.
We will continue to update and improve this tool as time goes on. We really want your feedback, so don't hesitate to let us know what you think! We owe thanks to Andrea Harmon from Idaho Shirt Stack for her corrections and feedback – and we want yours!
Printavo is simple shop management software. We help you streamline your business, keep jobs moving forward and your team on the same page.
Scheduling, quoting, approvals, payments, customer communication, automation and more. With Printavo, you’ll work smarter–not harder.