Materials are the films, substrates, fabrics and paper stocks you sell. A part's material decides its price, the roll or sheet it's produced on, how it's cut and whether it's printed. Open the library with Price book on the Estimating page (its tabs are Materials & stocks, Finishing and Products), or add one from an estimate with + New material… or New stock…; the quick form there has the essentials (with a Roll / Sheet stock switch), and the library has every setting.
Identity#
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name | How the material appears in pickers and on the quote. |
| Category | Wrap film, vinyl, laminate, rigid substrate, banner and fabric, paper and card, folding carton board, corrugated board, label stock, or other. It decides which pricing units and routes the material can use (below). |
| Manufacturer, SKU | Your references. |
| External id | Optional. The id this material has in another database. Leave it blank if you don't use one. A CSV import matches a material by this id when the file has one. |
| Colour | The colour its parts are drawn in on the Takeoff. |
| Notes | Anything your team should know. |
Price#
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Pricing unit | Per ft² or per m² (any material); per sheet or per 1,000 sheets (sheet stock with a sheet size); per 1,000 ft² (corrugated board only; without a sheet size the board is made to size); per 1,000 in² (label stock only). The form offers only the units the category allows. |
| Sell price | What you charge per unit of material used. |
| Cost | What it costs you per unit. Customers never see it. |
| Waste % | Added on top of the traced area when a group is priced by area, for trim and overlaps. It isn't used once the group is nested, nor on sheet stock (spoilage and makeready replace it). The default is 10 %. |
A material with no sell price shows Set a price in the library and on quote lines. Click it to type the price in a small form without leaving the estimate; saving re-prices every estimate that uses the material.
A material group (all the parts of an estimate with the same material) is priced one of two ways:
- Area: the parts' area plus the waste percentage. This is used until the group has an up-to-date nest.
- Nested: the length of roll the nest uses, times the roll width, with no waste percentage. See Nesting and yield.
A material group is only a way of adding up the quote. It has nothing to do with how imposition places items on sheets.
Roll#
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Form | Roll or Sheet. |
| Width (in) | The roll or sheet width. Nesting uses it as the roll width; without it a group can't be nested. |
| Length (in) | The roll or sheet length, for your reference. |
| Side margin (in) | The unprintable edge on each side of the roll (default 0.5 in). |
| Lead-in (in), Lead-out (in) | Material used before the first part and after the last one (default 6 in each). |
For a roll material the form is Roll and the width is the roll width. For a sheet stock the width × length is the press sheet, and the Roll settings (margins, leads, waste and Printed) are hidden: a sheet's sides come from each line.
An estimate can use a different roll width for a group on its Production tab. Through the API it can also override the margins and leads.
Stock#
Sheet stocks (form Sheet) have a Stock section. Quote lines on the Sheets and Offset routes use it.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Runs on | Any press, Digital only or Offset only. The stock picker ranks stocks by it, and picking a stock sets the line's route. |
| Weight | The weight as you say it: 14pt, 100 lb cover, 300 gsm. The stock search understands 100# as 100 lb. |
| Weight (gsm) | The weight in grams per square metre, for your reference. |
| Caliper (in) | The thickness. Guillotine lifts use it, and a fold on a stock at least 0.010 in thick suggests adding a score. |
| Finish | Gloss, silk, matte, satin, uncoated or other. |
| Grain | Long or short grain, for your reference. |
| Paper (same stock in other sizes) | Rows with the same key are one paper in different sheet sizes. The stock picker shows them as one entry with size chips, and switching a line to Offset can move it to the same paper on a bigger sheet. |
Add from presets in the stock picker offers typical stocks (14pt C2S Gloss Cover, 100 lb Gloss Text, 70 lb Uncoated Offset, corrugated plastic, foam board, carton boards…), one row per sheet size. Presets carry typical technical values only, never a price: check them with your supplier, and a row made from one starts at $0 with Set a price.
Board#
Folding carton board and corrugated board rows can link to the shared board catalogue with Board (catalogue). The catalogue holds physical values only (grade, caliper, flute, test), never prices. Picking a board fills the caliper when the catalogue knows it; some calipers are left for you to enter from your supplier's sheet. A carton row takes a carton board, a corrugated row a corrugated grade.
Allowances (from your samples). Boxes drawn on a board row use the catalogue's allowances for how much the board's thickness adds at each fold. When a folded sample of your board comes out a little large or small, enter what you measured here; leave a field blank to keep the catalogue's value. Boxes already quoted keep the allowances they were drawn with until you update them.
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Caliper factor | Folding carton board: a factor on the caliper where panels fold (1 follows the catalogue). |
| Length allowance (mm), Width allowance (mm), Depth allowance (mm) | Corrugated: the score allowances of the length, width and depth panels in mm. Give all three, or none. |
| Joint | Corrugated: Plant keeps the glued lap inside the box, as most plants make it; Rigid keeps the whole inside on size. |
Cutting#
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Cut method | Thru-cut, Kiss-cut (the face only, leaving the liner), or No cutting. It picks the spot colour in cut files; No cutting leaves the group out of cut time. |
| Cutting speed (mm/s) | The practical cutting speed for this material. Leave it empty to use the cutter's default speed. It is always capped by the cutter's max speed. |
| Passes | Thick or tough materials may need more than one pass (1 to 10). |
Printing#
Printed adds print time and ink from the group's printer to quotes. Turn it off for plain films, application tape or anything you only cut.
Import a CSV#
Import CSV on Materials & stocks reads a spreadsheet into the price book. The first row is a header. The columns are:
| Column | Header names |
|---|---|
| Material name | name, material, material name, or product |
| Unit | unit, pricing unit, or unit of measure |
| Price | price, sell price, or unit price |
| External id | external id |
You can leave out unit, price or external id. Extra columns are ignored. A blank unit on a new material means per ft². Price is the sell price per that unit. A blank price on a new material is 0; on a material that already exists, a blank price leaves the price it has.
Each row is matched to a material you already have: by external id when the row has one, otherwise by name. A match is updated (name, unit, price and external id, where the cell isn't blank). A new name creates a material. A completely blank row is skipped. A row that can't be saved — a price that isn't a number, a unit that isn't one you sell in, two materials with the same name and no external id — is listed with its row number. The other rows are still imported.
Per sheet and per 1,000 sheets need a sheet size, which this import doesn't set, so that row is reported and you add the stock on the material form. Per 1,000 ft² creates a corrugated row, and per 1,000 in² a label row, when the name is new.
The file is a UTF-8 CSV, up to 1 MB and 2,000 materials. After it finishes you see how many were created, updated and skipped.
Archiving and changes#
Turn off the Active switch in the library to archive a material you no longer sell: it's no longer offered for new parts, and parts that already use it keep it. Turn it back on to restore it. Editing a material's price, waste or settings re-prices every estimate that uses it.
Estimates created through the API can limit which materials a designer link offers. See Designer links for customers and staff.