What this screen printing run spent on ink, screens and setup minutes, and what a repeat would not pay twice
A screen printing run's cost moves in four ways that behave nothing alike, and that is why one division will not do. Ink is spent on every impression and is spent again in full every time the art runs. Screens are paid once for one colour at one location, and not again for as long as the mesh stays on the rack. Setup minutes are paid once for the whole run, whether it is fifty pieces or five thousand, and paid once more when the art comes back. Spoilage is not a line of spend at all: it is the reason the first three get divided across fewer pieces of sellable work. Four things, three denominators, and one column for the repeat. Every figure is yours: the grams you weighed, the price you paid, the screens you burned, the minutes you clocked.
What this page does: From the grams per print, price per kilogram, screens and setup time you enter, computes the ink cost, setup cost and total cost per piece for this run, and prints the arithmetic. On the run-total route it answers from the run's own weigh-in, invoice and screens figure instead of a per-colour split. This page divides figures you type in and prints the working. It holds no usage table and no price list, so it will never tell you how much ink a print takes, what a print is worth, what to quote, or what margin to add; it is not accurate, exact or professional pricing, because it knows nothing except your own measurements. It logs the parts of a mix as you name them and computes no colour of any kind. It compares itself with no software and no supply house.
The walkthrough is on. Each part says what its figures mean and where a printer finds them. Turn it off at the top once you know your way around. The run in the blanks is an example of a shape, not of a price: the quantity, the spoilage, the colour rows and the setup clock are filled in, and every money figure and the grams of ink are left empty, because those are the ones only you hold.
This run is not costed yet: no route is picked, so this page divides nothing. Pick it where the colour rows are.
Still waiting for: the route you measured this run by and the hourly rate you pay for setup.
Pieces printed in this run240 pieces (with fields still blank)
Pieces fit to sell, with the spoiled ones taken off234 pieces (with fields still blank)
Impressions pulled, one for every colour-and-location row, on each piece720 impressions (with fields still blank)
Screens burned for this run2 screens (with fields still blank)
Screens already on the rack for this art1 screen (with fields still blank)
What this run spent on ink, screens and setupwaiting for the route you measured this run by
That spend for each piece printedwaiting for the route you measured this run by
That spend for each piece fit to sellwaiting for the route you measured this run by
For each piece fit to sell when this art runs againwaiting for the route you measured this run by
What the spoiled pieces add to each piece fit to sellwaiting for the route you measured this run by
A
The run, off your own job ticket
Four figures a printer holds the moment the press stops: how many pieces went through it, how many came off the press unsellable, how long setup and registration took, and what that time costs you. Three of them ship filled in, as the shape of a ticket for you to type over; the fourth, your rate, ships blank, and so does every figure of money and of grams anywhere on this page, because no figure of either is this page's to offer.
Pieces printed
Every piece that went through the press on this run, sellable or not. A reader quoting a job that has not run yet types the quantity they are quoting and leaves the spoiled count at nothing, and the two piece columns are then one column.
Pieces spoiled
Your own count off the press: misregistered, blurred, cured wrong, the test pulls you kept. It is not a line of spend of its own; its whole effect is to shrink the denominator for the three lines that are.
Setup minutes
The clock over setting the press and registering the art, once for the run however long the run is. Minutes of nothing is a real answer and means you charged no setup to this job.
The hourly rate
What that time costs you, whether you pay yourself, a printer or a shop rate. Your figure; this page has no rate of its own and will not propose one. A rate of nothing is a real answer too.
Pieces printed in this run
Pieces spoiled or misprinted your count off the press
Setup minutes for the run press and registration
The hourly rate you pay for that time yours; the page suggests none
B
How you measured it, and the colour rows
One colour pulled at one location is one row, up to eight of them. Before the rows comes the one question this page cannot answer for you: whether you weighed and invoiced each colour separately, or hold one set of figures for the whole run. Nothing is picked for you, and until you pick, both sets of fields stay on screen so you can see what each one asks.
The mix or colour name
Whatever your own mix log calls it, in your own words: the parts of base ink that made it, a customer's name for it, a code off the lid. The page keeps it as text and computes nothing from it. It reproduces no colour and names no ink brand.
The location
Left chest, full back, sleeve hit. Two colours at one location are two rows; one colour at two locations is two rows as well, because each is a screen and a pull of its own.
Grams of ink per impression
Weigh the ink, pull ten prints, weigh it again, divide the difference by ten. There is no figure here to start you off, in this field or anywhere on this page, because the answer turns on mesh, ink, coverage and squeegee and you are the only one who has it.
Already burned and kept
Yes if the screen was on the rack from an earlier run of this art, so this run paid nothing to make it. It is read on both routes, because the rack is a fact you can read off whether or not you split your invoices.
Only hold run totals? If you did not weigh or invoice each colour separately, pick the run-total route and enter the run's own three figures: the whole run's weigh-in minus weigh-out in grams, the whole run's ink spend, and what the screens burned for this run cost in total. Name your colours and locations as usual. The cost lines, the total and the per-piece columns are then exact, and the page prints no per-colour figure at all, because a run total does not say which colour used which share and this page will not invent one.
The first three colour rows ship with a mix name, a location and a rack answer already typed, so the shape of a ticket is on the screen before you start. Those words are an example, not your run: type over them. The page does print them back, as the label of each row's own working line, and no figure anywhere is computed from them. Every field of money and grams ships empty, here and everywhere, because no figure for ink or time is this page's to offer. The count you pick in that list is also what decides how many rows this page reads: pick three after filling eight and the last five rows are put away, their figures stay in the fields where you typed them, and nothing in them is read, costed or counted while the count says three. Pick eight again and they come back as you left them.
Colour row 1
Grams of ink per impression weigh it; no figure is offered
Price per kilogram you paid your supplier invoice
What burning this screen cost you mesh, emulsion, reclaim, or your burn shop
Colour row 2
Grams of ink per impression weigh it; no figure is offered
Price per kilogram you paid your supplier invoice
What burning this screen cost you mesh, emulsion, reclaim, or your burn shop
Colour row 3
Grams of ink per impression weigh it; no figure is offered
Price per kilogram you paid your supplier invoice
What burning this screen cost you mesh, emulsion, reclaim, or your burn shop
Colour row 4
Grams of ink per impression weigh it; no figure is offered
Price per kilogram you paid your supplier invoice
What burning this screen cost you mesh, emulsion, reclaim, or your burn shop
Colour row 5
Grams of ink per impression weigh it; no figure is offered
Price per kilogram you paid your supplier invoice
What burning this screen cost you mesh, emulsion, reclaim, or your burn shop
Colour row 6
Grams of ink per impression weigh it; no figure is offered
Price per kilogram you paid your supplier invoice
What burning this screen cost you mesh, emulsion, reclaim, or your burn shop
Colour row 7
Grams of ink per impression weigh it; no figure is offered
Price per kilogram you paid your supplier invoice
What burning this screen cost you mesh, emulsion, reclaim, or your burn shop
Colour row 8
Grams of ink per impression weigh it; no figure is offered
Price per kilogram you paid your supplier invoice
What burning this screen cost you mesh, emulsion, reclaim, or your burn shop
The run's own three figuresFor the run-total route. A blank here is a figure still to come; a typed nothing is an answer.
The whole run's grams of ink weigh-in less weigh-out, every screen
The whole run's ink spend your one invoice or till total
What the screens burned for this run cost in total type 0 if the screens cost this run nothing; a blank is a figure still to come
C
Three lines of spend, footed four times
Three lines of spend, footed once for the whole run and then over the two counts a printer could sensibly divide by - the pieces printed and the pieces fit to sell - and a fourth time for a repeat of this art where the screens are already on the rack. Read the columns from left to right and you can watch which lines move and which do not.
The line of spend
This run
Each piece printed
Each piece fit to sell
Each piece on a repeat
Ink, from your own grams and your own ink cost
—
—
—
—
Screens, counting only the ones burned this time
—
—
—
—
Setup, from your own minutes and your own rate
—
—
—
—
Everything, added up
—
—
—
—
The run column is money to the cent, which is how you paid it. The three per-piece columns are money to four places, because one invoice divided across hundreds of pieces lands well inside a cent, and the cent is too coarse a unit to carry a figure of that size without changing it. Where rounding leaves a remainder between a column's three lines and its own foot, the working underneath prints that remainder instead of hiding it.
This arithmetic, written out for anything reading the page instead of looking at it: api.json beside this page carries every input, every output, both rounding conventions, the identities, this worked run and a list of what the calculation deliberately leaves alone.
D
The working, row by row
Every line is computed from the figures printed beside it, so nothing in the table is a shortened version of a longer number kept out of sight. On the per-colour route there is one pair of lines for each colour row; on the run-total route there is one line for the run, because a run total does not divide into colours and this page will not split it.
E
Words that come up
Impression
One pull of one screen onto one piece. A three-colour job on two hundred shirts is six hundred impressions, which is why ink is counted here and not by the shirt.
Piece fit to sell
A printed piece you would hand over: the pieces printed with your own spoiled count taken off. Every line of spend was paid on the whole run, so dividing by this count is what puts the loss where it belongs.
Burning a screen
Coating mesh with emulsion, exposing the art onto it and washing it out. Its cost is yours to say: mesh, emulsion, degreaser, reclaim and your time, or the flat charge a burn shop makes.
Kept on the rack
A screen from an earlier run of this art that was never reclaimed. The run that first burned it paid for it; the repeat pays nothing for it, which is why the last column exists, and that nought prints in the screens line as soon as the ink and the setup for the repeat are in.
Mix log
The record of what went into a colour, in parts, so the colour can be made again for a reorder. The one record in a shop that cannot be bought in, because it is a year of your own mixes.
Weigh-in less weigh-out
Weighing the ink before the run and after it and taking one from the other. It gives the run's grams in one figure and says nothing about which colour used what, which is why this page prints no per-colour share on that route.
Setup
Registering the screens and making ready, paid once for a run of any length. Setup is one of the two lines paid once per run - the newly burned screens are the other - so a longer run spreads each of them over more pieces. On the per-colour route the ink is paid per impression and is not spread at all; on the run-total route the ink is one typed figure for the whole run, so a longer run spreads it too, just like the two once-paid lines. A short run feels every line it has.
Spoilage
The pieces that came off the press unsellable. Not a line of spend on this page: a shrunken denominator for the three lines that are.
The figures print with it. Nothing is sent anywhere and nothing is saved except whether the walkthrough is on.
The mix you will be asked to make again next spring
This page costs one run and forgets it. What it cannot give you back is the colour: the parts of base ink that made the customer's blue last March, which is the figure a reorder turns on and the one nobody writes down until they have ruined a run guessing at it.
The kit is two files, for one price, yours to keep:
One workbook: the ink mix formula log, with the job ticket figures on each colour's own line — five sheets, four hundred log lines ready to fill, and the formulas left in. Base inks holds the inks you mix from, two to six of them. Mix log is the record itself: one line for one colour at one location on one job, carrying the date, your job number, the customer, the mix name you will look the colour up by, the location, the parts of each base ink that made it, the total parts, the mesh, whether the screen was already on the rack, the grams an impression you weighed, the price a kilogram you paid, what burning the screen cost, the pieces printed, the pieces spoiled, the setup minutes and your hourly rate; and then, by formula, the ink used, the ink cost, the screens paid for, the setup cost, what that colour cost the job and what it comes to for each piece fit to sell. Summary adds the log up and foots each base ink by name, Check works the Summary's totals out a second way and prints the difference beside each, and Read me says how to use it. This is the lead file and the reason for the kit.
The shop rules as a short PDF — the rules this record runs on, written once: what a line of the log is, why the recipe is kept in parts and the ink in grams, which job pays for burning a screen, why spoilage is not a line of spend, how a mix is named so it can be found again, and whose figures these are. With them the words this record uses, how to work the workbook, and what the arithmetic cannot settle.
One payment, no subscription, no account on this site. A spreadsheet and a PDF; files, not software. Nothing on this page needs it, and the page stays free and complete without it.
A guess at what a print job cost in ink is a guess at the price you quote for the next one. This page prices one run and forgets it. If the way you log ink does not fit the columns here, send the columns off your own job ticket and the totals you need at the end of the week, and a workbook gets built around those instead. Nothing to pay to ask.