Automated sign shop estimation — the spreadsheet retires here
If your estimating lives in a spreadsheet only one person understands, every quote is a bottleneck and every price is a small act of faith. Sign OS automates estimation from product recipes so any staff member can produce the estimate your best estimator would — and production, purchasing and invoicing run off the same numbers.
What actually gets automated
An estimate in Sign OS isn't a template — it's computed. The engine takes the product recipe and the job's dimensions and quantities, then derives material consumption (including waste and yield per substrate), machine minutes for each process, labour steps at your department rates, and your markup applied at quote time.
Change the quantity and the whole estimate re-derives: usage, offcut waste, setup versus run time. That's the arithmetic your spreadsheet was approximating, done properly and instantly.
- Material usage from sheet/roll geometry — waste calculated, not padded
- Machine time split into setup and run, per process step
- Labour from department rates and step estimates
Consistency is the real saving
Shops rarely lose money on the jobs they price carefully — they lose it on the Friday-afternoon quote someone rushed. Because Sign OS estimates are recipe-driven, the rushed quote and the careful quote use identical logic. Warnings surface anything unusual; nothing blocks you, but nothing slips through silently either.
And because the estimate becomes the job on acceptance, the numbers production sees are the numbers you quoted — actual time and materials clock against the estimate, and the margin panel shows quoted versus actual live per job.
The floor runs on the same numbers
Estimation isn't a silo in Sign OS. Released jobs reserve stock, purchase orders raise against the job with your suppliers' real prices, cutting and print queues appear on department boards, and installation work is dispatched with site details and job sheets. When the job closes, quoted-versus-actual tells you whether the recipe needs tuning — so estimates get sharper every month.
- Release wizard validates stock before the floor sees the job
- Job-linked purchase orders with supplier records and terms
- Install dispatch with QR job sheets and time clocking
- Quoted vs actual margin per job — feedback that tunes your recipes
Priced for Australian shops
Sign OS plans are AUD, start at $89/month, and undercut the incumbent MIS players by roughly half at every tier — with no onboarding fees and no per-user gouging. It's built in Australia by people from the sign trade, with a free 7-day trial that doesn't ask for a card.
Frequently asked questions
- How is this different from a quoting spreadsheet?
- A spreadsheet stores formulas one person maintains; Sign OS computes estimates from product recipes everyone shares. Material waste, machine time, labour and markup are derived the same way on every quote, the logic is auditable, and the estimate flows straight into production, purchasing and invoicing instead of being re-keyed.
- Can I still override a price?
- Always. Sign OS warns, it never blocks — you can override any line and the override is visible, so you keep commercial control while the engine keeps everyone honest.
- How long does setup take?
- You can be quoting the day you start: the free trial includes a shared catalogue of materials, machines and processes to build from, and every recipe you add makes the next quote faster. Most shops start with their top five products and grow from there.
- Does it handle installation work?
- Yes. Jobs carry site and logistics details, installation is scheduled on the same department timeline as production, and there's a dedicated portal for install contractors with the job information they need — without exposing your prices.