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4.133. How do I price embroidery?

How do I price embroidery using EstiMate?

Pricing Embroidery: Quick Start Guide

1. After you have installed EstiMate, the first time you run it you will see a welcome screen. Follow the on-screen instructions step-by-step. This ?Welcome Wizard? will gather the necessary information for you to start using EstiMate. Please fill this out carefully; it is short but crucial. The overhead worksheet is an optional tool, but if you use it EstiMate?s ?Hard Numbers? will be much more accurate.
2. Once you have completed the ?Welcome Wizard? and have seen the ?Tip of the day? and are at the main EstiMate screen, you are ready to create an estimate. Click on the ?New Estimate? button.
3. At the new estimate screen, the first thing to do is enter a line-item. Click the ?Add Item? button and choose ?Embroidered items? from the menu that drops down.
In this example we will price a two-color 2000 stitch design on a quantity of 24 baseball caps.
4. At the embroidered items screen, select ?Baseball Caps ? Cotton Twill? from the product dropdown list. The image area for the hat automatically fills in. Press the tab key on your keyboard until you reach the field marked ?Color Chgs?. Type in the number 2 for the two colors or use the up/down arrows to indicate the change.
Press the tab key to move over to the ?# Stitches? field. Type in the number 2000 as the number of stitches.
Click in the quantity field (to the upper right of the screen) to enter the quantity of hats. Type in ?24? in the quantity field.
5. Next we will need to choose the threads to use. From the threads dropdown, choose a primary thread, and an accent thread. For the purpose of this exercise we will assume the primary thread is the dominant color in the design, so set the coverage of the accent thread to 10%. You will automatically see the primary thread coverage move to 90%.
6. Adjust the artwork complexity to 3% and note that the design time (in the lower right) comes up to about 15minutes.
7. Leave the General Difficulty Level slider alone, since this is a very simple project.
8. Leave the Shop Workload slider at 50% which represents an average Workload in your shop and doesn?t adjust the price at all.
9. Leave the market level slider where it is also, as you set this in the welcome wizard.
10. The Margin slider is special. It really represents your customer?s attitude, and the lower the percentage, the higher the price. Play with it now to see what I mean, and when you?re done, put back at 100%. The title is ?margin? in case the customer is looking over your shoulder while you price. That way you can say, ?see! we even lowered our margin for you.?
11. Click the Calculate button. The price for the embroidered hats will appear in the subtotal box. You may think this is high or low, remember no program can exactly price embroidery for you. This is where you have to use your experience. Everyone tells us EstiMate comes extremely close, however.
12. Now for the exciting part. Double-click directly in the sub total box. The ?Hard Numbers? will appear. This screen tells you exactly how much the job will cost you and how much you?ll profit. They are called the hard numbers for a reason and may help put the price in perspective for you.
13. Click the OK button (green checkmark) on the hard numbers screen to return to the Embroidered Items screen.
14. Click the OK button on the Embroidered Items screen to save this sign as a line-item on the estimate.
15. Now we will add a customer to this estimate. At the top left of the screen you will see a box marked ?Client.? Click the icon of an open book to the right of this box to bring up the client list. Click the ?New? button in the lower left of the screen. Enter a new client record exactly the way you want it to appear on an estimate. Then click the OK button.
16. Once you are back at the client list, click the OK button to return to the estimate. Then choose the client you just entered from the drop-down list on the New Estimate screen.
17. To the right of the client box, enter a description for this job, i.e. ?Hats Embroidered For Baseball Team?.
Click ?Save.?
18. Click the ?Print? button and choose ?Estimate? from the menu that comes up.
19. In the Print A Report screen that appears, make sure to check the following boxes: ?Include Signature Line? , ?Preview?, and ?Print totals on estimate? . Be sure the following are unchecked: ?Print financial analysis report? and ?Suppress individual item prices?.
20. Click the printer icon to print the estimate; you will see a preview appear on the screen. To print it to your printer, click the printer button at the top left of the preview screen. You can add your logo to this print later by clicking Management->Configure EstiMate from the main EstiMate screen and choosing the ?Logo? tab.
21. Once you are back at the ?New estimate? screen, click ?Close.?