Organization Help

[peavey123]

Hi All, Peav here. lol I need some input regarding organization of our shop. Not storing materials etc. More along the lines of ways to take orders and keep everyone organized and everything running smoothly. I'm sorry if this seems ridiculous to you. I'm not a business man so I'm asking for help.

A brief background of our situation. We are VERY busy shop consisting of 3 dudes. Myself, the graphic designer/print manager, My boss - the sales and business guy and his brother, our installer and production man. I've been here coming up on 3 years (business is 7 years old) and one thing that has been driving us all crazy is how unorganized we are. We are having a meeting next week regarding this and I want to come to the meeting with some suggestions.

Right now, everything is pretty much verbal. I seem to be the only one who will write stuff down and I can only do that with orders I take. My boss just doesn't have time to make paperwork right now, which I completely understand. The problem is 85% of the orders go to his personal e-mail that we don't have access too. So we are reliant on him to get things done at the moment. Another thing is due to not having proper paperwork I can't go back and see what we've done if a customer wants a repeat order.

I've showed him signVOX and it seems cool, but lots of people mentioning that it's slow. So not sure about that for right now plus the cost is also a factor at this very moment. Might be something we consider a little bit down the road though. I've also made up work orders consisting of mainly check boxes to save time, but those never got used much and now completely abandoned.

My thoughts are to have an e-mail strictly for orders where then I can make up work orders myself, taking some work off my bosses plate. I'm just afraid that he's had the same routine for so long that he's just grown to be comfortable with the chaos. I know that there are some who have been in similar situations or maybe not? maybe you're the most organized person in the world?...please share a little insight so we can keep this good thing going.

Again, I'm sorry if this is stupid but any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Peav

 

[tattoo.dan]

Good luck! We make paper work orders, attach to files and put in proper filing catergory....then spend half damn day walking around looking for file! I am re-visiting sign tracker now as we speak. Have also tried sign vox, but just wasn't for us. I will be following this one!

 

[darby07]

• What type of printing do you do?
• How do you receive orders? Meaning are you web based and have pricelist items that do not require any estimating? If a customer sees something they like, you just produce it?

 

[Rick]

• What type of printing do you do?
• How do you receive orders? Meaning are you web based and have pricelist items that do not require any estimating? If a customer sees something they like, you just produce it?

Another question might be, what type of sign shop are you?
Do you make more than the basic vinyl shop does?
Do you do dimensional?
Architectural?
Electrical?

How many jobs need to be redone?
If there is a screw up, where in the process does that
usually happen?
(You don't have to answer this but) What do they gross a year?
If it's 400-500k... it's time to hire someone else.
In what I read, your boss seems to be the issue. He simply
has to make time or gives someone access to the email
to get orders set up. It's not a blame thing, more that
he needs to delegate it to the person most responsible.
He needs to let each person own their part of the job,
but delegate someone to follow each job from
start to completion... (project manager)

Hopefully all you are is a vinyl shop. 3 workers... seems like
not much time for screw-ups. Lord help you if you are a
full service shop.

I worked at a shop where we had printed work orders.
The boss and secretary made the orders, then the "hot potato" (thats what the boss called it)
process would put in place. The designer/graphic production guy
owned his department... he designed, ordered inks, vinyl, and supplies
for his department, then he handed off the work order to the shop
guy who laminated, weeded or whatever... he owned his department,
then off to the installer. The installer had the office manager make
the appointment. When he finished, he handed it back to the office
and it was done.

We also watched how much materials we were using by marking
off on each work order. It was a pain at first, but ice we got used
to it, we could track how much was being made.

That shop had 6 people... all vinyl, screen print large graphics,
some paint and did a little over million a year. So that system worked.
We had screw ups and we had a monthly meeting to discuss
the mistakes and see how to improve.

 

[CanuckSigns]

Hi All, Peav here. lol I need some input regarding organization of our shop. Not storing materials etc. More along the lines of ways to take orders and keep everyone organized and everything running smoothly. I'm sorry if this seems ridiculous to you. I'm not a business man so I'm asking for help.

A brief background of our situation. We are VERY busy shop consisting of 3 dudes. Myself, the graphic designer/print manager, My boss - the sales and business guy and his brother, our installer and production man. I've been here coming up on 3 years (business is 7 years old) and one thing that has been driving us all crazy is how unorganized we are. We are having a meeting next week regarding this and I want to come to the meeting with some suggestions.

Right now, everything is pretty much verbal. I seem to be the only one who will write stuff down and I can only do that with orders I take. My boss just doesn't have time to make paperwork right now, which I completely understand. The problem is 85% of the orders go to his personal e-mail that we don't have access too. So we are reliant on him to get things done at the moment. Another thing is due to not having proper paperwork I can't go back and see what we've done if a customer wants a repeat order.

I've showed him signVOX and it seems cool, but lots of people mentioning that it's slow. So not sure about that for right now plus the cost is also a factor at this very moment. Might be something we consider a little bit down the road though. I've also made up work orders consisting of mainly check boxes to save time, but those never got used much and now completely abandoned.

My thoughts are to have an e-mail strictly for orders where then I can make up work orders myself, taking some work off my bosses plate. I'm just afraid that he's had the same routine for so long that he's just grown to be comfortable with the chaos. I know that there are some who have been in similar situations or maybe not? maybe you're the most organized person in the world?...please share a little insight so we can keep this good thing going.

Again, I'm sorry if this is stupid but any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Peav

We could use an employee like you...

 

[peavey123]

haha Rick the "hot potato" made me chuckle. We had a system like this that I implemented when I first started but it didn't last long.

To answer the question about what kind of shop we are, We are full service. Mostly custom work, but we also have a good percentage of our work being trade printing. We do have another good percentage of our work coming in via an online store I set-up for one of our nationwide customers.

oh and I don't know much about our finances. sorry.

Watson: You hush. You're gonna get me in trouble. haha

 

[SignVOX]

Try signVOX... or shopVOX

Hi All, Peav here. lol I need some input regarding organization of our shop. Not storing materials etc. More along the lines of ways to take orders and keep everyone organized and everything running smoothly. I'm sorry if this seems ridiculous to you. I'm not a business man so I'm asking for help.

A brief background of our situation. We are VERY busy shop consisting of 3 dudes. Myself, the graphic designer/print manager, My boss - the sales and business guy and his brother, our installer and production man. I've been here coming up on 3 years (business is 7 years old) and one thing that has been driving us all crazy is how unorganized we are. We are having a meeting next week regarding this and I want to come to the meeting with some suggestions.

Right now, everything is pretty much verbal. I seem to be the only one who will write stuff down and I can only do that with orders I take. My boss just doesn't have time to make paperwork right now, which I completely understand. The problem is 85% of the orders go to his personal e-mail that we don't have access too. So we are reliant on him to get things done at the moment. Another thing is due to not having proper paperwork I can't go back and see what we've done if a customer wants a repeat order.

I've showed him signVOX and it seems cool, but lots of people mentioning that it's slow. So not sure about that for right now plus the cost is also a factor at this very moment. Might be something we consider a little bit down the road though. I've also made up work orders consisting of mainly check boxes to save time, but those never got used much and now completely abandoned.

My thoughts are to have an e-mail strictly for orders where then I can make up work orders myself, taking some work off my bosses plate. I'm just afraid that he's had the same routine for so long that he's just grown to be comfortable with the chaos. I know that there are some who have been in similar situations or maybe not? maybe you're the most organized person in the world?...please share a little insight so we can keep this good thing going.

Again, I'm sorry if this is stupid but any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Peav

Hi Peav,
I can understand the situation you are in. I would say give signVOX a fair shake and you will notice it is the answer to your situation. Now signVOX is the full suite and if you think you want mainly to manage the production side (meaning after you got the order) and then it is chaos, then try shopVOX Express - which is easy to setup and does all the organizational stuff you need from

1. Configurable workflows
2. Online proofing
3. Syncs with QB Desktop (and QB Online next week) estimates and invoices.

Let me know if you want to try it out and we can get you going.

Good luck.

 

[CanuckSigns]

Lol, just throwing it out there...

As for sending all orders to a certain email address, we tried that a few years ago, it didn't really work, it was impossible to get clients to change which address they use, we ended up having to forward all orders to a singular address, which was just adding an extra step to the process. Unless you have an office manager or someone who's job it is to write up orders.

Scott

 

[KaranGrewal]

+1 sign vox and rao's team

 

[SignManiac]

I just yell out to everyone what I want done. I sit them down, show them the file, explain what should be done. They write stuff down and do what I ask. They seldom make mistakes. I juggle so much stuff in such a random order that no system would work for me since 90% of what's going on is in my head.

I use notepad to make daily a daily list of things I'd like to get done. If it's not done, it gets moved over to the next day. I rely a lot on email communication between me and the client and will not take an order verbally. The stuff I make is so highly custom that half the time not even I know how I'm going to make it until I figure it out, so scheduling time just doesn't work. I do always tell customers that it will take longer to produce knowing I will get it done sooner, but that my wiggle room for all the inevitable F-ups.

Being more of an artist than a manager I get distracted easily and jump around all over the place, but in the most efficient manner possible. There is nothing normal, straight forward, or predictable in my day to day work routine.

 

[Z SIGNS]

I just yell out to everyone what I want done. I sit them down, show them the file, explain what should be done. They write stuff down and do what I ask. They seldom make mistakes. I juggle so much stuff in such a random order that no system would work for me since 90% of what's going on is in my head.

I use notepad to make daily a daily list of things I'd like to get done. If it's not done, it gets moved over to the next day. I rely a lot on email communication between me and the client and will not take an order verbally. The stuff I make is so highly custom that half the time not even I know how I'm going to make it until I figure it out, so scheduling time just doesn't work. I do always tell customers that it will take longer to produce knowing I will get it done sooner, but that my wiggle room for all the inevitable F-ups.

Being more of an artist than a manager I get distracted easily and jump around all over the place, but in the most efficient manner possible. There is nothing normal, straight forward, or predictable in my day to day work routine.

That's my operating procedure too except I don't yell at anyone.

There can be 20 different jobs going on all at the same time all in different stages of completion for different reasons.
When we go to work we know what needs to be done.

I keep a note pad just to keep tabs on the important work.

All other jobs that are unimportant I don't care about.

The software to organize the way I work has not been developed yet.

 

[FireSprint.com]

To each his own....


We are upgrading our software right now, but for the longest time we use a paper system with a clear plastic sleeve.

Job Tickets:
We build an invoice in quickbooks and print a special version of that as a job ticket. It's easy to do with templates. We then print that off and put that in a clear plastic sleeve. Most of the order details go into the invoice but whatever's left, including a proof gets printed off and put in the back of the job ticket sleeve. So one side is the order information, the other has a proof and maybe measurements.

Status Updates:
We have wall pockets or trays at every workstation. To change the status of a job, we simply move it to that tray. When the first step is done for instance, we simply walk the job ticket and whatever materials are part of that job to the next step and drop the ticket into the tray there.

We also list all our jobs in an access database and print off a report of everything that is due that day.

It's not a high tech system yet (that's coming) but we have processed over 10,000 jobs that way and have not really lost one. Once the job ticket has been created, it's a pretty solid system.

One note though, it does take someone (or a few people in our case) to be anal about making sure the job tickets don't get left on a workbench or something. They need to be in one status wall pocket, or at very least in someone's hand. A job ticket sitting on the ground or left on a workbench causes a big ruckus around here.

 

[TonyC]

Computer based workflow.....

We are a small full service sign shop. We average 35-45 jobs in progress at any time. At times 70 jobs is not unusual. There are 4 full time people, a part time helper, and 2 part time installers. We have used signVOX since nov. last year. It keeps us on track and is worth every penny.

I spent and wasted more time than I care to mention trying to develope a system like yourself. SignVox is not a "open the box and it will work perfect for you" system. As with any system it will need to be tweaked as your company changes, but it is the best starting point I have found.

As soon as I get a few minutes, I will be looking at shopvox.

 

[Z SIGNS]

You need sign vox only if

Tracking software like sign vox is great if your are a producer or broker of commodities.Sorta the way they keep track of things at home depot.

If you are a sign artist that creates and produces unique one of a kind custom signage that caters to the discerning I don't think the app is out there.
I get annoyed when salesman approach me with these kind of products

I wonder how people like Maxfield Parish survived without signvox

 

[SignManiac]

Tracking software like sign vox is great if your are a producer or broker of commodities.Sorta the way they keep track of things at home depot.

If you are a sign artist that creates and produces unique one of a kind custom signage that caters to the discerning I don't think the app is out there.
I get annoyed when salesman approach me with these kind of products

I wonder how people like Maxfield Parish survived without signvox

Amen!

 

[binki]

I like this thread, we have been overwhelmed this year and are really struggling to keep up.

 

[SignVOX]

signVOX is for Custom Manufacturing shops...

Tracking software like sign vox is great if your are a producer or broker of commodities.Sorta the way they keep track of things at home depot.

If you are a sign artist that creates and produces unique one of a kind custom signage that caters to the discerning I don't think the app is out there.
I get annoyed when salesman approach me with these kind of products

I wonder how people like Maxfield Parish survived without signvox

Hi
I am a bit confused when you say it is for broker of commodities. We think signVOX is the solution for the custom manufacturing industry and sign business is a classic example of custom (made to order) businesses. It has been built exclusively to accommodate this workflow of custom manufacturing and not , made to shelf.

If you look at the high level workflow of a sign business it is as follows:

1. Customer contacts you or you contact the customer.
2. Customer has a specific sign project that they need to get made as per their specs (sizes, designs, colors, materials, application etc.)
3. Sales person/project manager does the survey and finds out all the necessary details of the project.
4. Gets the designer to make a proof as per the customers requirements or (online proofing )
4a. Creates a quote.
If customer accepts the quote ,
5. Pays down payment (to cover the costs)
6. Get the design done and approved by customer.
7. Once proof approved , order materials (unless they have in house)
8. Go to production, make the sign, QC it.
9. Deliver/ship it
10. Install it
11. Invoice it and get paid
12. Send Invoice data to accounting package (like QB for P&L)

Again above is one version of a high level workflow ( I am sure there are different version and nuances of it), but if this is what you do on a day in and day out basis, then this is the workflow signVOX has in built.

When you say broker of commodities - I am assuming you mean, like a retail store front selling commodities off the shelf without any value add.

signVOX is built for the above workflow so I am curious to learn how signVOX wont help a business which has a similar workflow. Can it do 100% of what every sign business needs, may be not , but I can see it can support 90% of the sign shops and help them get organized.

This is a great thread as the other gentleman has commented.

If there is some thing fundamental missing, would love to learn and incorporate into signVOX.

 

[Rick]

Maxfield Parish didn't use Corel or Illustrator either.. even if he did,
he wouldn't be here, he made the equivalent of 2,500,00 bucks a year.
We're just peons...

I personally think if had use of a computer, he'd use one to track his
print sales... I should know, I talk to him every day...

 

[Rick]

I think most here are replicators... it may not
be a commodity thing, but it may it be far from it.
Even with the design/craft aspect of our work, we
are selling a sign that needs supplies that need
to be tracked. especially if they are dealing with
multiple jobs and no feedback between co-workers.

Peavys place sounds like a mess.

The artists here may in fact be artist,
but the sign still has to be made, priced,
billed, put in the books, tracked... all that crap.
It can be done without software. But each shop
is unique. Since I never worked for a shop selling online
I would imagine that adds to the frustration of
tracking... especially if you have no access to the orders
till the boss gives it to you.

To the OP... If hot potato didn't work, (probably the
simplest of the processes) than you have an uphill
battle.

If you are going to use anything like Signvox,
Estimate, Cyrious or Signtracker. You still have to
get the boss to use it... I don't see that happening.

I've used 2 of the programs, and they would have
worked, but the system was never carried through
by all departments. It still takes people to follow through.

 

[SignVOX]

I agree with Rick...

I think most here are replicators... it may not
be a commodity thing, but it may it be far from it.
Even with the design/craft aspect of our work, we
are selling a sign that needs supplies that need
to be tracked. especially if they are dealing with
multiple jobs and no feedback between co-workers.

Peavys place sounds like a mess.

The artists here may in fact be artist,
but the sign still has to be made, priced,
billed, put in the books, tracked... all that crap.
It can be done without software. But each shop
is unique. Since I never worked for a shop selling online
I would imagine that adds to the frustration of
tracking... especially if you have no access to the orders
till the boss gives it to you.

To the OP... If hot potato didn't work, (probably the
simplest of the processes) than you have an uphill
battle.

If you are going to use anything like Signvox,
Estimate, Cyrious or Signtracker. You still have to
get the boss to use it... I don't see that happening.

I've used 2 of the programs, and they would have
worked, but the system was never carried through
by all departments. It still takes people to follow through.

I totally agree with Rick. At the end of the day , the owner has to buy into it and put a process in place and have all the staff use the system, if that does not happen no system in place can track any thing if it is not used and also software and computers are as good as the data you put in. Garbage in and garbage out. But once you put in place and all of the users buy into it, the organization is very smooth and saves a lot of time which can be used for other things to improve the business or , just go home early and spend time with the family/friends/loved ones.