Your first job, start to finish

A complete worked example: one product, one job, one delivery — and the numbers it produces.

This walks one real job all the way through, with numbers you can follow. The example is business cards, sold in packs of 100. Do it once and the shape of the system will be obvious.

1. Stock the shelf

In Inventory Items, add the two things a business card needs:

The SKU field fills itself in — accept the suggestion or type your own. Because you entered opening stock, PrintERP writes an opening-balance movement for each item, visible later in Stock Movements.

2. Measure the paper

You buy paper by the ream but print by the sheet, so register it in Paper. Link Card Stock 250gsm and set Pieces per Unit to 250.

PrintERP now knows you hold 10 × 250 = 2,500 pieces, each costing ₱450 ÷ 250 = ₱1.80.

3. Measure the ink

In Ink Usage Management, link Black Ink and enter 70 ml per bottle, a bottle price of ₱850, and a yield of 300 to 500 pages.

• Average pages: (300 + 500) ÷ 2 = 400
• Millilitres per page: 70 ÷ 400 = 0.175 ml
• Cost per millilitre: ₱850 ÷ 70 = ₱12.14
• Cost per page: 0.175 × ₱12.14 = ₱2.13

4. Set up the printer

In Machines, add your printer. Give it a Production Speed — say 1,200 pieces per hour, which PrintERP turns into 3 seconds per piece. Add a Black ink tank with a capacity of 100 ml and link it to the Black Ink inventory item.

5. Build the product

In Products, create Business Cards (100pcs) with a selling price of ₱350. Open it and add its recipe — what one pack consumes:

Twenty-five sheets, four cards to a sheet, makes 100 cards. The product page immediately works out your economics:

• Paper: 25 × 1.05 × ₱1.80 = ₱47.25
• Ink: 3 × ₱12.14 = ₱36.43
• Total cost: ₱83.68 · Profit: ₱266.32 · Margin: 76%

6. Run the job

1. 1Go to Production, click Business Cards (100pcs), set the quantity to 10 packs and choose your printer.
2. 2Checkout. A job is created with the status *Queued*.
3. 3Open it from Production Jobs and press Start Production. 30 ml of ink leaves the tank (3 ml × 10), and the estimate reads about 12 minutes (250 pieces × 3 seconds).
4. 4Print. If a sheet jams, press Error, choose *Paper Jam* and enter the pieces lost — the ink loss is worked out for you.
5. 5When the work is physically done, press Done.

7. What Done actually did

Pressing Done settles the books in one action:

• 262.5 pieces of paper came off stock (25 × 1.05 × 10), leaving 2,237.5 of your 2,500.
• One ream rolled off the inventory count — and only one, because the rest of that ream is still usable. See Partial reams and bottles.
• A cost record of ₱836.80 was written against the job.
• No ink moved. It left the tank when the job started, and the tank refills from stock. This is the single most misunderstood part of PrintERP — How ink works explains it properly.

Sell those ten packs at ₱350 and you have ₱3,500 of revenue against ₱836.80 of materials. That gap is what shows up in Reports and the Financial Report.

8. If it was for a customer

A job created from the production floor has no customer, which is right for counter trade. For quoted work, add the customer in Customers first, raise a quotation, approve it and convert it — the job that comes out behaves exactly as above, and finishing it opens a delivery you can pack, dispatch and mark delivered.

Where to go next

• Add the rest of your catalogue — Building a product recipe
• Understand ink properly — How ink works
• Learn the job lifecycle in depth — Running a production job
• See whether you are making money — Profit & Loss vs Cash Flow