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With great power comes great responsibility. So if you built your screen printing website you’re probably drowning in new customers and need a way to manage all of these new accounts. Oh and you’ll probably want a way to invoice them and get paid in a timely and streamlined way too. You need accounting software for screen printers.

Most people probably dread keeping track of the books and all of the behind the scenes finance that can keep your business afloat. That’s largely because accounting software can be confusing and bland. I like to imagine accounting as a sad Excel spreadsheet softly crying into a bowl of flavorless oatmeal. You probably got into screen printing to make things look awesome and pretty and don’t want to get bogged down with numbers. But surprisingly there are a ton of accounting solutions for print shops and even more surprisingly they are really really good. Seriously I knew a few of these off the top of my head but while I was doing research for this article I just kept finding more and more of these accounting platforms built for screen printers.

What software should you use?

Keep in mind when you choose what accounting/project management platform that you need to think about the people who will be using it and it may be important to get a system in place before your employees (or you) get used to a system you’re going to replace later. Your users will probably be your sales team, your accounting department, and anyone who needs to track their billable time to customers like the art department and print shop. Okay so that’s pretty much everybody in your crew but then again almost everybody is going to have to touch a print project at some point in its lifespan. Sales and accounting will probably be affected the most by the software you choose but some of the platforms below have checkpoints so everybody in your team can know exactly where a project is in its lifecycle. Of course there are jillions of accounting platforms out there but choosing one that is right for your print shop is very important. I have used some accounting software that is downright non-user friendly and confusing. This can make it hard to get paid by your customers and ruin your entire workflow. So let’s take a look at some accounting software for screen printers that works well. This stuff is all about saving you time, getting your shop organized, and getting you paid for your hard work.

Pancake

The first on this list is web based invoicing/project management platform, Pancake (affiliate link). Pancake isn’t necessarily for print shops, but you can tailor it to your needs. Personally, I have been using Pancake for years and it helps me look extremely professional to my customers.

Pancake, lets you add customers’ business information, then send estimates, proposals, and invoices to them. You can easily create new projects from scratch or create a project from an estimate and attach it to the customer’s account. Pancake has built in timers that you can start and stop whenever you are working on a project so that you can track your time and charge it to the customer. This is super useful for billing art time. You can also add expenses to your invoices like t-shirts or special equipment you have to buy to fulfill your customer’s request.

There is a dashboard within Pancake that allows you to view all activity and get a quick look at what needs your attention and get informed with reports. When an order is done and you’re ready to get paid, Pancake will automatically generate an invoice email that gives your customer a link to pay you or they can be sent to their own “client area” where they can view all of their previous and current invoices. It’s pretty seamless and it all resides on your own servers so your customers won’t be scared off by some third party system. Add users/employees and only grant them access to the areas they need to work within.  I also like Pancake because you pay for it one time and it resides on your server forever instead of having to pay a monthly fee.

This isnt everything that Pancake can do so I recommend you try out their demo site to really get a sense of all of the features. The demo lets you do everything that the full version can do so you can see if it’s the right fit before picking it up. Like I mentioned before, Pancake is not specifically geared toward screen printers, however I do think Pancake would be a perfect fit for small print shops with a small team of employees. The low cost is perfect for printers who fly solo and want to run an at-home print shop.

RunMyShop

RunMyShop is a robotic butler that you buy that runs your print shop for you while you sleep in a hammock drinking lemonade. Okay not really but that’s what it sounds like. RunMyShop was created by the awesome development team at AKT, who have worked on countless projects revolving around the apparel industry. So they they really have their finger on the pulse of the screen printing world. RunMyShop has most of the features that Pancake does but in this case its obviously intended to be used by print shops.

RunMyShop has quotes, invoicing, client info, and all of the features you would expect from a project management and accounting program. More importantly it has print shop specific features like the ability to set the status of a project like “Shirts Ordered”, “Art Approved”, and “Screens Burned”. A large calendar shows you at a glance when orders are scheduled to print. One feature that looks extremely useful is the fact that you get a whole section devoted to third party vendors and printers you might outsource to. Because let’s face it, sometimes your shop might not have the capacity or equipment to fulfill an order, so you’ll need a discrete way to have select print jobs outsourced to other printers.

RunMyShop also lets you really be an accountant with things like employee payroll and time clocks. RunMyShop is web based and runs through a browser so you can log in wherever. Unlike Pancake, there is a monthly subscription fee to use RunMyShop with different pricing plans to accommodate everyone from startups to established print shops. You dont get everything at the startup price and you’ll need to step up your subscription level to get things like payroll and financial stats.

Printavo

I have to say I’ve had a lot of fun during my time using Printavo. It really has every feature you could want and then some, plus it just looks really cool. I remember a few years back, cruising the t-shirt message boards and seeing a post from Bruce Ackerman, Printavo’s creator, announcing Printavo’s arrival and being really impressed. I didn’t have a need for accounting software then but I always kept it in the back of my mind. It’s been cool seeing how much its progressed. It pretty much has all of the features of the first two platforms I mentioned. You can add users or employees and only give them access to the parts of the system they need.

Probably the best feature and the one that is def my fave is Printavo’s ability to hook into wholesaler’s catalogues like SanMar and Alpha Broder and give you a pricing matrix. This lets Printavo pull up products automatically as you type them into your quotes and invoices. Say you are giving a customer a quote for t-shirts. You can start to type in Fruit of the Loom and Printavo will pull up all of the Fruit of Loom products from Sanmar and Alpha Broder and you can select the one you are looking for. Then when you put in the quantity and imprint locations, it will give you a retail price based on whatever mark-up you have set up. So now you don’t need to bust out the calculator to give a customer a quote. You can always import your own products and prices into Printavo so that they can be called up in later quotes.

Okay one more cool thing. Printavo gives you your own contact form that’s SEO optimized that you can embed on your own site. The contact form is used to find you and request a quote which helps bring in some sweet online sales.

The verdict

So in the end what accounting software for screen printers is right for your shop? Well if you’re running your own print shop by yourself or only have a small team I would suggest getting Pancake. It doesn’t have a monthly fee and is low cost which is very attractive for someone just getting into printing and needing some good invoicing software. If you’re a big shot and you have oodles of print jobs and employees to keep an eye on, I would go with RunMyShop or Printavo as those let you see a job’s status at a glance with my vote going to Printavo in terms of features and price. Keep in mind that all of these have demos or trials so you can take them for a spin and find out what just feels good to you.

I never typed Printaco during this review.

Honorable mention

QuickBooks for Screen Printers Resource Guide (by Ryonet)

I don’t really know much about Quickbooks for Screen Printers but if you are a fanboy of QuickBooks and cant get enough of it, this can add some value to your invoicing experience. Although its not really a software solution, there’s a ton of templates and guides and pricing calculators that come in the package to help you make full use of  your existing QuickBooks software.

From the Ryonet website:

Pre-built company files loaded with a proper chart of accounts, part numbers, pricing, vendors and templates.

• Over 30 tutorial videos (in QuickTime format) covering:
• Estimates, Invoicing, Receiving Payments, Deposits, Purchase Orders, Receiving Inventory, Inventory Control, Paying Bills, Writing Checks, Sales Tax, Banking, Bank Reconciliation, Chart of Accounts, Customer Management, Reports and much more.
• A T-Shirt Pricing Calculator (for MS Excel) helps make estimating and costing jobs fast and easy.
• Ready to use QuickBooks test file, which can be imported to your version of QuickBooks and show you how to properly configure a file.
• Test import files for current quickbooks users.
• Excel templates for pricing updates.
• Advanced tutorials, interactive Q&A and pricing updates.

And here’s a video of Ryan from Ryonet explaining why they developed this resource guide. Duck if you dont want to get hit by Ryan’s flying hands.

I know there are a ton of other accounting platforms out there so sound off in the comments if you’re using some awesome software to run your print shop. I’d love to dive deeper into this stuff and save someone who is experiencing accounting software hell. Remember, the best screen printing software is whatever works for you.

I’ll leave you with this. Its a podcast episode by Inkslapper and this discussion is more about finances and book keeping, but it might be beneficial to anyone thinking about hiring an accountant. I honestly don’t understand some of this but then again that’s kind of the point of this episode. “You don’t understand accounting because you only know screen printing, so hire an accountant for that stuff.”

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