How to do it, and why it's built this way

With your shop's code, the one you received. You type it once: from then on the program knows you on that computer and stops asking.

There's no password and no email to sign up with. The code is the key: whoever has it gets in, so keep it in the shop. If you think it's been passed around, ask for a new one — it's free and you lose nothing.

With a real part. Not an example, and not by filling everything in first: take a print you have to quote this week and put that in.

The program only asks for what it needs, and whatever's missing it lets you type in by hand. Machines, the full material list and overhead come later, a piece at a time, and the math gets sharper every time.

That's the difference between an afternoon spent filling in boxes and ten minutes that hand you a number you can use.

No. You can cost a part by typing the hourly rate in by hand, and that's a perfectly good way to start.

Putting them in does change things: with the machine's card the program works out your real hourly rate — depreciation or lease, maintenance, power, and the share of rent and utilities that hour has to pay back. It almost always comes out higher than the number you carry in your head, and on a thousand-piece run that difference isn't a detail.

Start with the two or three machines most of your work goes through. The rest whenever you get to them.

The guided setup is five screens and five minutes: one machine, how you work, your own details for the quote letterhead, a few material prices and one customer.

The first screen is the heavy one, because it asks for the machine's numbers — what it cost, how many hours it runs, maintenance and power — and those are the numbers almost nobody has to hand. You can skip it: it says so at the top of the screen, and machines go in whenever you want from the Your shop page.

Then the first part. With the print in front of you, ten minutes. From there every new part is quicker than the last, because your materials and your machines are already in.

The shape and size of the stock you start from — round bar, bar, plate — and the program works the weight out on its own, from the density of the material.

Then it adds the drop: what you pay for and never becomes a part — the bar end left in the chuck, the chips, the machining allowance. If you leave the suggested figure, fine; if you know it's different on your part, change it.

If the material isn't on your list, type the price per pound right there. The program remembers it for next time.

It's the time it takes you to get the machine ready before the first good part: fixturing, touching off, proving it out.

You pay for it once, whether you make ten parts or a thousand. So it gets divided by the quantity: two hours of setup over ten parts is twelve minutes a part; over a thousand it's seven seconds.

It's why the same part costs more as a prototype and less in production — and if you don't spread it properly, you undercharge on your short runs.

You don't: you fill it in once and the program works it out. It needs what the machine cost (or what you pay on the lease), how many years you're writing it off over, how many hours a year it runs, maintenance and power.

On top of that goes its share of overhead — rent, utilities, insurance, the accountant. That money goes out even on the day no machine turns, and every working hour has to help pay it back.

The result is almost always higher than the number you carry in your head. That isn't the program getting it wrong: it's the line almost nobody puts in.

Because it's the biggest line in your hourly rate, and it's the one that almost never makes it into a quote.

Rent, power, heat, insurance, office staff, the accountant, phones, cleaning. You pay them every month regardless. If the price of your parts doesn't cover them, you're covering them out of your margin — which means you're working to cover costs instead of to make money.

You type them once, per year. The program spreads them over the hours your machines actually run.

In the “What it costs you” panel every line opens. Underneath you'll find the material with its drop, the setup spread over the lot, the minutes on each machine at its own hourly rate, programming, load/unload and outside treatments.

Every figure opens up, all the way down. If something doesn't add up, that's where you find out — and if it still adds up there, then what went in was wrong.

Because part of the cost you pay once for the whole lot: setup, programming, the first load. Over a few parts that weighs a lot; over many, almost nothing.

The program shows you the curve — how the cost per part moves as the quantity moves. It's worth a look before you answer a customer asking for a price break, so you know how far you can actually come down instead of guessing.

From three pieces: what you buy in (the material) with its own markup, what the time costs you with its own, and handling the order divided by the quantity.

It isn't one percentage on top of cost. Material and work are marked up differently because they're different things: on material you're just fronting cash; on time you're putting up the machine, the person and the risk.

Under the price there's “why this price”: it opens and tells you the sum in full, which rules it weighed and threw out and with what numbers, and what would move it.

Open the cost breakdown first and see where it comes from. Most of the time the difference is a line nobody counts in their head: overhead, setup on a short run, or an hourly rate higher than the one you remember.

The program doesn't know what you know: that this customer keeps you working all year, that you could make this part in your sleep, that the machine is sitting idle so it's worth taking anyway. You decide the price.

But if you go under your floor, the program tells you — and at the bottom of the page it keeps showing what you actually make at that price. Knowing you're giving away $20 a part is a different thing from not knowing.

Markup is how much you add on top of cost. Margin is how much of the selling price you keep. They're two different numbers: a 50% markup is a 33% margin.

Your minimum margin is the line you don't want to go under. The program won't stop you, but if a price goes under it, it says so — and tells you by how much.

After a few months of quotes sent and closed out, the program tells you: the median margin on the jobs you won and on the jobs you lost. In between is where it gets decided.

It isn't an opinion, and it's the only figure that's genuinely yours, because it's what your customers did with your prices. It does need the quotes to be closed out: always mark whether you got the job or lost it, even when it's bad news.

From “To quote” you open the request, price the lines and generate the PDF on your own letterhead. You see it in preview before it downloads: if something's off, you close it and no file was ever made.

From then on the request moves to “Quotes” and waits on the customer.

Paste it in. The request has a box to drop the list in exactly as it came: the program picks out part number, description and quantity and builds the lines.

The lines it can't read it doesn't invent: it leaves them for you to sort out by hand.

You mark the request accepted and it moves to “In production”, with the hours it brings with it and the promised date.

That day's price and cost stay frozen on the line. It means that two years from now you'll still know what margin you ran that part at, even if steel has doubled in the meantime.

The program counts the days. Once two weeks go by with no answer, the quote shows up among the ones worth a phone call.

It's the most profitable ten minutes there is: a share of the work isn't lost on price, it's lost because nobody followed up.

Yes, from a phone, on the On the floor page. They look up the part number, see the routing, the attachments and the planned times, and can log the real ones.

No price and no cost appear on that page: those have no business going round the shop floor.

To make the next quote true. An estimated time is a guess; a measured time is a fact, and the program shows you the gap.

After a few parts you find out which operations you're systematically optimistic about. It's one of the highest-value things in here, and it costs nothing but having someone punch the start and the end.

On the “To log” page, up on the top bar next to In production. Every job whose traveler you printed and whose times haven't come back yet lands there on its own.

The oldest sheets sit at the top, because you work a pile from the bottom. You look up the number written on the sheet, type the figures in, and it ticks off: the count at the top drops, so you always know how many are left.

After ten days a sheet that hasn't come back gets flagged: at that point it's either lost on the floor or under a pile, and it's worth going to look for it instead of waiting on it.

Whatever it says. The boxes want minutes — and they say so, “min” is written inside each one — but if you type 1h30, 1.5 h, 90 min or 45' the program understands it and converts, and shows you underneath how many minutes it read before you move on.

It's the most important thing on this screen: “1.5” typed for an hour and a half would be a minute and a half, forty times short, and the part would go out given away with nothing looking odd to anybody.

If the sheet has clock times instead of minutes — the operator wrote down when they started and when they stopped — switch the box over to clock times and type them as they are. The program works out the time per part, even when the shift runs past midnight.

You switch it off on its card. It stops being offered on new routings, but it stays on every part you've already made: the history doesn't change.

When it's running again, you switch it back on.

They stay as they are: that part, that day, cost that much. But when you reopen a part the program checks today's prices and tells you whether anything has moved, and by how much.

It's the most expensive question in the shop: “can you do it again at last year's price?”. With the increase in front of you, the answer is informed instead of just polite.

You can type a price per pound for that part alone: it applies to it and doesn't touch your material list. The program marks it as typed by hand, so when it checks for increases it knows that price was your decision.

Yes. Type your shop's code on the new computer and your data comes down from the online copy.

The program works on the device — so it keeps running when the signal doesn't reach the far end of the shop — and keeps a copy on the server that updates itself whenever there is a connection.

From Support, “Download all my data”. Out comes a single file with everything in it: materials, machines, people, customers, your past parts, quotes, company costs and history.

Prints, photos and programs aren't inside that file — a backup with two hundred prints in it would come out so big it would never open again. You get them from the same page with “Download the prints too”: they come out as separate files, with the part number in the name, and a list comes with them saying which print belongs to which part.

Do it now and again and keep it somewhere else. It's the one copy that doesn't depend on anybody.

From Support as well. You pick the file and the program first tells you what's inside it — how many parts, how many machines, what day it's from — without touching anything.

You can stop right there: that's how you check a backup is good while you still have everything, instead of finding out on the day you need it.

If you decide to apply it, the program tells you first what you lose, line by line. A restore replaces, it doesn't merge: two sets of parts mixed together means duplicate part numbers at different prices.

Yes. The subscription is per shop, not per seat: everybody who works with you can use it.

If two people change the same thing at the same time, the program notices and asks which version to keep, instead of quietly overwriting one of them.

Nobody, unless you send it to them. Whoever helps you sees your numbers only when you send them the file, or when you let them.

The program records how many things are in your shop — how many parts, how many machines — to tell whether it's being any use to you. Those are counts: no part numbers, no customers, no prices leave. If you'd rather it didn't, just say so.