How To Automate Your Production Schedule For Printing Businesses

Very quickly and not expensive

Benefits of automation

Automation allows production scheduling processes to scale as your printing business grows. As production volume increases or new products are introduced, automated scheduling can adapt to accommodate changes without requiring additional human effort.

What tools you need

Prouction Schedule

Google Calendar

Google Calendar is the most basic and powerfull tool to keep track of your printing production. You can create different calendars for each department. We suggest you to implement color codes for each events to determine if an order is in production, completed or awaiting.

Website

Shopify or Woocommerce

An online store is a powerfull tool to boost your sales online. With the Amazon effect, people are more likely to shop online and get their orders shipped to their doors. Customers want to place orders within a few clicks and as fast as possible.

Depending on what you choose:
Shopify (more costly, easier to use, a lot of powerfull plugins, the best checkout, made for sales)
Woocommerce (older technology, more customizable, made for advanced users or developpers)
*This website is run on woocommerce

Both website platforms can integrate what we will discuss later.

Automation tool

Zapier

Zapier is a powerful tool to create connections between platforms. A connection is called a zap. And you don’t need to be a developper to create a zap, it takes less than 10 seconds to do.

How to automate your zaps:
1 – Create a zapier account
2 – Install the zapier plugin on your website
3 – Create your first zap:

Once an order is placed on your website make it appear in your google calendar. You can setup rules as when it will appear, what color it will appear and the duration of an event.

Shipping

ClickShip or Shipstation

If you don’t have it yet, you will need a shipping software. Each software ClickShip or Shipstation have their own plugin for any website platforms.

Once an order will be placed on your website, it will be synced to the shipping software. That way, once your order is ready to ship, you can simply generate shipping labels through this platform. It will save you time from manually entering the shipping adresses and so on.

Once this is setup, you can create a zap that will put your orders completed once a shipping label is generated.

Final Workflow

Scale Your Work

Now your orders are automaticaly scheduled in your production calendar. Your employees will now know what to do and how long will it take. That way, your production can be adjusted accordingly and you can deliver orders to customers more efficiently. Putting orders in a production schedule is vital for any growing businesses. That way you can track and calculate your productivity. Most importantly workflow can be managed without your influence as a business owner. Your time needs to be involved is something more important: sales and scaling your business.

Need Help?

Our team can help you setup this system for you!

Experienced Developers

We have experienced web developers that can help you build your automation system for you.

Support

Something not working? We are here to help!

We understand the industry

Most of the times, softwares are not build by printers and are overcomplicated. We try to make it as simple as possible. Additionaly, we use that technology and it is working perfectly for us!

Early access to products & features

We keep you updated with industry growing technologies to help you be more efficient and more productif.

Please allow 24 hours for a response.