One thing I realized early on in my business is that quoting jobs isn’t actually the hard part of running a print shop.
The hard part is when you haven’t decided how your shop works yet.
When someone emails you asking for a quote, you suddenly have to make a bunch of decisions on the fly. What’s the minimum order? How fast can you realistically turn it around? What garments should you recommend? What artwork do you require?
If you haven’t already answered those questions for your business, quoting becomes slow, inconsistent, and sometimes stressful.
Most startup shops don’t realize this at first. They think quoting just takes time because screen printing is custom work.
But in reality, quoting gets easier and faster when you’ve already made a few key decisions about how your shop operates.
Here are five questions I think every print shop should answer early on.
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1. What Is Your Minimum Order?
Minimum orders are one of the first boundaries a shop should establish.
Without one, you’ll constantly find yourself quoting tiny orders that take just as much time to manage as larger ones. The emails, artwork, setup, invoicing, and communication are all still there.
A minimum order helps ensure that each job is worth the time and effort it takes to produce.
It also helps you stay profitable. Screen printing has setup time built into the process, so small orders can quickly eat up your time without generating much revenue.
Once you establish a clear minimum, quoting gets easier because you’re no longer negotiating that decision with every customer.
2. What Is Your Standard Turnaround Time?
Turnaround time is another decision that many shops make on the fly.
Someone asks when their shirts will be ready, and suddenly you’re mentally juggling your current orders, your schedule, and whatever else you have going on that week.
A standard turnaround time removes that pressure.
It also protects your life outside the shop. Turnaround time isn’t just about the hours it takes to produce the work. It’s about allowing room for artwork delays, supplier issues, shipping delays, and the reality that life happens.
Setting a clear turnaround window helps you manage expectations and keeps you from overcommitting.
3. What Information Do You Need Before Quoting?
One of the biggest reasons quotes take so long is that customers don’t always provide the information you need.
Maybe they forgot the quantity. Maybe they don’t know how many colors are in the design. Maybe they’re still deciding between garments.
If you establish a simple checklist of what you need before quoting, it saves time on both sides.
For example, you might require:
- Garment type
- Quantity
- Number of print colors
- Print locations
- Artwork or design concept
When those things are clear upfront, the quoting process becomes much smoother.
That’s one of the most important aspects of a quote form. If you just use a simple contact form, you’re immediately causing your quote process to have more back-and-forth. Ask the right questions up-front so you can save time and provide faster quotes.
(I recommend using Zite as your form builder to embed on your site. It’s the best one I’ve used by far.)
4. What Garments Do You Usually Recommend?
Another thing that slows down quoting is trying to recommend products every time someone asks.
Most shops eventually settle into a few go-to garments they trust. Maybe it’s a specific cotton tee, a blend option, or a performance shirt that prints well.
When you already know what you typically recommend, it saves time researching options for every request.
You can still offer alternatives when needed, but having a few default recommendations speeds up the quoting process dramatically.
5. How Do You Actually Price Your Jobs?
This might be the biggest one.
If you’re guessing prices every time someone asks for a quote, quoting will always feel slow and uncertain.
Pricing gets easier when you create a repeatable formula or structure that your shop follows.
That’s one of the reasons I built the Pricely app. Instead of rebuilding quotes from scratch each time, you can store pricing profiles and calculate jobs quickly using the same system every time.
If you’re still quoting jobs using spreadsheets or mental math, it might be worth checking out.
You Don’t Have to Figure This Out Alone
One of the best ways to work through these questions is simply talking with other printers.
Inside the Print Crew Discord, there are shop owners at different stages sharing how they handle things like minimum orders, turnaround times, and pricing structures.
If you’re still figuring out how your shop should operate, it’s a great place to ask questions and see how other printers approach these decisions.