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Product Options

(Admin role required)

Product options are what your team selects when pricing a work order — substrates, laminates, finishings, and everything else that goes into a job. Navigate to Options in the left sidebar to manage them.

The page has six tabs:

Tab What it covers
Substrates Your sign materials — vinyl, coroplast, aluminum, etc.
Laminates Laminate films and their cost
Finishings Add-ons like grommets, edge tape, and corner rounding
Colours Colour options for items
Pre Press Pre-press services and their pricing
Production Production services like installation

Substrates

Substrates are the materials you print on and the base from which all pricing starts. They are required before you can price a job — setting them up accurately is the most important step in configuring your shop.

Adding a Substrate

  1. Click New Substrate.
  2. Give it a name (e.g. "3M Vinyl", "6mm Coroplast").
  3. Choose a Pricing Strategy — how the material is sold:
  4. Roll Material — sold off a roll; enter the roll width and price by linear or square foot
  5. Flat Material — sheet goods with fixed dimensions; enter width and height
  6. Fixed Price — a flat fee regardless of size
  7. Raw Square Footage — price purely by the square footage entered on the line item
  8. Choose a Pricing Type — how you charge the customer:
  9. Per square foot
  10. Per linear foot
  11. Per item
  12. Percentage of subtotal
  13. Enter your material cost and ink cost per sq ft separately — Substrate uses both to calculate your margin accurately.
  14. Click Save.

Advanced Substrate Settings

Each substrate has a number of optional settings you can configure to match how your shop actually prices jobs:

  • Margin override — set a substrate-specific margin that overrides your global AutoCalc default. Useful for materials that carry a higher cost or command a premium price.
  • Two-sided printing — mark a substrate as two-sided capable and define how the back side is priced: either as a percentage of the front cost or at a separate per sq ft rate.
  • Defaults — pre-select a laminate, pre press option, and colour that automatically apply whenever this substrate is chosen on a quote. Saves your team time on every order.
  • Associated laminates & finishings — control exactly which laminates and finishings are available for this substrate. You can also mark a finishing as default-selected so it's included automatically on every quote using this material.
  • Volume discounts — set tiered pricing so customers automatically get better rates as quantities increase. Add as many tiers as your pricing structure requires.

Removing and Restoring Substrates

Deleting a substrate doesn't remove it from past jobs — it just hides it so it can't be selected on new work orders.

  • To remove one: click the delete icon on its row.
  • To bring one back: turn on the Show Deleted toggle and click Restore next to it.

Syncing to QuickBooks

Click Sync with QuickBooks on the Substrates tab to push your substrate list to QB as service items.

Note

This sync only goes one way — Substrate pushes to QuickBooks. Any changes you make in QB won't come back to Substrate, so keep your list maintained here.

Laminates

  1. Click New Laminate.
  2. Enter a name and your cost.
  3. Turn on Applies Both Sides if the laminate is applied to both faces of the material.
  4. Save.

When a laminate is added to a line item, its cost is added on top of the substrate price.

Finishings

Finishings are add-ons layered onto a substrate — things like masking, grommets, edge sealing, rounded corners, or vinyl applied on top of a printed piece. They are priced separately and added on top of the line item price.

When adding a finishing you choose a Pricing Type to match how that service is actually charged:

Pricing Type When to use it
Flat A fixed fee regardless of size or quantity
Per Sq Ft Cost scales with the area of the piece
Per Item Charged once per finished piece
Per Linear Ft Cost scales with the length (e.g. edge tape)
% of Subtotal A percentage added on top of the line item subtotal

Colours, Pre Press & Production

These three tabs follow the same pattern: name and active/inactive toggle. Add whatever services and options your shop offers so your team can select them when pricing jobs.

Hiding an Option Without Deleting It

If you stop offering something but don't want to delete it entirely, you can set it to Inactive. It disappears from the selection when pricing new work orders but stays in your records.

Click the active/inactive toggle on the item's row to switch it. You can reactivate it the same way.